Climate Change

Screegor · Climate Change

I've been away for a while and instead of trawling the old threads I decided to start a new one.

Well I'm glad to say that the Met Office has since I have been here in the US; produced the following information, for the people who seem to want to follow the newspapers rather than the science. It also lays down the areas of uncertainty etc.

The causes of climate change

I invite everyone to read this, as it answers a lot of misinformation and critism that was put to me some weeks ago by people (person) not doing there own research into the subject.

SLG

All looks like pretty bad news Screegor - what are you going to do about it?

Screegor

Well I haven't driven a car for 3 months, but that may be related to the fact my car is 3000 miles from me at the moment.

I think I'll try and catch more trains than planes. I think that is really the most important thing at the mo, cut plane flights.
Included in this is eating more local produce. Despite the fact it is nice to eat cherries in the winter flown fresh from Argentina. I think that I may stick to eating neaps and tatties, a true scottish delicacy....... Confused

This is also better for the scottish economy as well as reducing C emmisions.

Anyway my major concern is other pollutant forms at the mo. So personally I'll stick to researching the agricultural pollutants. I will consider going into C again in a few years.

SLG

That all sounds good. I try and follow is similar rules, although I do drive most days (can't wait for these trams Wink

). What sort of scale are these factors though? E.g. if car usage in western countries dropped 25%, 25% less air travel, if 25% less air miles were used supplying food to western markets... would this actually have a significant effect?

I think the world (certainly most folk I know) are full of good intentions, but it's very easy to make excuses by (i) thinking that it's all a bit of a myth and (ii) think that there is nothing as an individual you can actually do.

I think a lot more needs to be done to inform people, in practical terms, what they can achieve and what effect that will have.

gordon899 · Re: Climate Change

LAz

I took a meteorology class and we talked about global warming quite a bit.

Humans have contributed a lot to it. But despite that, it is not the only 'cause of it. It would happen naturally too, as the earth heats up and cools down. We are in the process of becoming warmer naturally. Despite this, I feel that what we are doing is only speeding the warming. By how much? - I don't know.

There is also negative feedback and positive feedback processes'. How those things come in to play could make things even more messed up.

Screegor

Screegor

Screegor

Also I thought I would quickly inform the people on here of some interesting developments. I recently attended a Global Warming conference, including some of the main researchers and policy makers in GW research.

At this conference they displayed the latest information and results from the past 4 years. These results have not been published yet, and I believe this was the first time they were displayed.

Basically the interesting things:-
All climate models are currently being predicted on an increase in CO2 emissions at a rate of 1.6% per year.
However - in the last 4 years, CO2 emissions have increased by 3% per year on avergae.
When recalucating the climate models for T increases, this equates to a staggering 1 oC increase in the predictions by 2100. So best case - 4.5oC increase, worst case 10 oC increase.

Secondly, data was displayed showing that with the strictist CO2 curbing (nothing out there at the moment to do this). With a reduction starting now. By cutting the total emissions by 1% per year (so 4% less than current). This would reduce the overall global warming on average prediction (not extremes) by almost 2 oC (so there would only be about a 2.5oC rise in 100 years - ie it is enevitable for some rise). Of course this will not happen immediately (the curbing), and the prediction in saving for every decade we wait before we start reducing CO2 emissions. Increases the overall impact, temperature predictions, and needed CO2 emission cuts.

However, 'is it worth it' - yes. Based on IPCC impact assessment, this would impact the planet - but maybe within a controllable amount, but with current uncontrolled CO2 release at 3%, well the guy would not speculate what the effects on humans would be - it was off the current charts proposed.

LAz

Screegor

Dave Coull

LAz wrote "I am not too interested in Global Warming".

That is, to say the least, a very short sighted attitude.

