Well, someone said you could “wait until intention shows up”, so how could I resist?
As with most claims about warming, some seem to be true, some seem to be false, and in general, we don’t have enough information about any of them for a definitive answer.
In order, you say:
[QUOTE=human_extinction]
- There is a lag between the graph of increasing temperature and the graph of increasing CO2 - that is: CO2 is a consequence of heat and not the other way around.
[/quote]
Both directions appear to be true - CO2 increases with heat and heat increases with CO2. The unanswered question, however, is the important one – by how much? That, we don’t know.
[QUOTE=human_extinction]
2) The guy who originally measured C02 increase on a Hawaii island (near a volcano - sorry I forgot his name) never cleaned the sensors so the data showed a slow build-up of CO2.
[/quote]
Not true. The guy was Keeling, and the sensors are about twenty miles up the volcano from my house. As someone else pointed out, the sensors are checked against known reference samples on a regular basis.
[QUOTE=human_extinction]
3) The hockey stick graph of increasing CO2 and temperatures looks like it will top out if the graph is made proportional (not crushed horizontally).
[/QUOTE]
You’re talking about two separate graphs, one of CO2 and one of temperature. The one of temperature may have already topped out (little change in the last decade), while the one of CO2 has continued to rise.
[QUOTE=human_extinction]
4) This is a natural heating period which is “likely” followed by a consequential cooling. (The global climate “tipping point” is one that will lead to cooling rather than more heat.)
[/QUOTE]
Two separate claims here: 1) this it a natural heating period, and 2) it will be followed by a cooling period.
For the first claim, we have no evidence that this is not a natural heating period, as the earth has been warming about 0.5°/century for the last 300 years or so. In addition, the recent warming is not statistically different from the 1920-1945 warming in amount or slope, so we can’t reject the null hypothesis that it is natural. Note that this does not mean it is in fact natural, just that we can’t say scientifically that it is not. Yes, I know the IPCC says otherwise, but they admit that they have no scientific proof of their claim, just “expert opinion” … and at the end of the day, that’s opinion, not science. Given that they are reluctant to listen to anyone who disagrees with them, I don’t give their opinion much weight.
For the second claim, we don’t know whether tomorrow will be warmer or cooler. My guess is cooler, because the sun appears to be heading for a minimum around 2030 or so, but like with the IPCC, that’s my opinion, not science.
The huge problem with all of this is the lack of data. It has been greatly exacerbated by some of the climate scientists’ habit of hiding their data. I have just been partially successful in getting the data upon which the HadCRUT3 global temperature dataset is based. I had to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get it, however, and it took me six months to get it, and they still held some back … when someone starts fighting hard like that to keep their “science” secret, it definitely raises suspicion.
Even without those shenanigans, however, the data is very poor. Our thermometer based ground stations were not built to measure temperatures for teasing out a tiny signal, they were build for rough temperature measurements for weather. In the past, nobody cared if trees grew up around a thermometer station, or if a parking lot was put in next to it, and the temperature changed by a degree or two. It didn’t matter.
Now, however, we are trying to tease out a signal of one or two hundredths of a degree per year from very poor station data. Stations have moved, they are missing days, months or years of observations, thermometers have been changed, and changed again, times of observation have changed, often records are very short or fragmentary, it’s a mess. Take a look at surfacestations.org to see just how bad the US stations are … and these are likely among the world’s best.
In addition, 70% of the globe is covered by ocean, where the temperature records are few, far between, and clustered along trade routes with huge areas left uncovered.
As a result, nobody has been able to show that the temperature rise of the last century is un-natural in any way. Does this mean humans didn’t affect the temperature? By no means. It is a reflection of the short, inaccurate nature of our records.
Finally, the climate system is complex beyond belief. I have said it before, but it bears repeating. The climate is a driven, multi-stable, chaotic, turbulent, resonant, constructal, tera-watt scale planetary sized heat engine. It has a host of forcings, parasitic losses, natural cycles, and feedbacks, both internal and external, and both known and unknown. It contains important phenomena on all spatial scales from molecular to planetwide, and on all temporal scales from nano-seconds to millions of years. It has five major inter-related sub-systems (ocean, atmosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere). Each sub-system has its own forcings, resonances, and feedbacks which affect both itself and all of the other sub-systems.
The idea that we understand the climate well enough to predict how a small change in a small part of that huge, unimaginably complex system will play out one hundred years from now is one of the larger scientific misconceptions of the century. So unfortunately, if you’re looking for something solid and scientific, climate science is not the place to look.
Sorry I couldn’t help with “concreteness” …
Best to all,
w.