Beechnut, I thought your claim is that the data over the past 9 years proves global warming is no longer occurring. If that is your claim, you need to show that that statistically. That is, you need to show that the 0.6 C/yr (which I believe is the commonly accepted value) is statistically inconsistent with the data. You have not done this, therefore you have so far failed to prove your point.
I have done that is spades for Jan 1998 through Mar 2006.
First, the average global troposphere temperature has averaged 0.226 C, so how in the heck could it be increasing 0.6/yr if the fully 8 years have averaged 0.226 C … that is totally ridiculous.
Second, I have shown none of the data, including 1998, can be thrown out based on a statistical +/- 3 sigma.
Third, I have shown there is no trend coefficent for 1998 through 2006 that is even remotely significantly different than 0.
Beechnut: I don’t know what your point is in regards to the ice core data. There are at least 5 reasons why the temperature variation that we have seen since the beginning of the industrial revolution is less than that shown in this data:
(1) You don’t show the CO2 variation, but I seem to recall, it goes from like 180 ppm in the cold periods to 280 ppm in the warm periods. This is approximately a 56% increase. By contrast, since the industrial revolution began, we have so far increased from 280 ppm to 380 ppm, which is about a 36% increase. [The fractional, or percent increase, is what is important rather than the absolute magnitude because temperature is expected to vary approximately logarithmically on CO2 concentration.]
(2) The temperature record you plot from the Vostok ice core is not the global temperature but the temperature in the polar region. The polar region temperature oscillations are expected to be about a factor of 2 higher than the global temperature oscillations.
(3) Since the increase in CO2 that we have produced has happened very quickly, the earth has not yet come into equilibrium with the current CO2 concentration. It is estimated that if we fixed the CO2 levels at where they are today, the temperature would continue to rise another ~0.5 C before leveling off.
(4) During the ice age – interglacial oscillations, more things were happening than just a change in CO2. In fact, the trigger for those oscillations has been demonstrated to be oscillations in the earth’s orbit (namely, in the eccentricity of the orbit, in the precession of the earth’s axis [and hence whether Northern hemisphere’s winter occurs when the earth is closer to the sun as it does now or when it is further away], and in the tilt of the axis). The CO2 is understood to account for roughly half of the observed temperature change.
(5) For us now, also, more things are happening than just a change in CO2. In fact, it is believed that air pollution (sulfate aerosols mainly) have likely masked some of the warming that we would have otherwise experienced.
Notes added in preview:
(1) Just a correction to scr4’s estimate, the accepted value of the warming over the last few decades is something in the neighborhood of 0.16-0.20 C per decade. [The 0.6 C number quoted is something you might be remembering as roughly the total rise during the 20th century.]
(2) Beechnut: In regards to your claim that today’s CO2 and temperature variations are insignificant compared to the past, this is not so. As I have shown, the current CO2 fractional variation may be less than the variation experienced between ice age and interglacial but by less than a factor of 2 (and it won’t be by the time we are through!). Also, the variation is much larger than any CO2 variation that has occurred in the last several thousand years (i.e., during the current interglacial). Also, since the variation is up, rather than down, from interglacial values, it has taken us to levels not seen for at least the last 700,000 years (according to ice core data) and likely the last ~10 million years. As for temperature, proxy data shows that the Northern Hemisphere temperatures are likely higher than they have been at any time in the last 2000 years. (Data in the southern hemisphere is too sparse to draw definitive conclusions.) The high end estimate in the IPCC TAR report would give a rise by 2100 that is comparable to the rise from ice age to interglacial (while the low end estimate would be a bit over a quarter of that). Since temperatures have only been a little bit higher (on the order of a degree C or so) in some previous interglacials, as your plot shows, this is again taking us into territory that has not been explored for at least hundreds of thousands if not millions of years.
Even assuming this to be true (and I have my doubts but will take it as true for the sake of argument), all you have shown is that you can cherry-pick the data…i.e., look at a specific beginning point and the current endpoint and find that you cannot determine a significant trend. Fortunately, in the real world, scientists are not restricted to looking at only the eight year period that you have cherry-picked. And, when they look over a longer period (and probably shorter periods such as the last 5 years or 7 years, say), the trend is indeed significant.
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Very important … are you saying the temperature variations shown in that graph of approximately +3 C (tropical) to -8 C (ige age) are not reflective of the global temperature variations over history?
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CO2 being at 380 ppm and if the reason for global warming, shouldn’t we be way higher than a 0.226 C global temperature, 0.192 C today?
All I can say is that these scientists ought to take a basic course in statistics. When comparing the global temperature variation today of +0.226 C to historic variations of +3 C to -8 C … only a fool would think that today’s global temperature variation is even remotely close to being significantly different than 0.
Since it is argued the Antartica temperature variations do not reflect the global temperature variations (which they do by the way), the following graph from UN IPCC. Again, it shows based on histoical variations in global temperature that today’s is statistically no different than 0 and maybe more on a 10 of thousands of year cycle.
The green was add by me to indicate today’s variations in global temperature.
The only conclusion again, is that anyone believing today’s +0.226 C anomaly is statistically different from zero or even more so outside of historical cycles is completely misinformed.
The general variations are reflective of the global variations but they are amplified by roughly a factor of 2 from the global variations.
First of all, this “+0.226” you quote is not the full variation that we have seen. What you are reading is the temperature relative to some mean…I believe the mean is conventionally taken to be the years 1961-1990 or something like that. It is not relative to the pre-industrial temperatures. The rise from 1900 to now is ~0.7 C.
Second of all, the arguments for global warming are not based on statistical analysis of the temperature. The fact that the temperature has varied by large amounts on large timescales does not mean that one cannot resolve, and study the physical basis for, smaller variations on shorter timescales. There is more to life than statistical analysis.