It would be strange if somebody was to say on this Our Scotland forum "I'm not too interested in what happens in Scotland". However, it would be a bit more understandable if somebody were to say "I'm not too interested in what happens in the countries of the former Yugoslavia", or even "I am not too interested in what happens in Ireland". But global warming, by definition, is something that effects the whole globe, the whole world, all of the countries and all of the people in the world, including those who say they are not too interested in global warming. When I first studied environmental science (in my mid-fifties!) back in 1994, all of our professors were already, at that time, teaching global warming, caused by human activity, as an established fact. The predictions which some of them made in 1994 have been proved correct in the years since then. Global warming is happening, and it is accelerating, and we could be in for a very bumpy ride indeed. Anybody who is still saying "I'm not too interested in global warming" really doesn't understand the world that we live in.

LAz

Neil

Catastrophe enthusiasts normally attack any sceptic on the grounds that at some time in the last 30 years they accepted money from business, or they knew somebody who did, or they have copuld have taken money or known somebody so we might as well accuse them anyway.

Since Screegor's link is to the Met Office which received quite a lot of money from a catastrophe supporting ourganisation (the government) all enthusiasts must naturally discount it to. In a similar vein we may note thar Alan Thorpe, the boss of NERC, which gets over £300 million from the government issued a public challenge to debate the alleged catastrophe online or in person - when it was accepted he ran away. (I will forward a copy of this to him & he may come out of his hole).

We have been over the warming scam before & the fact is that global temperature has not gone up since 1998 which makes "warming" problematic & catastrophic warming pure nonsense.

Screegor

A few primary source, peer reviewed publications / quotes. For those that are interested in real science. This isn't my list, but a friend of mine put this together. Most of these are very new articles. As for the Met Office it is a world leader in climate predictions, and has been spot on in its predictions for the last 10 years.

**GENERAL**

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level."

"Discernable human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patters."

"Anthropogenic warming of the climate system can be detected in temperature obsevations taken at the surface, in the troposhere, and in the oceans."

Hegerl, Zwiers, Braconnot et a. (2007)

"The warming effects of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations have been detected in all the regions examined, including North America and Europe."

Peter A. Stott "Attribution of regional-scale temperature changes to anthropogenic and natural causes" GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 30, NO. 14, 1728, doi:10.1029/2003GL017324 (2003)

**WARMING OCEANS**

"This suggests that the observed ocean heat-content changes are consistent with those expected from anthropogenic forcing, which broadens the basis for claims that an anthropogenic signal has been detected in the global climate system. Additionally, the requirement that modeled ocean heat uptakes match observations puts a strong, new constraint on anthropogenically forced climate models."

Tim P. Barnett, David W. Pierce et al. Science 13 Vol. 292.(2001)

"A warming signal has penetrated into the world's oceans over the past 40 years. The signal is complex, with a vertical structure that varies widely by ocean; it cannot be explained by natural internal climate variability or solar and volcanic forcing, but is well simulated by two anthropogenically forced climate models. We conclude that it is of human origin, a conclusion robust to observational sampling and model differences."

Tim P. Barnett, David W. Pierce et al. Science 8 July (2005)

"the observed increase in ocean heat content may largely be due to the increase of anthropogenic gases in Earth's atmosphere."

Sydney Levitus, John I. Antonov et al. Science Vol. 292 (2001)

**ON THE ANTHROPOGENIC SIGNAL**

"The greenhouse gas signal in global surface temperature can be distinguished from internal climate varibility and from the response to other forcings (solar variation, volcanism, and anthropogenic forces other than greenhouse gases)"

"[Most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is like to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentration (Mitchell et al. 2001)] This conclusion has been largely based on results using multiple regressions of observed surface air temperature onto fingerprints of greenhouse gas, sulphate aerosol or combined anthropogenic non-greenhouse gas emissions, and natural forcing"

Hegerl, G; Karl, T et al. "Climate Change Detection and Attribution: Beyond Mean Temperature Signals" Journal of Climate Volume 19 (2005)

More if you need: Karoly et al. 2003; Stott 2003; Zwiers and Zhang 2003; Karoly and Braganza 2005

***Some references illustrating the debunked science behind 'Swindle':***

"800-year lag of CO2 to temperature":

"the situation at Temination III* differs from the recent anthropogenic increase. As recently noted by Kump (2002), we should distinguish between internal influences (such as deglacial CO2 increase) and external influences (such as anthropogenic increase) on the climate system.

