Ah the 70’s..
Nope, it was popular press that came with that meme, most scientific papers then predicted that warming was coming.
Thank you for that, and I like to peruse all scientific data and then draw my own conclusions … Have you considered:
- The amount of CO2 emmitted by humans for a flash in the pan of time, amounts to absolutely nothing (quite literally nothing) in comparisson to the fact that volcanos have been emitting CO2 (at even higher rates in the past) for MILLIONS of years?
I’m sure there are plenty of scientists out there who will gladly defend the position that man is releasing CO2 at 3X rate per year and volcanos only release at X per year… They hope you don’t know how to take 3X and multiply it by .000003 and then take X and multiply that by 1,000,000,000 at ever increasingly higher amounts as you go further back in time.
All available “volcanos haven’t contributed to atmospheric CO2” positions rely on the CO2 emission rates for right this minute (and even those numbers are seriously questionable). Our atmosphere isn’t a result of “right this minute” circumstances. As all things are, it’s a result of what has been over time.
That only works by some out there hopping that you never wonder that natural sinks also worked for those millions of years to also remove most of that, have you considered that in reality many sources out there are pulling your leg?
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2827&from=rss_home
I never claimed the Earth would be fine, but don’t worry, I’m glad to take any words you place into my mouth out. I specifically said our land was being choked by trash and that industrial solvents were polluting our waters… sigh I digress.
Listen, I’m not some fundie conservative. I’m pro choice, smoke’em if you got’em (even though I don’t smoke), marry whoever you want, die hard liberal …
BUT, I won’t jump on the “we’re doomed” due to manmade global warming/cooling bandwagon every time it rolls around with new color of paint. I don’t believe God is going to rip open the sky and pluck out his chosen either.
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 … but NOT because asthmatics are allegedly releasing CO2 that increases CO2 in the stratosphere by .01% or any other combination of recent, minute (comparitively to what’s already in the atmosphere) releases.
Actually, it is. Millions of years ago, the sun was dimmer, and so the same equilibrium temperature was produced by higher levels of greenhouse gases. For instance, I don’t know if it would have been warm enough in the Earth’s early history to develop liquid-based life it not for the loads of methane in the atmosphere. Whereas if we had that much methane now, we’d be much warmer than Earth was back then.
Dear, you are the ones quoting sources … Even using the numbers quoted by your sources … Take THEIR CO2 emissions by man and multiply that by 75 years then take THEIR CO2 emissions by volcanos and other natural sources and multiply that by 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 and see what your numbers say.
It was I who rejected the bombardment of the GLOBAL WARMING DOOMSDAY leg pulling and noticed the inconsistencies I have now shared with you. Reject them if you like, that won’t have an affect on climate change either.
He don’t know me really well, huh folks?
I do not post only for me, but for others, and there is a method to my questioning, it always shows who is always more upset with the one bringing the information rather than the ones that gave him the FUD.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
So yeah, those millions of years of volcano emissions have a reason to not be as important nowadays, and it is because other natural sinks also worked for millions of years to limit those emissions, the problem is that the balance now is being upset by human emissions.
As Feynman liked to say, points like these are like a guy that approaches a safe cracker that has worked on a safe for days and he says to the safe cracker: why don’t you try the combination 10:20:30?
And the safe cracker already knows that it is a 5 number combination…
And sites like Skeptical Science keeps track of those debunked points, to go forward one has to at least be aware of what the safe cracker (and Feynman was one 
) already knows.
You are in trouble if you depend on a deity to judge what the science is.
Okay, so although you haven’t answered my question about when you are starting from, I take it that your estimate of 1 to 1.5 C is the ADDITIONAL WARMING between now and 2100 on top of the warming that we have already had.
As for the justification of linear regression: It is really an ill-defined argument since the fate is in our hands, i.e., how much warming we get depends not just on the climate sensitivity but on what we do about CO2 emissions. If we do nothing to curtail CO2 emissions, burning most of the fossil fuels available to us, then the warming will almost certainly accelerate. If we start to get onto a different track, then yes, we can hopefully keep the temperature rise to the range that you quote, which will still be around 2 C more than it was in the early 20th century, enough to gives scientists considerable cause for alarm.
