# Somebody please try to sell me on Global "Warming" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 24, 2004, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919 "2004-06-24T00:58:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Uncommon\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Uncommon\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncommon_Sense)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2004, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919/101 "2004-06-28T16:55:21Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > which are released into the atmosphere. > > 🙂 …or, Lake Michigan - if you catch my drift. Pun intended. ---
**Author:** ![sinical\_brit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/48db29/32.png) [@sinical\_brit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sinical_brit)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2004, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919/102 "2004-07-08T11:49:31Z")
As this thread seems to have stalled, ill pitch in with some BRAND NEW DATA from a TRUSTED source. As was mentioned in previous posts and links, there is a link between “global average temp” ( whatever that is supposed to be ) with co2 levels in the atmos. Now it appears that many people in this discussion believe that the co2 levels alter the temperature - ie the co2 levels rise so the temp goes up. Now then, as i understand it, the oceans will absorb / disolve and release co2 depending on several factors ( namly air pressure, temperature, salinity etc ), as will vegetation. So, this week we get some new data on this ubject and behold there are NO headlines in the newspapers. Ill leave it to you to decide why: Here: [http://tinyurl.com/26d28](http://tinyurl.com/26d28) new research by the British Antartic Survey has studied the suns activity over the last 11,000 years : "… the last century when solar flares, sunspots and geomagnetic storms, increased in number. This rise is simultaneous with emissions of greenhouses gases and an estimated increase in solar heat output, which together have warmed the Earth’s temperature by a global average of 0.7 degrees celsius. " The report author Mark Clilverd continues, “This research is important for understanding the severity and impact of climate change in coming centuries. As noted by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the Third Assessment Report, published in 2001, anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are highly likely to cause warming of the Earth, but factors such as solar variability could amplify or subdue the effect.” I agree with this statement, but as the article also points out the effect may lie somewhere between 4-20% of the temp increase. That is a pretty large error factor and would lead me to believe that this area of research is pretty new. This research would also agree totaly with the issue of The Little Ice Age -explained here ([http://tinyurl.com/yvbtn](http://tinyurl.com/yvbtn) - site mixes faith and science, not my cup of tea but its just an explanation - its a well known event - Google it if you want a better source): "Another theory for the cause of the Little Ice Age centers not on the atmospheric restriction of the amount of energy flowing into the earth, but on the concept that the sun itself is variable in its energy production. It is estimated that a fluctuation of only a few tenths of 1% in energy output would be sufficient to produce significant changes in climate (Budyko 1969). An interesting coincidence held meaningful by many is the absence of sunspot activity through most of the latter and most severe period of the Little Ice Age (Eddy 1976)… …changes in solar magnetic field also affect the rate at which 14C is produced on earth and may provide a retrospective record of variations in sunspot activity (Figure 1g). Observations from the 1700s to the present have established a remarkable regularity in sunspot activity. Over the years there have been numerous attempts to correlate these cycles with weather cycles. While sunspot/weather analysis has not produced a consistent correlation, it is widely accepted that sunspot activity does indeed influence the weather. However, an interesting near absence of sunspot activity is found in the early decades of the 1600s extending into the first decade of the 1700s. This time corresponds remarkably with the coldest period of the Little Ice Age. " So, as i said in my other posts, i just dont believe that its a simple as “we burn stuff and the earth gets hotter” - which seems to be the current attitude in the press and public generally. I say: could it not be that the sun is at the peak of its (long term, not 11 year )activity cycle which as caused the earth to warm, leading to a general release of co2 into the atmosphere which has amplified the effect. If this is so, then we are right to try and reduce the man made levels, but we should definatly NOT say that we undertand the mechanism responsible for global warming. Apols for not answering your earlier “Do you accept that anthropgenic forcing far outweighs natural forcing since 1750?” question SentientMeat. I dont know what it means and your link to a frankly un readable graph was pointless. It is interesting to note that the question ( and graph) start just as the above described little ice age ends ! Sin ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2004, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919/103 "2004-07-08T12:00:57Z")
> [@sinical brit](#): > > I agree with this statement, but as the article also points out the effect may lie somewhere between 4-20% of the temp increase. That is a pretty large error factor and would lead me to believe that this area of research is pretty new. That seems like a perfectly reasonable error range, given the vast scale of the necessary predictions. > [@](#): > > So, as i said in my other posts, i just dont believe that its a simple as “we burn stuff and the earth gets hotter” - which seems to be the current attitude in the press and public generally. That’s the simplified version - the correct hypothesis is “we burn stuff and the world _probably_ gets hotter”. Very different. > [@](#): > > I say: could it not be that the sun is at the peak of its (long term, not 11 year )activity cycle which as caused the earth to warm, leading to a general release of co2 into the atmosphere which has amplified the effect. If this is so, then we are right to try and reduce the man made levels, but we should definatly NOT say that we undertand the mechanism responsible for global warming. And what if the sun is not yet at such a peak, and that further warming will occur? ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2004, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919/104 "2004-07-08T15:30:38Z")