"Althought the recent CO2 increase has cleary been imposed first, as a result of anthropogenic activities, it natually takes, at Termination III, for CO2 to outgas from the ocean once it starts to react to a climate change"

Caillon, Serveringhaus (2003)

"Sunspots, blah blah blah"

"the last decade has seen a revival of various hypotheses claiming a strong correlation between solar activity and a number of terrestrial climate parameters...Analysis of a number of puplished graphs (swindle gragh) shows that the apparent strong correlations displayed have been obtained by incorrect handling of the physiacal data...their misleading character has not yet been generally recognized"

Damon, Laut- Eos Vol. 84 (2005)

***More random ones***

"The results indicate that, on the basis for the patterns for the variance, a distinction can be made between temperature change due to natural variability and temperature change due to changes in external forcing... a change in external forcing has to be invoked to explain the observed spring and summer warming. From the evaluation of greenhouse and natural variability in the climate model simulations, we infer that the observed spring and summer variance patters contain imprints consistent with anthropogenic warming."

Tank, Konnen and Selten, Journal of Climatology (2005)

**MEDIEVAL WARM PERIOD**

"Reconstructions of hemispheric mean tempertures over roughly the past two millenia... support previous conclusions with regard to the anomalous nature of the late 20th century temperature... To the extent that a "Medieval Warm Period" of moderately warmer conditions can be defined from about AD 800-1400, any heisheric warth during that interval is dwarfed in magnitude by the late 20th century warmth"

Mann and Jones 2003 Geophysical Research Letters
Vol. 30, No. 15, 1820, August (2003)

"In experiments in which forcing factors are varied individually rather than jointly, human-caused changes in greenhouse gases are the main driver of the 20th-century SST increases in both tropical cyclogenesis regions."

Santera, Wigley (2006)

"High variability in reconstructions does not hamper the detection of greenhouse gas–induced climate change, since a substantial fraction of the variance in these reconstructions from the beginning of the analysis in the late thirteenth century to the end of the records can be attributed to external forcing. Results from a detection and attribution analysis show that greenhouse warming is detectable in all analyzed high-variance reconstructions"

Gabriele C. Hegerl, Thomas J. Crowley et al. Journal of Climate (2007)

**ON ANTHROPOGENIC AEROSOLS**

"Although long considered to be of marginal importance to global climate change, tropospheric aerosol contributes substantially to radiative forcing, and anthropogenic sulfate aerosol in particular has imposed a major perturbation to this forcing."

"This perturbation is comparable in magnitude to current anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing but opposite in sign. Thus, the aerosol forcing has likely offset global greenhouse warming to a substantial degree."

SCHWARTZ, HALES et al. SCIENCE 255 (1992)

**ON PHANEROZOIC CO2 LEVELS**

"CO2 levels were high during the Mesozoic and early Paleozoic and low during the Permo-Carboniferous and late Cenozoic. These results correspond to independently deduced Phanerozoic paleoclimates and support the notion that the atmospheric CO2 greenhouse mechanism is a major control on climate over very long time scales."

Berner, "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels Over Phanerozoic Time" Science (1990)

**ON MODEL UNCERTAINTY**

"Optimal detection analyses have been used to determine the causes of past global warming... To date however, these analyses have not taken full account of uncertainty in the modelled patterns of climate response due to differences in basic model formulation.

"we extend the optimal detection method to include, simultaneously, output from more than one GCM by introducing inter-model variance as an extra uncertainty. Applying the new analysis to three climate models we find that the effects of both anthropogenic and natural factors are detected. We find that greenhouse gas forcing would very likely have resulted in greater warming than observed during the past half century if there had not been an offsetting cooling from aerosols and other forcings."

