# Global warming v weather shift **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 20, 2012, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050 "2012-08-20T13:14:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/41 "2012-08-22T01:46:39Z")
Sorry, but that is not a peer reviewed article, and the moment it declares the IPCC wrong and accuses it of talking of catastrophism when they are actually conservative in their projections and based on peer reviewed science, I have to doubt on how they are getting those results. Particularly coming from a website that supports birtherism and whoo whoo quantum mechanical consciousness and the Tea party. ---
**Author:** ![Michael63129](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@Michael63129](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael63129)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/42 "2012-08-22T02:03:13Z")
> [@SillyBean](#): > > Earth was covered in molten lava before, ice before, and everything in between long before mankind and I’m contending that it likely will be again for any number of reasons … Yes, and I’m sure that there were no humans around back then, which is really the entire point; [humans aren’t adapted for very high temperatures](http://www.livescience.com/6428-earth-hot-humans.html), even those much higher than today (not so much just higher temperatures, but higher temperatures and humidity, so claiming that people can live in a 120 degree desert is invalid). [Or their food crops](http://www.pnas.org/content/101/27/9971.long), which is really even more important (food prices have been in the news a lot in recent years, and a lot of it is due to crops being damaged by extreme weather). Not only that, when Earth was covered in molten lava (or ice) in the past, we know why it was so, and the same applies to the current observed warming (which also has past analogs; humans didn’t cause those past episodes but that doesn’t mean humans can’t be causing the current one). ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/43 "2012-08-22T02:09:37Z")
And no wonder that Randombiology cite looked familiar, as usual there are no easy pickings even for mild skeptics, I noticed that site in the past as it was pushed before, for their calculations they are dismissing the most likely increased levels of CO2 emissions that even conservatively speaking went up during the recession. The few actual researchers that remain skeptical are few and getting trounced on the peer review. It is really clear that blogessors are taking the space, but just publishing in the internet is not science. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/44 "2012-08-22T02:17:07Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > There is one thing you need to understand. For temperatures to increase **linearly** then greenhouse gasses have to increase \*\*logarithmically \*\* . This is actually basic physics. To support a linear rate of temperature increase then there actually has to be a logarithmic increase in the release of greenhouse gases. I think you mean “exponential” increase, right? The logarithmic relationship between CO2 increases and radiative forcing or temperature means that exponential growth in the atmospheric gas concentrations produces linear growth in temperature (temp grows as the log of concentration). > [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > There is some math involved in this article. It is pretty simple math. You really need to understand some math to have a reasoned opinion on global warming. Yes, I agree. Even as a college math teacher I can’t follow all the applied equations in advanced climate science research articles, so I’m thankful that the math in the elementary parts of the models is pretty basic. However, “basic” doesn’t always equate to “well-defined”, alas. Given this logarithmic relationship, it is certainly true that if the doubling time for CO2 concentration is constant, then the temperature increase will be linear. [But the IPCC seems to be estimating that the time for successive doublings will actually **decrease** ,](http://www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-myth-3-linear-warming.html) or IOW we’re **increasing** the exponential rate of greenhouse gas increase. This would mean that the future temperature rise would be superlinear, with a rising curve whose shape would depend on how fast we pumped the additional emissions out. Then there are various factors like possible changes in the ability of the oceans to absorb more CO2, etc., that would increase the effective emissions rate (since absorbing less emissions has the same effect as adding more emissions). In short, it looks to my admittedly layperson perspective that a projected linear or less-than-linear temperature rise over the course of the 21st century is by no means guaranteed. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/45 "2012-08-22T02:33:23Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Sorry, but that is not a peer reviewed article, and the moment it declares the IPCC wrong and accuses it of talking of catastrophism when they are actually conservative in their projections and based on peer reviewed science, I have to doubt on how they are getting those results. > > Particularly coming from a website that supports birtherism and whoo whoo quantum mechanical consciousness and the Tea party. You do know that nothing from Skeptical Science hasn’t been peer reviewed and as far as I know it isn’t written by actual scientists? ---
**Author:** ![Michael63129](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@Michael63129](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael63129)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/46 "2012-08-22T02:49:14Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > You do know that nothing from Skeptical Science hasn’t been peer reviewed and as far as I know it isn’t written by actual scientists? So that means that cites to scientific papers are useless because the article itself wasn’t written by scientists? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/47 "2012-08-22T02:54:47Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > You do know that nothing from Skeptical Science hasn’t been peer reviewed and as far as I know it isn’t written by actual scientists? Piffle. I actually do bother to check the contents of the site that cite of yours came from (What I see there is not pretty), if you had bothered to check Skeptical Science you would had known already that anyone can check that it is based on what actual scientists say. And even Real scientists also contribute: > **[Roy Spencer’s Great Blunder, Part 1](https://skepticalscience.com/Roy-Spencers-Great-Blunder-Part-1.html)** > > The following is reposted from Barry Bickmore's blog - it's PART 1 of an extended critique of Roy Spencer’s The Great Global Warming Blunder:  How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists (New York:  Encounter Books, 2010).  