Ah yes, the global cooling “mole”. Here is an article that demonstrates the actual facts about this:
(1) Although there were some articles in the popular press and a book or two warming about cooling in the 1970s, the peer-reviewed literature actually recognized that there were both warming and cooling influences and there were more articles discussing warming than cooling. (And, even if the popular press and in another book and movie, there was discussion of global warming. In fact, the 1973 movie “Soylent Green” was based on such a premise.)
(2) When the National Academy of Sciences was asked to weigh in on the issue in the mid 70s. They produced a report that correctly identified the various warming and cooling influences on the climate (e.g., CO2 warms, aerosols cool, long-term natural trend should be toward cooling from current interglacial). However, they also said that the science was not yet at a state where it could be confidently predicted which of these influences would predominate. Fast forward to now and the National Academy of Sciences, and the analogous bodies in all of the G8+5 countries have concluded that the issue of global warming is serious and requires action ( http://www.vbschools.com/GreenSchools/pdfs/JointScienceAcademies.pdf )
So, we see that a careful look at the past in fact shows us that, while it is correct not to pay close attention to what the popular press says, there is no such issue with what a carefully produced scientific consensus says. In fact, we see that when the NAS was not confident what the future state of the climate would be, they said so. They did not issue alarmist statements.
I think you are pretty confused here. Your asthma inhaler contains CFCs that harm the stratospheric ozone layer (by producing chlorine ions that react with ozone). It has nothing to do with CO2, at least that I know of.
And, as pointed out by others, the rise in CO2 levels that has occurred in the atmosphere (from the pre-industrial level of ~280 ppm to the current level approaching 400 ppm) is due to man. In fact, if one calculates the amount emitted by burning fossil fuels, one finds that the levels in the atmosphere would have increased by about double that amount if all of it remained in the atmosphere. As it turns out, that is not what happens: about half of the emissions into the atmosphere rapidly segregate into the ocean mixed layer and the land biosphere; however, from there the processes by which the elevated CO2 is removed slow down considerably, so that we are talking hundreds to even thousands of years that a good portion will remain.
But, at any rate, I don’t think this has anything to do with your asthma inhaler. Stratospheric ozone depletion and global warming are two essentially separate issues. (There are some connections because CFCs are also greenhouse gases at least partly because reducing stratospheric ozone can cause some warming due to the additional solar radiation that gets into the troposphere. However, the larger concern with them is their effect on stratospheric ozone.)
Speaking as one of those others… I’ve been reading these debates for a while now, and find your style far (FAR!) more persuasive than those you rebut. You have solid facts, precisely marshaled, cogent and to the point. And you don’t engage in fallacies; you engage with facts.
I might wish that all debates here rely more on print cites than on YouTube and video cites. I’m willing to read a (short) paper on a technical issue, but I’m very reluctant to watch a video lecture. I can get a lot more information, a lot faster, in print than by listening. (Others may feel differently.)
Actually, your link is to the wrong Skeptical Science page…I think you meant this one! (So many myths, so little time!)
Thanks for that Trinopus!
Good thing I did not use the lecture of Barry Bickmore (Republican, scientist at BYU, and Mormon) where he describes his journey from skepticism to accepting the facts. That puppy runs 40 minutes, and it is quite interesting. But usually all the videos I use do not last more than 10 minutes, they are brief and most importantly, when Climate Crocks or science writer Peter Hadfield AKA Potholer54 are used, there is usually a long list of citations in their Youtube video notes (Under “Show More”) to check if video is not your cup of tea.
:dubious: That’s kind of like trying to argue that there’s no problem with eating twenty cheeseburgers a day for months on end, because over the course of your previous lifetime you’ve consumed way more total calories than that.