Huntingford, Stott et al. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33 (2006)

"The effect of sampling error in surface air temperature observations is assessed for detection and attribution of an anthropogenic signal... Including the effect of sampling error is found to increase the uncertainty in estimates of the greenhouse gas–plus–sulfate aerosol signal from observations by less than 2%–6% for recent trend patterns (1949–9 Cool

, and 3%–8% for signal estimates from observations in the first half of the twentieth century. Random instrumental error shows even smaller effects."

Hegerl; Jones Journal of Climate (2001)

**WATER MASSES**

"Our results suggest that the observed changes are most likely to be a signal of anthropogenic climate change. The strong signal in the Southern Ocean, which is detectable in the model from the 1980s, is in marked contrast with the intermediate waters of the Northern hemisphere oceans, where internal climate variability is large and a signal of anthropogenic climate change is not detectable in the model until 2020 at the earliest."

Banks, Wood et al. Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 27 (2000)

Screegor

Neil

I could paste up screeds of sceptical opinions if I wished to to prove my facility with Google too.

You have confused opinion with data. The link to the Met Office was not to data but to opinions beiing given by them - in such circumstances poiting out that they are funded by people committeed to the warming scare is perfectly proper.

Your use of temperature figues show you know perfectly well what the 1998 figure is & that all years since then have been cooler. That is not evidence of a catastrophic warming trend.

That temperatures are now at record heights is only true if you take the record back only 150 years. The fact is that temperatures are not higher than the Medieval warming & lower than the late Roman. Both were periods of prosperity not catastrophe.

Chris

Neil

As your graphs show we were clearly in a cooling period between 1940 & 1975 (which is why the environmental mopverment tried to frighten us with a new ice age then). Equally if you take your graph from 1998 to today (which is cherry picking a decade perhaps but not one year) we would also be on a cooling trend as indeed if you took a longer term trend from the Late Roman to Medieval to 1198 high points. What is clearly true is that you can establish any trend you want by carefully cherry picking the desired start point, as your graphs have done.

I'm not sure what your evidence is that the Medieval & late Roman warmings were confined to Europe (since air tends to move around & Europe will tend to be the same distance from the Sun as America this seems inherently improbable). I suggest that this is an invented claim relying on the fact that records from Medieval Europe are accessible & those of Australasia non-existent. In fact the dying out of the Viking colony in Greenland is normally taken as being due to a climate change you deny happened there & while precise records from China are relatively unavailable both were certainly periods of prospertiy. I look forward to your evidence that these warmings only happened in Europe & explanation of how this could happen.

Your guarantee that medieval temperatures were lower than now is not one that would require proof. The lower graph here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/m...ws/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml
says the opposite (though the alternative one, the Hockeystick, denies that any warming at all took place - which seems no longer to be part of your "consensus") - in any case you do not dispute that the Late Roman period was significantly warmer than now which is clearly inconsistent with catastrophism.

SLG

Chris

Neil, with regards to this graph:

Here is the list of references by colored line:

