There should be wiki definition of climate change. An annual vacation event where leaders from all over the world fly the biggest airplane their country can afford to a single location to discuss the weather.
Us foolish mortals in the private sector use Skype at work because the company jet is usually unavailable.
Can’t we at least talk about factual truth for two or three posts before the senseless political insinuations?
Your two graphs cover very different timescales. The first one covers hundreds of millions of years, while the second is only hundreds of thousands. There are many things other than carbon dioxide that change over hundreds of millions of years, such as the inherent brightness of the Sun, the axial tilt of the Earth, the shapes of the continents, the strength of the Earth’s magnetic dynamo, and the gross percentages of other gases in the atmosphere. None of those has changed appreciably in the past two hundred years, nor will they change appreciably in the next hundred. Carbon dioxide, however, has changed and will change appreciably over those timescales, so if we want to know what will happen, we should look at times in the past when carbon dioxide has changed but those other things haven’t.
Yes, good point.
I assume the data showing the correlation comes from ice core data. Is it possible that ice core data shows a false correlation between the two?
Also, is it now solidly established that CO2 drives temperature changes and not the other way around?
No, they are/will be discussing the CLIMATE, there is a difference.
Then why is business travel up? People travel to meetings because more goes on than just the main event. There are side conversations and a chance to meet others in person.
Yep, IIRC there were reports of big technology companies that found that indeed there is a lot that is lost when there is no direct interaction; climate change deniers are also denying what it is lost if one just relies on remote communication or just e-mail in an issue that does require tons of diplomacy and to gain the trust of others.
The worst part is the HUGE carbon foot print these meetings have. From site preparation and clean up to all the jumbo jets flying in, tons and tons of carbon emissions are released into the environment.
And for what? Some joint declaration that no country is going to follow up on.
You are just not going to be able to tell China and Russia what to do or not do. Neither India nor Brazil can afford what they really need to do. And without these four countries going along with any of the restrictions needed to clean up the planet, it doesn’t matter what all the other countries in the world do.
The meetings will always be a waste of time (and carbon).
BTW that graph in the OP and the simplified one shown by Patric Moore betrays where it came from, as many times it has happened with many deniers a good graph and data has been misused countless times. As Science writer Peter Hadfield reported back in 2013:
The graph does show indeed no strong correlation, **this is the same graph **the OP linked to and the same data that Patric Moore misleadingly uses]
** (Hah! The auto transcript tool from YouTube called Tim Ball “10 balls” , at least I agree that deniers like him and Patric Moore need to have lots of them to spew their FUD)
As usual sweeping statements like this one ignores what China and other nations have pledged even before the Paris meeting. As I pointed before too, if one does think that China, India and Brazil will not do a thing you are expecting then that their governments will fall then, because as it was told many times before, ignoring this issue will not make it go away and it will be the nations that do not change or prepare the ones that will suffer most.
Face to face meetings are still very important to set the seeds for change.
The OP wasn’t asking for an opinion about climate conferences, so it’s not clear why you feel the need to intrude with comments that are not only irrelevant, but also factually incorrect.
Furthermore, it wouldn’t matter even if they didn’t offset the carbon, because the UNFCCC conferences have vital long-term global objectives. And you don’t negotiate international treaties with Skype.
I just want to add two other points. It’s one thing to draw some lines on a chart, but quite something else to actually have accurate data. That long-term chart going back hundreds of millions of years would look vastly different if margins of uncertainty were drawn around the putative CO2 and temperature levels – they would be so huge that the chart is almost meaningless, aside from all the factors that Chronos correctly cited. Bernier’s CO2 reconstruction is based on geochemical proxies that not only have huge margins of error in the quantities, but also in timeframes, and their temporal resolution is a minimum of 10 million years. And aside from all of that, the graphs appear to have been seriously doctored to try to make a false denialist point. Scotese’s actual temperature reconstruction looks quite different, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Bernier’s has been rescaled or otherwise altered as well.
