Global Warming

[USMC the Almighty]

no, I'm just pointing out the fact that you have no knowledge about this subject other than what politics has told you

Haha, you're worse than Roker. So where exactly did I go wrong?

 

[mr universe]

Why the Sun seems to be 'dimming'
By David Sington

We are all seeing rather less of the Sun, according to scientists who have been looking at five decades of sunlight measurements.
They have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface has been gradually falling.

Paradoxically, the decline in sunlight may mean that global warming is a far greater threat to society than previously thought.



The effect was first spotted by Gerry Stanhill, an English scientist working in Israel.
Cloud changes

Comparing Israeli sunlight records from the 1950s with current ones, Dr Stanhill was astonished to find a large fall in solar radiation.

"There was a staggering 22% drop in the sunlight, and that really amazed me." Intrigued, he searched records from all around the world, and found the same story almost everywhere he looked.

Sunlight was falling by 10% over the USA, nearly 30% in parts of the former Soviet Union, and even by 16% in parts of the British Isles.

Although the effect varied greatly from place to place, overall the decline amounted to one to two per cent globally every decade between the 1950s and the 1990s.

Dr Stanhill called it "global dimming", but his research, published in 2001, met a sceptical response from other scientists.

It was only recently, when his conclusions were confirmed by Australian scientists using a completely different method to estimate solar radiation, that climate scientists at last woke up to the reality of global dimming.


My main concern is global dimming is also having a detrimental impact on the Asian monsoon ... We are talking about billions of people
Professor Veerhabhadran Ramanathan

Dimming appears to be caused by air pollution.
Burning coal, oil and wood, whether in cars, power stations or cooking fires, produces not only invisible carbon dioxide - the principal greenhouse gas responsible for global warming - but also tiny airborne particles of soot, ash, sulphur compounds and other pollutants.

This visible air pollution reflects sunlight back into space, preventing it reaching the surface. But the pollution also changes the optical properties of clouds.

Because the particles seed the formation of water droplets, polluted clouds contain a larger number of droplets than unpolluted clouds.

Recent research shows that this makes them more reflective than they would otherwise be, again reflecting the Sun's rays back into space.

Scientists are now worried that dimming, by shielding the oceans from the full power of the Sun, may be disrupting the pattern of the world's rainfall.

There are suggestions that dimming was behind the droughts in sub-Saharan Africa which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the 1970s and 80s.

There are disturbing hints the same thing may be happening today in Asia, home to half the world's population.

"My main concern is global dimming is also having a detrimental impact on the Asian monsoon," says Professor Veerhabhadran Ramanathan, professor of climate and atmospheric sciences at the University of California, San Diego. "We are talking about billions of people."

Alarming energy

But perhaps the most alarming aspect of global dimming is that it may have led scientists to underestimate the true power of the greenhouse effect.

They know how much extra energy is being trapped in the Earth's atmosphere by the extra carbon dioxide we have placed there.

What has been surprising is that this extra energy has so far resulted in a temperature rise of just 0.6 degree Celsius.

This has led many scientists to conclude that the present-day climate is less sensitive to the effects of carbon dioxide than it was, say, during the ice age, when a similar rise in CO2 led to a temperature rise of six degrees Celsius.

But it now appears the warming from greenhouse gases has been offset by a strong cooling effect from dimming - in effect two of our pollutants have been cancelling each other out.

This means that the climate may in fact be more sensitive to the greenhouse effect than previously thought.

If so, then this is bad news, according to Dr Peter Cox, one of the world's leading climate modellers.

As things stand, CO2 levels are projected to rise strongly over coming decades, whereas there are encouraging signs that particle pollution is at last being brought under control.

"We're going to be in a situation unless we act where the cooling pollutant is dropping off while the warming pollutant is going up.

"That means we'll get reducing cooling and increased heating at the same time and that's a problem for us," says Dr Cox.

Even the most pessimistic forecasts of global warming may now have to be drastically revised upwards.

That means a temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 could be on the cards, giving the UK a climate like that of North Africa, and rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable.

 

[mr universe]

Haha, you're worse than Roker. So where exactly did I go wrong?

where you thought we were entering a cooling time because wee are now at the solar maximum.

the solar maximum occurs every eleven years, with the last one in 2001

two little things that blow a hole in your credibility

 

[mr universe]

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast30may_1m.htm

a bit about the atmosphere and the solar max.