1. (dark blue ): P.D. Jones, K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett, and S.F.B. Tett (1998). "High-resolution Palaeoclimatic Records for the last Millennium: Interpretation, Integration and Comparison with General Circulation Model Control-run Temperatures". The Holocene 8: 455-471.
2. (blue): M.E. Mann, R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes (1999). "Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations". Geophysical Research Letters 26 (6): 759-762.
3. (light blue): Crowley and Lowery (2000). "Northern Hemisphere Temperature Reconstruction". Ambio 29: 51-54. Modified as published in Crowley (2000). "Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years". Science 289: 270-277.
4. (lightest blue): K.R. Briffa, T.J. Osborn, F.H. Schweingruber, I.C. Harris, P.D. Jones, S.G. Shiyatov, S.G. and E.A. Vaganov (2001). "Low-frequency temperature variations from a northern tree-ring density network". J. Geophys. Res. 106: 2929-2941.
5. (light green): J. Esper, E.R. Cook, and F.H. Schweingruber (2002). "Low-Frequency Signals in Long Tree-Ring Chronologies for Reconstructing Past Temperature Variability". Science 295 (5563): 2250-2253.
6. (yellow): M.E. Mann and P.D. Jones (2003). "Global Surface Temperatures over the Past Two Millennia". Geophysical Research Letters 30 (15): 1820.
7. (orange): P.D. Jones and M.E. Mann (2004). "Climate Over Past Millennia". Reviews of Geophysics 42: RG2002.
8. (red-orange 1500-1980): S. Huang (2004). "Merging Information from Different Resources for New Insights into Climate Change in the Past and Future". Geophys. Res Lett. 31: L13205.
9. (red): A. Moberg, D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karl..n (2005). "Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data". Nature 443: 613-617.
10. (dark red): J.H. Oerlemans (2005). "Extracting a Climate Signal from 169 Glacier Records". Science 308: 675-677.
11. (black): Instrumental data was jointly compiled by the Climatic Research Unit and the UK Meteorological Office Hadley Centre.

The mechanics used for these researches were independent from each other, and used various methods (especially multi-proxy information from ice, ocean and lakes, tree-rings), and include various mechanisms such a solar activity, volcanoes, internal natural forcings, and the like. There have been numerous mechanisms and locations used. A few examples:
Ice caps in Peru and Bolivia, tree-ring chronologies from northern
Patagonia, Stalagmite-derived regional annual maximum temperature for northeastern South Africa, tree rings in New Zealand, tree-rings and historical documents in China and Mongolia, delta18O from Sajama, Bolivia, delta18O from Huascaran, Peru, Lamination thickness in lake sediments at Baffin Island, N. Canada. (Bradley et al., 2003). There are plenty more examples there which would overcomplicate this post.

The concept of a Medieval Warm Period was suggestedd by Lamb in 1965. Lamb based his argument exclusively on historical and paleoclimatic data from western Europe. If solar irradiance was enhanced in the 12th century, conditions in northern and western Europe may have been relatively warm because of changes in large-scale circulation patterns associated with the Arctic Oscillation (Shindell et al., 2001). This mechanism may explain why some regions were relatively warm in Medieval times whereas others were not. You must understand that there are many mechanisms which interact to determine local and global phenomena involving a complex sun/atmosphere/earth/ocean/ice/land system.

I would also read theGulledge Testimony, which addresses both the MWP and the hockey stick
and, http://www.realclimate.org/index....medieval-warmth-and-english-wine/
http://www.realclimate.org/index....t-if-the-hockey-stick-were-wrong/

Could you be more specific as far as other claimed warm periods and supporting references? I don't deny that natural variations exist, and the Earth's history has had considerably warmer periods in our ~4.6 billion years than today. However, they also involved considerably different solar, geological, and ecological circumstances. I can be more specific if you wish to point out a particular event. The onus is also on you to tell me what those natural variations are today which can explain the increase in temperature around 1900. Skeptics love to point to natural variations; we can even assume the MWP and RWP were warmer globally, why is the last 100 years getting warmer? What is the natural triggering?

With regards to the 1940-1970 decrease...During that time, output of sulfate aerosols and others, and particulate air pollution also increased exponentially (These are particularly good at scattering and deflecting solar radiation which decreases global temperatures. Pinatubo caused a reduction of approximately 0.5°C at its greatest impact.) This followed the Great Depression when industrial production had decreased significantly, corresponding to global warming growth in the early 1900's. Around 1970, American and European output of aerosols and particulates began decreasing over the next couple of decades (legislation on pollution). CO2 levels, however, had continued to increase during all of this time. Note that New Zealand climatologists reported that during this time and other parts of the Southern Hemisphere had been warming (Salinger and Gunn, 1975). Industrial production of sulfate aerosols and other atmospheric pollutants were much lower in the Southern Hemisphere.