See... > [@](#): > > Summary of Part 1: In his latest book, The Great Global Warming Blunder, Roy Spencer lashes out at the rest of the climate science community for either ignoring or suppressing publication of his research. This research, he claims, virtually proves that the climate models used by the IPCC respond much too sensitively to external “forcing” due to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, variations in solar radiation, and so on. Instead, Spencer believes most climate change is caused by chaotic, natural variations in cloud cover. He and a colleague published a peer-reviewed paper in which they used a simple climate model to show that these chaotic variations could cause patterns in satellite data that would lead climatologists to believe the climate is significantly more sensitive to external forcing than it really is. Spencer admits, however, that his results may only apply to very short timescales. Since the publication of his book, furthermore, other scientists (including one that initially gave Spencer’s paper a favorable review) have shown that Spencer was only able to obtain this result by assuming unrealistic values for various model parameters. Besides showing how silly is your point of no scientists over there (they are mostly in the cites, but they even contribute and many scientific organizations and scientists do link to Skeptical Science because they do know that it is a good resource) I think this cite I have here shows what the bloglessor you had in your cite would find in the real world, and I have seen enough to conclude that the bloglessors also know it and so they prefer to reside in the blogosphere. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/48 "2012-08-22T03:02:59Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > You do know that nothing from Skeptical Science hasn’t been peer reviewed and as far as I know it isn’t written by actual scientists? I think you got a bit mixed up in posting this as a reply to **GIGObuster** : I was the one who cited the Skeptical Science article on nonlinear warming in my recent reply to you. In any case, the author of the article I linked to is described on the site’s author team webpage as an environmental scientist with undergraduate and master’s degrees in physics. It’s certainly true that he’s not an actual climate science researcher, but his article references publications by actual researchers, and you’ve provided no evidence to suggest that he hasn’t interpreted the science correctly. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/49 "2012-08-22T03:31:10Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > However, “basic” doesn’t always equate to “well-defined”, alas. Given this logarithmic relationship, it is certainly true that if the doubling time for CO2 concentration is constant, then the temperature increase will be linear. [But the IPCC seems to be estimating that the time for successive doublings will actually **decrease** ,](http://www.skepticalscience.com/monckton-myth-3-linear-warming.html) or IOW we’re **increasing** the exponential rate of greenhouse gas increase. It is funny that you quote Skeptical Science. I discovered a long time ago on Skeptical Science that the economic assumptions that the IPCC use are dogma and you aren’t allowed to question them. Every year the price of harvesting fossil fuels increases and we have to go further out and deeper to find them. We appear to have already reached peak oil [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak\_oil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil) and we will see peak coal in our lifetime. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak\_coal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_coal) Does the IPCC predictions of exponential increases in use of fossil fuels out into the indefinite future seem true or even plausible? China has actually outstripped their domestic supplies of coal and they are importing coal from Australia and they tried to import it from the U.S. They know that fossil fuels have a limited future and their long term plans are to switch to nuclear. It will take them 50 years or more, but they have a plan. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/50 "2012-08-22T04:10:21Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I think you got a bit mixed up in posting this as a reply to **GIGObuster** : I was the one who cited the Skeptical Science article on nonlinear warming in my recent reply to you. > > In any case, the author of the article I linked to is described on the site’s author team webpage as an environmental scientist with undergraduate and master’s degrees in physics. It’s certainly true that he’s not an actual climate science researcher, but his article references publications by actual researchers, and you’ve provided no evidence to suggest that he hasn’t interpreted the science correctly. I’m sorry but Gigobuster is a one trick pony half of whose posts are references to skeptical science. He has demonstrated in previous forums that he doesn’t understand any science skeptical or otherwise and usually turns out that the posts he cites actually have nothing to do with the topic and he simply does some key word searches in google. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/51 "2012-08-22T04:12:35Z")
> [@Michael63129](#): > > So that means that cites to scientific papers are useless because the article itself wasn’t written by scientists? No I mean that Gigobuster rejected the article because it wasn’t peer reviewed without looking at the footnotes. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/52 "2012-08-22T04:37:51Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > It is funny that you quote Skeptical Science. I discovered a long time ago on Skeptical Science that the economic assumptions that the IPCC use are dogma and you aren’t allowed to question them. Every year the price of harvesting fossil fuels increases and we have to go further out and deeper to find them. We appear to have already reached peak oil > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak\_oil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil) > and we will see peak coal in our lifetime. > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak\_coal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_coal) > > Does the IPCC predictions of exponential increases in use of fossil fuels out into the indefinite future seem true or even plausible? Yes as some of the scenarios include also a reduction in the use of fossil fuels. The point here is that it seems to be a bit of a straw man as the scenarios of the IPCC do include a phase out of fossil fuels due to cost by 2050, particularly scenario B1. [http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc\_co2.html](http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc_co2.html) It is an scenario that still shows a high increase in the PPM and at the dangerous level of a 2 degree increase, IMHO one should work to reduce that as much as possible as the current effects of the AGW observed so far are problematic just with a close to one degree in increase so far. > [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > China has actually outstripped their domestic supplies of coal and they are importing coal from Australia and they tried to import it from the U.S. They know that fossil fuels have a limited future and their long term plans are to switch to nuclear. It will take them 50 years or more, but they have a plan. Of course they do, but the point is that even expecting that is just piling up the bad odds for the future, the point of controlling emissions now, and not waiting for a peak to take care of it, is to reduce those odds so future generations will have less to worry. [http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.com/executive\_summary.html](http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.com/executive_summary.html) > [@](#): > > The most significant recent climate change findings are: > > Surging greenhouse gas emissions: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were 40% higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilized at present –day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2°C. Even with zero emissions after 2030. Every year of delayed action increase the chances of exceeding 2°C warming. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/53 "2012-08-22T05:01:37Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > No I mean that Gigobuster rejected the article because it wasn’t peer reviewed without looking at the footnotes. Unfortunately for you I already did, they include very misleading articles like this one: > **[StockExaminer - AI-Powered Stock Chatbot](https://examiner.com)** > > Discover Stock Examiner, the AI-powered chatbot delivering instant, interactive stock charts, real-time financials, breaking news, stock screeners, and more—all in one seamless experience. That does the already debunked point that the earth is cooling, in this case the oceans, only that if one reads the actual article that footnote uses (yes, that blogessor uses a second hand reference of what they call a “grey” source, good for academia, but lots of opinion that makes it hard to call it published science. Still, what the NASA article says and what the footnote says could not be more different: > **[Correcting Ocean Cooling](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OceanCooling)** > > Scientists revise their conclusion that the ocean has cooled since 2003. > [@](#): > > Underestimating ocean warming > > “Susan Wijffels and her colleagues from here at CSIRO, along with Josh Willis, provided a way to correct the XBT data, and so we took those corrections and made the first revised estimates of sea level rise due to ocean warming for the period 1961 to 2003. What we found was that ocean heating was larger than scientists previously thought, and so the contribution of thermal expansion to sea level rise was actually 50 percent larger than previous estimates." I’m having the theory that the makers of the first article just saw the first 2 pages of the NASA one and just missed that it had other pages, like page 4 showing the corrected latest graph showing the mess of warming we actually had in the oceans. > **[Correcting Ocean Cooling](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OceanCooling/page4.php)** > > Scientists revise their conclusion that the ocean has cooled since 2003. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/54 "2012-08-22T19:18:47Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Unfortunately for you I already did, they include very misleading articles like this one: > > [StockExaminer - AI-Powered Stock Chatbot](http://www.examiner.com/article/oceans-are-cooling-according-to-nasa) Actually the article seems to accurately represent Willis’ work. That isn’t surprising, since it was written by a meteorologist who could actually understand the work. As usual, you demonstrate you don’t understand the science and you just nitpick, since you don’t have the knowledge to actually address the topic of the paper. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/55 "2012-08-22T19:33:12Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > Does the IPCC predictions of exponential increases in use of fossil fuels out into the indefinite future seem true or even plausible? I think you may be mistakenly conflating “increase in fossil fuel use” with “increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations”. As **GIGObuster** pointed out, the IPCC models **don’t** assume “exponential increases in use of fossil fuels out into the indefinite future”. Rather, they consider various more realistic scenarios for future fossil-fuel use. The thing is that exponential growth in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations could continue (and even accelerate) for at least several more decades **even as fossil fuel use itself is flattening out or decreasing**. Some of the potential factors include: **More emissions-intensive fuels.** As we run out of comparatively easy and cheap supplies of fossil fuels, we are turning to extracting them from sources that are harder to get to and harder to process, like tar sands. This means that we’re creating more emissions per unit of energy obtained. So it’s possible for greenhouse-gas emissions to be going **up** even while the amount of fossil-fuel energy we use is going **down**. **Changes in carbon cycle feedbacks.** All current estimates of CO2 concentrations are based on assumptions about how fast the global environment is able to absorb excess CO2. But the “absorbing power” of natural carbon sinks is predicted to change in a variety of possible ways as the atmosphere gets more carbon-heavy. As I said before, absorbing less emissions is equivalent to generating more emissions, so it’s also possible for greenhouse-gas **concentrations** to be going up even while **emissions** are going down. **Population-driven changes in land use.