> [@sinical brit](#): > > I agree with this statement, but as the article also points out the effect may lie somewhere between 4-20% of the temp increase. That is a pretty large error factor and would lead me to believe that this area of research is pretty new. (1) Yes, there is a fair bit of range here…However, the range is from this effect accounting for a very small amount of the warming to it accounting for a small amount of the warming. (2) It’s not so much that this area of research is new as that those who have proposed a connection between such activity and climate have not made much progress in coming up with a mechanism to explain it. One of the most quoted correlations that was found along these lines dates back to a paper in _Science_ magazine from the early 1990s [Christensen, E. and Lassen, K. (1991) Science **254** , 698-700], where they found a correlation between temperatures and the mean length of the sunspot cycle. This data was used by lots of global warming naysayers (e.g., I think it appears as Fig 3 in the [paper](http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm) accompanying the infamous Oregon Petition). However, the problem is twofold. First, a convincing mechanism to explain why this correlation could really be cause and effect has not been forthcoming. Second, one of the original scientists on that paper, Lassen, and a colleague Thejll updated the graph a few years ago and found that there has been a marked deviation since ~1980, with the temp continuing to rise while the solar cycle “predicted” it should level off and start to fall: > [@](#): > > “The curves diverge after 1980,” says Thejll, “and it’s a startlingly large deviation. Something else is acting on the climate.” > > Although they can’t be sure, they suspect that emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are responsible. “It has the fingerprints of the greenhouse effect,” says Thejll. Other climatologists agree. “It sounds like an actual piece of evidence for greenhouse warming,” says Richard Betts of Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Bracknell, Berkshire. “Any natural effect would swamp the small early changes, so you’d expect to see the larger changes more recently.” > > Others, however, remain sceptical about this line of research. Tom Wigley at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, who in 1992 criticised Lassen’s initial research, points out that since then no one has provided a convincing physical explanation for the correlation between the sunspot cycle and temperature. Wigley accepts that solar effects may have dominated until about 1950, but certainly not as late as 1980. > [@sinical brit](#): > > This research would also agree totaly with the issue of The Little Ice Age -explained here ([http://tinyurl.com/yvbtn](http://tinyurl.com/yvbtn) - site mixes faith and science, not my cup of tea but its just an explanation - its a well known event - Google it if you want a better source): The best evidence is that the so-called “Little Ice Age” was mainly a regional phenomenon with at most only a modest cooling on the hemispheral or global scales. [Here](http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/070.htm) is what the IPCC report says on the subject: > [@](#): > > The terms “Little Ice Age” and “Medieval Warm Period” have been used to describe two past climate epochs in Europe and neighbouring regions during roughly the 17th to 19th and 11th to 14th centuries, respectively. The timing, however, of these cold and warm periods has recently been demonstrated to vary geographically over the globe in a considerable way (Bradley and Jones, 1993; Hughes and Diaz, 1994; Crowley and Lowery, 2000). Evidence from mountain glaciers does suggest increased glaciation in a number of widely spread regions outside Europe prior to the 20th century, including Alaska, New Zealand and Patagonia (Grove and Switsur, 1994). However, the timing of maximum glacial advances in these regions differs considerably, suggesting that they may represent largely independent regional climate changes, not a globally-synchronous increased glaciation (see Bradley, 1999). Thus current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this timeframe, and the conventional terms of “Little Ice Age” and “Medieval Warm Period” appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries. With the more widespread proxy data and multi-proxy reconstructions of temperature change now available, the spatial and temporal character of these putative climate epochs can be reassessed. > > Mann et al. (1998) and Jones et al. (1998) support the idea that the 15th to 19th centuries were the coldest of the millennium over the Northern Hemisphere overall. However, viewed hemispherically, the “Little Ice Age” can only be considered as a modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during this period of less than 1°C relative to late 20th century levels (Bradley and Jones, 1993; Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1998; 1999; Crowley and Lowery, 2000). Cold conditions appear, however, to have been considerably more pronounced in particular regions. Such regional variability can be understood in part as reflecting accompanying changes in atmospheric circulation. The “Little Ice Age” appears to have been most clearly expressed in the North Atlantic region as altered patterns of atmospheric circulation (O’Brien et al., 1995). Unusually cold, dry winters in central Europe (e.g., 1 to 2°C below normal during the late 17th century) were very likely to have been associated with more frequent flows of continental air from the north-east (Wanner et al., 1995; Pfister, 1999). Such conditions are consistent (Luterbacher et al., 1999) with the negative or enhanced easterly wind phase of the NAO (Sections 2.2.2.3 and 2.6.5), which implies both warm and cold anomalies over different regions in the North Atlantic sector. Such strong influences on European temperature demonstrate the difficulty in extrapolating the sparse early information about European climate change to the hemispheric, let