It is also clear, temperatures are expected to significantly increase until 2100 and beyond. There is a clear correlation between CO2 and temperature. CO2 has become a forcing rather than a feedback mechanism. As global temperatures increase, feedback mechanisms kick in such as increased albedo due to ice melting, release of further of CO2 from the world's oceans, and melting of permafrost.

In reference to your article, there are far too many wrong or misleading claims to address in one post. If you would like to present a couple arguments at a time, then I will be happy to address them, or if I cannot, refer you to various sources that can. All the arguments are common ones, and all counter-arguments from "just another natural cycle" to "sun activity" have been refuted. It is also clear that this article is not up to date with science. Its main arguments are reports from the '90s. The '90s are credible, but if more up to date research concludes the old stuff was wrong, and shows why it is wrong, then I will refer to those. This is what Science does, correct errors. An example of a "not up to date" part is "A recent paper by John Lyman, of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, reports that the oceans have cooled sharply in the past two years."

The article by Lyman, Willis, and Johnson asserted that approximately 20% of heat gained by the upper ocean from 1955 to 2003 had been lost from 2003 to 2005. However, in a paper entitled Correction to “Recent Cooling of the Upper Ocean”, by Willis, Lyman, Johnson, and Gilson, 2007, the authors recanted saying in their abstract "The recent cooling signal in the upper ocean reported by Lyman et al. (2006) is shown to be an artifact that was caused by a large cold bias discovered in a small fraction of Argo floats as well as a smaller but more prevalent warm bias in eXpendable BathyThermograph (XBT) data."

In essence, steric sea level rise continued unabated. Steric sea level rise is due to thermal expansion of the ocean, which should only happen if the oceans continued to heat up. (As opposed to eustatic sea level rise which is due to the increasing volume of the oceans - currently due to the increasing amounts of water in the ocean from melting ice.)

I realize your source was written before this, so it is only commenting on what it had to work with. However, instead of referring me to scientific sources, you refer me to news sources, written by people who are not scientists. This is what happens with wrong sources. It says nothing about the science of climate change; It says an incredible amount about how science is politically polarised.

Screegor

Okay 40s, 50s and 60s.
CO2 is not the only pollutant or thing that effects global T. That is why climate models account for many factors. Therefore the rise is not perfectly steady - you wouldn't expect this.
e.g. 1990 - a massive volcanic eruption by by Mount Pinatubo. Caused a slight drop in global T, by releasing sulfates into the atmosphere.

In the 40-60s, the same happened. CO2 warming was overridden by other pollutants. The major factor was human particulates and aerosols. Once these were cleaned from our pollutants, (due to smogs etc) the CO2 trend continued.

Neil

To amplify:

Despite my asking you have produced no evidence for the claim that the Medieval & Roman warmings were limiteed to Europe. I have given 4 reasons against that (that atmosphere moves around the planet, that the sun shines form the same distance on the whole planet, that history shows the MWP affected Greenland, & that it indicats the same for China). If you are going to assert, as fact, that it was a purely European phenomena it is up to you to justify that. The ball is in your court.

I accept you are not a climate scientist. The self proclaimed climate scientist who debated this last time was also unable to provide evidience either & what is considerably worse, repeatedly caught out in simple errors so you are well ahead of him.
http://ourscotland.myfreeforum.org/about3508.html

Holebender

I have seen evidence cited above (ice samples, tree rings).

Neil

Do you intend to amplify or is that it?

SLG

Screegor

Neil

SLG
It is up to Screegor to produce evidence that the Medieval warming, whicich he admits happened in Europe & apparently North america didn't happen anywhere else for 2 reasons:

1) That having accepted it happened the assumption requiring fewest changes (check out Occam's Razor) is that it was the same all over. The onus is therefore on him to show that it isn't.