OTOH, the temperature and CO2 reconstructions we have going back as far as 600,000 and even 800,000 years are based on relatively accurate data from a stable climate regime that occurred in the latter part of the Quaternary in which glaciation cycles have closely followed slow-but-steady CO2 cycles probably triggered by tiny orbital variations. Not only is this the valid chart from which to draw extrapolations of modern climate change, it also illustrates the magnitude of the change. Look at where 400 ppm would be on that chart. If you drew a line up to the 400 ppm level in reference to the timeframe on the X axis, you’d end up with a vertical line that goes straight up and towers above the chart as high as the whole chart itself. That’s the impact we’ve had on CO2 in mostly just the last hundred years, and the climate impacts are just beginning to catch up.
No, because ice core data is corroborated by many other temperature proxies, like tree ring chronologies and marine sediment deposits.
As Gigo already said, technically it’s both, but in any given set of conditions it’s always atmospheric carbon that drives the climate. The ice age transitions that may be triggered by orbital Milankovitch cycles are ultimately driven by CO2 changes, because the orbital effects themselves are far too small to affect the climate to any degree other than affecting the carbon cycle.
There are still unknowns about the glacial cycles, but there is absolutely no dispute about the specific and well-quantified climate forcing of CO2 (and methane, and other GHGs). So regardless of what may or may not come first in any given circumstances, CO2 acts as a heat blanket just as surely as the glass of a greenhouse, although the physics of how it works is completely different. The real uncertainties about CO2-driven temperature rise are not with respect to the CO2 itself, but with estimating the magnitude of the amplifying feedbacks.
“China and other nations have* pledged*…”. These conferences always have plenty of “pledges”, but how much is actually done to clean things up in their countries?
" if one does think that China, India and Brazil will not do a thing you are expecting then that their governments will fall" The Chinese government will fall? The Communist Party will be thrown out by the people if they don’t follow the pledges they made at a climate conference? And the leaders of India and Brazil will not be reelected because they went back on a climate conference pledge?
" a bold plan for the city of 1.2 million people to become the world’s first carbon neutral city by 2025." Statements like these always have a date far enough in the future that no one will remember them when they do not come to fruition.
As Richard Feynman said, “you can’t fool mother Nature.” I’m just saying that if they follow your cynicism the countries will find that they should had listened to their scientists and follow what they pledged or else they will indeed see worse results in the near and far future for their nations. (Higher ocean rise and worse droughts does mean mass migration of people, and most people will know by then what institutions to blame for the inaction).
And anyhow, this being General Questions and being that we have to stick to the issue at hand what do you think about the sorry effort here made by Patric Moore?
This is a page pulled right out of Conspiracy Theorist manual. When one can’t argue the facts, pick some other nonsensical argument that has nothing to do with the original post and re-frame the debate. On the very first response! Bravo.
No, no scientist would consider the results of models to be useless right away, models are not reality but they are a valid tool to check against reality and they are validated constantly.
Looking at what typical deniers are doing one could describe the graphs that Patric Moore did show on the video as a model, but it was made by ignoring other variables. Sadly, misleading models like that are the ones used by politicians that are acting on that bullshit.
How many degrees in a tree ring? At best it gives indication of rain.
We have no clue what the accurate temperature was 100 years ago. The error rates in thermometers makes the readings useless. The locations of the thermometers makes the records useless.
Unless the models take in all aspects of weather then the output is useless. Anyone who claims the models take in all variables of weather makes that statement in pure bravado.
You can post graphs and charts until the cows come home that does not make them accurate. It just means the end result matches what people want it to say.
It became political when politicians starting using derogatory terms such as deniers to destroy the mere mention that the output may be flawed. That was the death of any further scientific funding that might contradict it. The real denier is anyone who suggests they have a lock on climate modeling.
That is your opinion as it does not stop the science from being accepted.
BTW the temperature reconstructions made by Mann and many others after not only used three rings, and some also did not even use three rings.
The deniers of human induced climate change are derided because they are nowadays at the level of creationists in ignoring the evidence and even the defenders of evolution had to include also the defense of teaching climate science because virtually the same ones that deny evolution are also denying climate science.
, at least I agree that deniers like him and Patric Moore need to have lots of them to spew their FUD)