** We have to consider not only natural changes in the absorbing power of carbon sinks but also direct human impacts on them. As global population grows and local climates change in response to warming, continuing deforestation and agriculture will affect greenhouse-gas emissions and absorption independently of fossil-fuel use rates. So in short: It’s not realistic just to shrug and say _“eh, we’re inevitably going to cut down on fossil fuel use in the future, so the overall warming won’t be that big a deal.”_ In the meantime, particularly the near- and medium-term meantime, the increases in atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations could still produce significant climate consequences, including superlinear temperature increases over the 21st century. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/56 "2012-08-22T19:37:31Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > Actually the article seems to accurately represent Willis’ work. That isn’t surprising, since it was written by a meteorologist who could actually understand the work. > > As usual, you demonstrate you don’t understand the science and you just nitpick, since you don’t have the knowledge to actually address the topic of the paper. Nope, read it again, the overall affirmation in the footnote article is that the oceans are cooling and the only graph shown is the one made without the adjustments that are known now, the oceans have warmed. It is indeed a sign that the bloglessor just cherry-pics the data that has to be entered in this “paper”, a basic “mistake” worthy of Soon and Bailunas. > **[Soon and Baliunas controversy](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Soon_and_Baliunas_controversy)** > > The Soon and Baliunas controversy was an incident in which a paper published by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas in the journal Climate Research led to the resignation of a number of its editors. The paper reviewed over 200 previous papers on global... ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/57 "2012-08-22T19:42:57Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > As **GIGObuster** pointed out, the IPCC models **don’t** assume “exponential increases in use of fossil fuels out into the indefinite future”. Not to nitpick – well, ok, to nitpick – but is “exponential” the correct word to use here? When I hear that word, it makes me think the person using it is misinformed, FoS or cleverly spreading incendiary fertilizer. To my understanding, the correct word would be “geometric” which is quadratic, where as “exponential” would be hyperbolic (which kind of forms an appropriate wordplay). I do understand that language is dynamic, perhaps the meaning of that word has changed through misuse, but to me it sure seems plain deceitful. ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/58 "2012-08-22T19:45:21Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Yes as some of the scenarios include also a reduction in the use of fossil fuels. The point here is that it seems to be a bit of a straw man as the scenarios of the IPCC do include a phase out of fossil fuels due to cost by 2050, particularly scenario B1. > > [http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc\_co2.html](http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc_co2.html) > > It is an scenario that still shows a high increase in the PPM and at the dangerous level of a 2 degree increase, IMHO one should work to reduce that as much as possible as the current effects of the AGW observed so far are problematic just with a close to one degree in increase so far. And if you look at the models that use it assumes a residence time for CO2 of a couple of hundred years and the high feedback climate models. BTW, there is no science behind the 2 degree increase. That is just a number that a committee pulled out of their ass. It is just a part of climate change dogma. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/59 "2012-08-22T19:53:52Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > And if you look at the models that use it assumes a residence time for CO2 of a couple of hundred years and the high feedback climate models. > > BTW, there is no science behind the 2 degree increase. That is just a number that a committee pulled out of their ass. It is just a part of climate change dogma. And.. there goes the conspiracy theory, I knew it was in you. 🙂 As usual, there is no basis on denying that scientists are the ones that are consulted for the latest reports that will be included in the upcoming release. [http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.com/executive\_summary.html](http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.com/executive_summary.html) > [@](#): > > The turning point must come soon: If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2°C above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society – with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases – need to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-90% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2012, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050/60 "2012-08-22T20:28:46Z")
> [@For You](#): > > Not to nitpick – well, ok, to nitpick – but is “exponential” the correct word to use here? When I hear that word, it makes me think the person using it is misinformed, FoS or cleverly spreading incendiary fertilizer. To my understanding, the correct word would be “geometric” which is quadratic, where as “exponential” would be hyperbolic (which kind of forms an appropriate wordplay). I do understand that language is dynamic, perhaps the meaning of that word has changed through misuse, but to me it sure seems plain deceitful. Nopeser, “exponential” is okay in this context (though you’re right that “geometric growth” would also be correct if we’re considering the function values at equal intervals). “Quadratic” would refer to a function (oh, let’s see, call it F, I’m so imaginative) varying as the square of elapsed time: F = t^2. However, a function of time that has a constant growth rate, as in the case of many natural processes like population growth (and currently atmospheric CO2 concentration), is said to exhibit **exponential** growth. That is, for some constant base B, the function F varies exponentially with time: F = B^t. If B is greater than 1, exponential growth is going to be faster than quadratic growth. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-v-weather-shift/632050.md?page=4)