2) Since we are supposed to be spending £400 million a day on opposing warming it is incumbent on those proposing it to produce some evidence. Since the existence of the Medieval warming precludes any worry about us undergoing an unprecedented, or even harmful, warming it is incumbent on them to show that it didn't happen, or as Screegor now acknowledges did happen, but only within the range of written records.

In the same way if I, or you, were to inform the government that if we weren't paid an enormous postal order of £400 million a day a giant hummingbird would eat the planet, it would be wise of the government to seek some evidence before paying.

Screegor
Firstly the reason why Europe is warmer than Canada is not atmospheric but because of the Gulf Stream - water. An amazing example to use from somebody who, in the previous thread, made numerous cliams about your proficciency as a climate scientist.

Secondly your point about sunlight having to travel further to reach the far side of the Earth would be a foolish nitpick (the diameter of the Earth is 8,000 miles & the distance from the Sun 98,000,000 miles so the effect is irrelevant) were it not for one matter. The far side of the Earth doesn't get sunlight. This is known as night & it is also surprising that a "scientist" of your caliber has not noticed.

I must admit to having forgotten the name of the previous "scientist" who had done the last thread & eventually run away after he had been proven to to have contradicted himeself repeatedly & lied also repeatedly. I didn't therefore realise that you were the same "scientist". I accept that your claim then to have in 1972, shared responsibility for producing maps of all pollutants which retroactively created the Clean Air Act of 1956 represnts the standard of honesty to which you aspire & that many ofv your otherv statements represent an equal standard.

Now are you going to produce evidence that the Medieval, let alone late Roman warmings were, while equal to or in the latter case, warmer than the "catastrophe" that we are presently experienceing nonexistent beyond the range of European records? Or will you acknowledge that it is a claim made without evidence? No real scientist, or indeed any individual with any respect for science, would ever refuse to produce the alleged evidence behind their hypothesis.

Screegor

Neil

"Hahahaha, you obviously do not read my posts["

Gosh what I am missing.

Moderately seriously your repeated habit of bursting into paroxysms of written laughter make you look like something out of Monty Python. (The Holy Grail one).

Since you have already accepted the existence of the Medieval warming it is ridiculous for you to object to me not subsequently providing links.

The point is that you have claimed , without evidence, to know that warming was limited to Europe or nearby. That is something which nobody with any respeect whatspever for the scientific method would dream of doing without being willing to produce even a tiny amount of evidence.

Even a decent astrologer would be willing to say which particular planets were causing the effects he claims but you cannot.

I'm glad you now know that the Gulf Stream is in the sea. Well done.

I hope you won't mind my pointing out that your defence of your global warming theory - that it is colder at the North Pole than the equator - is very silly as this has nothing whatsoever to do with increasing CO2. To simplify for you since sunlight at the poles comes in at a sharp angle the same amount of sunlight is spread over a far larger area than at the equator. This is simple geometry. The poles have ALWAYS been cooler than the equator.[

SLG

Neil

1) No the onus really is on the person putting forward the more complex claim to produce some evidence. This iprinciple s a more important point than the actual question. It is a basic scientific & indeed real life principle that you require evidence rather than mere assertion, however authoratitive.

In fact there is some evidence of warming elsewhere in the world, it is just that written records in Eueope are clear, but not in Australasia. If I produced tthe evidence Screegor would merely change the subject again, as he has done many times before, which is why I am standing on the principle.

2) The £400 million a day is the assessed cost of Kyoto worldwide. Actually I very much doubt if it will be met because everybody is failing to meet their Kyoto targets & promising to instead do even better next decade. Our governments are failing to live down to their promises.

I wouldn't disbelieve that humanity might be making some change but since CO2 is 0.03% of the atmosphere & human beings cause only 3% of that small figure I think that solar variability must be orders of manitude more important. The existence of the Medieval & Roman warmings being warmer than now seems to support that. I am also oldenough to remember when these "environmentalists" were threatening us with an ice age.