alone global, scale. While past changes in the NAO have likely had an influence in eastern North America, changes in the El Niño phenomenon (see also Section 2.6), are likely to have had a particularly significant influence on regional temperature patterns over North America. > > … > [@sinical brit](#): > > So, this week we get some new data on this ubject and behold there are NO headlines in the newspapers. Ill leave it to you to decide why: Well, my guess would be that the main reason is that it is a very technical piece of work with no real dramatic conclusions…i.e., that the sun might account for 4-20% of the warming in the past century is nothing new and not in contradiction to what is generally believed. (And, by the way, it is not from this week; the press release is dated Oct 1, 2003.) One should also note that there are plenty of papers that are published every week in reputable journals about climate change that don’t make the headlines. Since October of 2003, there have probably been several hundred that fall into this category. I’m not even sure if this paper is dramatic enough for even the “conservative echo chamber” to go into action and try to talk it up like they did with the paper by Soon and Baliunas last year that became quite an embarrassment. (See [this](http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/CR-problem/Chronicle%20of%20Higher%20Education.030904.pdf) PDF file of an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education for a full account of this story.) ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2004, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919/105 "2004-07-08T16:04:35Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > Second, one of the original scientists on that paper, Lassen, and a colleague Thejll updated the graph a few years ago and found that there has been a marked deviation since ~1980, with the temp continuing to rise while the solar cycle “predicted” it should level off and start to fall: I meant to provide [this](http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/climate.jsp?id=22370800) link to the article from which the quotation following this sentence is taken. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919/106 "2004-07-19T01:03:07Z")
[Here](http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2004/0616climate.shtml), by the way, is a link to a news release by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which, among other things, publishes the journal _Science_) about a one-day meeting on climate change that it sponsored: > [@](#): > > **Climate experts urge immediate action to offset impact of global warming** > > Governments and consumers in the United States and worldwide should take immediate steps to reduce the threat of global warming and to prepare for a future in which coastal flooding, reduced crop yields and elevated rates of climate-related illness are all but certain, top U.S. scientists said Tuesday. > > At a meeting organized by AAAS and its journal, Science, the climate researchers argued that while some policy experts and sectors of the public dispute the risk, there is in fact no cause for doubt: The world is significantly warmer today than it was a century ago–and it’s getting warmer. Without action now, they warned, the impact could be devastating. > > … From there, there is a link to the conference program, including PDFs of the presentations. ---
**Author:** ![Dog80](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@Dog80](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dog80)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919/107 "2004-07-19T01:55:35Z")
How is global warming going to reduce the crop yields? I thought warmer climates make plants grow faster, not slower. ---
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919/108 "2004-07-19T02:18:54Z")
> [@Dog80](#): > > How is global warming going to reduce the crop yields? I thought warmer climates make plants grow faster, not slower. You can’t grow wheat in the Sonoran Desert. A lot of plants like it warm, but there’s such a thing as “too warm.” And shifting rainfall patterns could produce some crippling droughts in places like the Great Plains of the U.S., currently one of the most productive chunks of land on the planet. It’s certainly possible, of course, that other areas might become more productive because of warming. That’s a big gamble, however. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919/109 "2004-07-19T07:24:53Z")
> [@Dog80](#): > > The article’s source is far from reputable. But how about France producing 70% of electricity from nuclear factories? I think that this is an objective fact. What you wrote is a fact. What the article’s author write, on the other hand (“Over 70 percent of France’s energy needs are met by nuclear power”) is false. “Energy needs” don’t only include electricity. For instance, we don’t have a lot of nuclear propelled cars over here. And I somehow doubt this mistake is genuine. Assuming it is, then, it shows that the author is basing its conclusions on erroneous “facts”. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919/110 "2004-07-19T07:53:50Z")
> [@Early Out](#): > > It’s certainly possible, of course, that other areas might become more productive because of warming. That’s a big gamble, however. I’ve read a couple months ago that the Russian governement had received reports stating that a global warming would likely result in the possibility of producing wheat in parts of Siberia. The article mentionned these reports were playing a part in Russian reluctance to ratify the Kyoto protocol. I wouldn’t know if these claims are true, though. The last one seem a little outrstandish to me, since I doubt Russia current stance would be significantly modified on the basis of probably highly unreliable long-term predictions. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2004, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919/111 "2004-07-19T18:12:07Z")
**duffer** , I’m finding this confusing. On the one hand, there are some serious questions here and I’ve learned a lot (and maybe even understood a bit) about global warming. On the other, you seem to be trying to sabotage your own thread by making attacks against Democrats that come out of nowhere as best I can tell. Why do you keep doing that? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-please-try-to-sell-me-on-global-warming/251919.md?page=5)