Not so fast, Captain “Don’t-Fall-for-the-Doomsday-Warnings”! Unfortunately, your reasoning is flawed. To pursue the calories analogy: sure, it’s true that you’ve consumed a hell of a lot of calories in the several decades or so you’ve been alive and eating. But when you eat normal healthy amounts regularly over time, those calories are regularly burned off by your body’s energy use or excreted from it. They help maintain the body’s healthy equilibrium.
If you guzzle hugely excessive amounts of food in a short time, on the other hand, your body’s natural nutrient cycle can’t cope with it, and it will impair your health. You can’t compare the total calories consumed over a long period to sustain your body’s healthy equilibrium with total calories consumed quickly that disrupt that equilibrium.
That’s the problem with your “but volcanoes!” argument. Volcanoes and other natural sources of CO2 are part of the natural climate equilibrium that has prevailed on earth for the last several hundred thousand years. Sure, these sources do keep spewing (fairly small) amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. But as GIGObuster points out, those amounts have been small enough to be absorbed each year by the earth’s natural carbon sinks.
So atmospheric carbon levels in that time have mostly oscillated between fairly stable limits, topping out at about 300 parts per million at the warmest periods. Sort of like an average healthy eater who alternately gains a few pounds and loses a few pounds here and there, while keeping their calorie intake and weight within a reasonably stable healthy range.
Nowadays, however, human activity is pumping hugely excessive quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere and overwhelming the climate’s natural carbon balancing mechanisms, like a compulsive eater scarfing down many cheeseburgers every day. Worse, we’re presently predicted to go on pumping out increasingly excessive quantities of CO2 in the future, like a compulsive eater unable to resist eating even more extra cheeseburgers every day.
See the problem? You can’t compare the totality of natural emissions over the very long term with human-generated emissions over the short term. Because you’re not taking into account the fact that the natural emissions are part of a stable natural climate cycle, which the human-generated emissions are disrupting because they’re too much and too fast for the system to process normally.
(Also, of course, the earth is nowhere near 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years old, as you suggest. It’s only about 5,000,000,000 years old, and the climate patterns within which modern humanity evolved and civilization developed are less than 1,000,000 years old.)
Darn, indeed so little time, I’m checkimg a hardrive for a friend and just switched to a secondary computer only to find that I dropped the wrong link there, so thank you for the proper link.
To make it up, here is a classic video from Climate Crocks dealing with the 70’s “global cooling”
In the “show more” there is a link to the Bulletin of American Meteorological Society article on the “Myth of Global Cooling”:
Warning: PDF
The Video:
Warning: Disco!
It is quite simple. You simply take the warming measured by the various temperature indexes since 1979 and do a least square fit through the data to estimate the warming rate.
Here is my graph:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bzn-XlBIM9nGaXpYT0dqdnp3WkU
If you can handle an Excel spreadsheet sheet, then you can check my calculations:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bzn-XlBIM9nGa1pKWVFaOGkwSjg
Using the GISS rate, which is highest, then warming would be 1.4 degrees centigrade by 2100. If you use the UAH rate, which is the lowest, then the warming is 1.2.
Of course there is a lot of uncertainty in these numbers. I suspect the actual 2 sigma, probably falls between 1 and 2 degrees centigrade.
Frankly, most of the uncertainty comes from the economics and not the science, since it depends on the future emissions of greenhouse gases. We have to figure the transition to nuclear power and how much use of fossil fuels in the future based on the future prices of oil, coal and natural gas. A lot of this depends on technology like batteries and development of breeder reactors. By 2100 we will be talking about technologies that aren’t even on our radar today.
Just to make sure I understand you, that’s assuming linear rates of temperature increase, right? And as you and jshore have discussed, it’s possible that warming rates might be nonlinear?
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.
Here is a short article explaining this.
http://www.randombio.com/co2.html
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.
From an economic point of view I doubt that logarithmic increase in the release of greenhouse gases for the rest of the century is plausible, so the actual temperature increase will actually be less than linear. If you have a economic model that would justify a logarithmic increase in green house gasses then trot it out.