3) I was being somewhat facetious but when you come down for it the actual evidence for catastrophic warming is the same as the hummingbird - zero. Lots of statements by the great & good. Lots of computer models (which don't tend to postdict previous weather either). Zero actual evidence. To be fair it is alsmost impossible to prove how anyhting will be in 2100 until we get there. The same applies to proving the non-existence of the hummingbird.

4) Since light at the poles is coming in at a slant it does indeed pass through more atmosphere & get absorbed slightly more. However this, like Screegor's entire point about the poles is completely irrelevant to changes in GLOBAL temperature, whether cuased by CO2 or not.

5) I have immense respect for scientists. All human progres ultimately depends on scientists & technologists (defined broadly enough to describe the tamer of fire as a scientist). What I have no time for is those who claim the mantle of science but do not stick to its rigorous requirements - that a theory requires evidence & must be falsifiable. There are many eminent people, a few of them with letters to their name who do not qualify. I know Screegor is your friend but I am afraid I put him in the same class.

SLG

Screegor

Holebender

Now I remember why I undertook never to respond to Neil some time last year. He's a dick.

Neil

SLG

1) It is a basic scientific principle, known as Mediocrity, that you assume things are pretty much the same all over. Thus since we know of the Medieval in areas where records are good, any working on scientific principle would take as a working assumption that this applied across the world. Screegor basis his assumption that the MWP did not exicst outside the European are on no evidence whatsover, with no theorectcal basis, merely that it is convenient since the catastrophic warming & Hockeystick theory fall apart otherwise.

1A) No until Screegor accepts the Principle of Mediocrity & produces some evidence.

2) Again it is theoretically possible that some new previously unknown effect could be causing present warming but again going for the simple theory, since we know greater warming has happened in the past naturally the optimum assumption would be that it is the same cause, not CO2 or indeed the Hummingbird.

The Ice Age threat, based on the fact that temperatures fell from 1940 to 1975 was very popular in "environmental" circles up till the early 1980s, at which point it was replaced by the warming scare. This got considerable support including from the, very political, leadership of the American academy of Scince.

3) Computer models mean nothing until they match reality. Most ofthe models have failed to correctly postdict how past weather has gone so it is unwise to rely on them being correct for the future. I would go for the conservative position that we should not assume a massive & unprecedented catastrophic change, from CO2 or Giant Hummingbirds, without strong evidence.

4) You misunderstand - the equator is not receiving more light than in the past or thepoles less. It is inherent in the circular shape of the Earth that exposure will unchangingly be as I said - that is why it has no relevence to the warming debate.

5)

SLG

Neil

Chris

Holebender

Will somebody tell that dick to read back through the posts and see where Chris (I believe) posted that climate data for other continents has been calculated from such sources as tree rings and ice cores. It is written in black and white so I resent the dick calling me a liar. It's not my fault he's an illiterate dick who obviously doesn't read the posts he responds to.

That's because he's a dick.

Chris

In addition to my post a minute ago, while the sun is the main force behind the Earth's climate, it is not the only factor regarding regional or global temperatures. These include Tectonic processes, mountains, continental spatiality, Milkanovitch cycles (obliquity, eccentricty, precession), volcanic activity, ocean circulation, atmospheric concentrations, and more.

The sun is responsible for almost all the energy received by Earth, but it cannot account for modern trends. The more important factor is the rise in greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, as a result of human activities, which is the most important variable now for CHANGE of temperature. The extra heat distributed by CO2 originally came from the sun, and is captured by the CO2 after being absorbed the Earth and radiated back outward toward space.

Assuming everything I just said was false, and we have a "what if" situation and "what if" the MWP was warmer globally. Well, so what? There clearly must have been a natural forcing. So now the onus is on you

Climate Change

Re: Climate Change