As a simple analogy, if I take a pot of water and repeatedly heat it up to boiling and then let it cool down to room temperature in a 68 F room. And then, after the last time I let it cool down, I take it outside where the temperature is 80 F and I monitor the temperature over time, I will see it rise from 68 F to 80 F. Even though this rise is much less than the variation between 68 F and 212 F, I can still detect it and study it and attribute a cause to it.
And maybe you are taking this change from a “cool” period … the current variation to “zero” is 0.226 C … the variations to “zero” historically have run +3 C to -8 C … thus, today’s is totally insignificant.
Dude, this has gone from being slightly amusing to very annoying. You have officially been pitted because it was simply getting too tempting to violate the rules of etiquette here in Great Debates.
From the UN IPCC chart the global temperature went up over 10.5 C from approximately14,400 BC through 3,400 BC … what was man doing then to cause this dramatic global warming?
Well, if presenting the real data and statistical analysis of such is against the etiquette here, I apologize. I will limit my arguments to what people “think”, their opinions and articles that present words and no data to back it up.
Record snows! If the global temperature keeps dropping by 1F like it has from April 1998 through March 2006 … what are we in for next? …
High country still frosty white
Snowstorms have left five river basins a wealth of unexpected water
By Dylan Darling, Record Searchlight
May 3, 2006
A steady series of snowstorms from late February to the middle of April has left the north state’s high country laden with snow.
“There is so much snow on the mountain, it’s amazing,” said Eric White, an avalanche specialist for the U.S. Forest Service at Mt. Shasta. “We had a lot more snow in the springtime than we normally do.”
The Old Ski Bowl, 7,900 feet above sea level on the mountain’s southern slope, got a whopping 21 feet of snowfall from late February to the middle of last month, White said. Around the north state, snow surveys conducted in late April by Forest Service workers show the same thing – lots of snow.
Better?
Again, I don’t think that 10.5 C number is accurate for the whole globe…James Hansen gives a value of ~5 C in the extended version of his Scientific American article in 2004. But be that as it may, it does not logically follow that just because the earth’s climate has changed in the past without man’s interference that therefore the current change has nothing to do with us. In fact, it is from studying these past climate changes that scientists can get an estimate of how sensitive the climate system is to the forcings that occurred at that time and therefore estimate how much the climate is likely to change in response to the known forcing we are putting on it with the increase in greenhouse gas levels that we are causing. Hansen’s estimate made in this way suggests an equilibrium climate sensitivity of approximately 3 C for a doubling in the concentration of CO2…which is pretty much right in the middle of the range that climate models also predict. [By the way, if the global temperature change were really 10.5 C and the estimate of the forcings at that time kept equal, then Hansen’s estimate of the climate sensitivity would actually double.]
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The +10.5 C is clearly discerned from the IPCC graph and the Antartica core
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CO2 is 380 ppm. Is it the independent or dependent variable? Why hasn’t the temperature gone up anywhere proportionate to the CO2 concentration versus history nor Hansen?
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The temperature from 14,400 BC to 3,400 BC went up 10.5 C, based on 2 sources (above), maybe Hansen ia all wet since nothing he has said has been verified?
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What data does he present and from what reference(s)?
It is rather irrelevant to the general theme here whether the rise globally was 5 or 10 C, but I should note that since you have the odd habit of posting graphs out of their context, it is hard to verify what was said about them in the original place that they appeared. I haven’t been able to find a specific statement of the global temperature change between glacial period and interglacial in the IPCC report although they do say this, which at least provides qualitative support of my idea that the ice core data shows larger temperature changes than occurred globally: “The amplitude of the glacial-interglacial temperature change was lower in tropical and equatorial regions (e.g., curve c) than in mid- and high latitudes (other curves).”
In the past, CO2 was both…i.e., it is generally understood that the orbital forcings were the triggers for the change in climate that (using the case of warming as an example) then resulted in the release of CO2 which then served to amplify the warming. However, in the present case, it is well-understood that we are causing the rise in CO2. This is strongly suggested from the circumstantial evidence that CO2 levels started rising with industrialization and are now higher than they have been in at least 700,000 years…and likely 10 million years or more. However, it is also seen from the fact that the amount of increase of CO2 levels in the atmosphere corresponds to the amount that we are putting into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. (To be specific, the levels are rising at a rate of about half the amount that we put in thus showing that the water, land, and biosphere are capable of taking up some but not all of the excess that we are producing.) Furthermore, one can apparently study the change in the isotopic distribution of the carbon in the atmospheric carbon dioxide to provide further evidence that it is due to the burning of fossil fuels.
See post #123 above.
I have acknowledged the source of every chart and the data sources utilized for them. If I have missed any please advise. The graph you reference also shows a +10.5 C degree “warming” which you now say doesn’t matter if it was +5 C! If that doesn’t matter, my God man, how does +0.226 C matter?
CO2 is now 380 ppm. yet the global temperature isn’t anywhere close to what is should be at that level based on postulated relationship between CO2 and global temperature. How’s that? Is CO2 the independent or dependent variable?
Presenting real data is not against this Forum’s etiquette. Presenting truncated data and refusing to recognize the issues such truncation create, while not against the rules, will generally bring scorn to the poster behaving in this dishonest manner.
Presenting truncated data, refusing to recognize or address the issues created by such truncation, and then posting barely disguised insults that one’s opponents are the ones who are misbehaving borders on being a jerk, which is not permitted here.
You seem to have a grasp of the mechanics of mathematics, yet you are displaying a real disconnect between playing with numbers and applying numbers to the real world. It almost appears that you have not yet begun to apply your math skills in the real world.
Moderator’s Note: Original poster of the thread banned for having multiple accounts/resubscribing as a Guest after the free trial membership period has expired.