 

[USMC the Almighty]

where you thought we were entering a cooling time because wee are now at the solar maximum.

the solar maximum occurs every eleven years, with the last one in 2001

two little things that blow a hole in your credibility

I am aware. But the current Maximum has entered unusally higher snsport activity - the highest since the Medieval Maximum. The 11-year cooling periods have never cooled down to previous levels, making a severe cooling period (or Maunder Minimum - "Little Ice Age") more than overdue.

 

[palerider]

I tell you what, why don't you find me every scientific paper that was written on the idea of this cooling conspiracy that you beileve in.

Aww..hell I'll do it for you.

Rasool and Schneider (1971) - Examined the possible effects of greenhouse gases and particulate pollution (such as from aerosols) on the climate. They found that greenhouse gases would result in warming the Earth and particulate pollution in cooling it, and guessed the latter to be more likely. They estimated that sustained effects of particulate polluntants could decrease the temperature of Earth by up to 3.5°C, and if this went on for long enough, it could cause Earth to drop into another ice age. Note that they didn't actually predict this would happen, they just proposed it as a possible future scenario. Nowadays, most scientists are indeed predicting that the Earth is going to warm up.

National Academy of Sciences Report (1975) - Often claimed to show fear of Global Cooling. In fact, all it said was that it's possible for the climate to change, they didn't know in which way it might, and so we should research it more. No big fears there.

Okay, we have one actual paper which shows any support at all for the hypothesis of Global Cooling. That's it. Some hysteria, eh?

And once again, its simply illogical to use the "science was wrong before" argument. Your argument is not only flawed, but shows a direct ignorance of how science even works.

And you are under the impression that every scientific paper written in the 70's is on the internet?

And I never used the "science was wrong before" argument. I was pointing out that the science in the 70's wasn't actually science, it was pseudoscience just like the "science" that AGW believers are pushing today.

 

[Fonz]

And you are under the impression that every scientific paper written in the 70's is on the internet?

And I never used the "science was wrong before" argument. I was pointing out that the science in the 70's wasn't actually science, it was pseudoscience just like the "science" that AGW believers are pushing today.

Nice Non-Retort. I'll take that as your concession that you don't have anything more to add to the debate.

Oh, and you might wanna tell the Scientists who make up the National Academies of Science that they are all just a bunch pf pseudo-scientists.

http://books.nap.edu/collections/global_warming/index.html

 

[Dave]

PUUUUUUUlease

wow

I suppose thats a much easier response than actually debating my position.

 

[Dave]

interesting, I found this at realclimate.org

If the data used to make this graph is correct, then I think the correlation that Mr. Shaviv has drawn is wrong.

Actually, realclimate is misrepresenting the information if they are saying that the average is all that matters here. If you look at the spikes and valleys on the graph, I believe you can see a direct link. The fact that they even have to work math on the data to show their point shows at least a little bias on their part. When you look at the raw, unprocessed data, it goes with what Shaviv was saying.

 

[Rokerijdude11]

I did it two posts above yours. Occasionally it would be a good idea to read the other persons posts before blindly responding.

someone should explain this to palerider

 

[Rokerijdude11]

I suppose thats a much easier response than actually debating my position.

i found nothing of value to debate in your off topic rant sorry?

 

[palerider]

Nice Non-Retort. I'll take that as your concession that you don't have anything more to add to the debate.

Oh, and you might wanna tell the Scientists who make up the National Academies of Science that they are all just a bunch pf pseudo-scientists.

http://books.nap.edu/collections/global_warming/index.html

Since clearly all the scientific reports that were done in the 70's are not on the internet, and for that matter all the scientific reports that were done in in 2005 are not on the internet, your point regarding them is no point at all. You may not realize it but everything is not on the net.

And the national acadamies of science has a history of jumping on bandwagons when money is involved. They were firmly behind the eugenics craze before WWII.

The fact is that the earth is coming out of an ice age, and has been for about 15,000 years and neither you, nor any of the pseudoscientists at the national academy, nor any other pseudoscientist presently collecting grant money for "climate change" research can provide even the smallest scrap of evidence to suggest that the rate at which the earth is coming out of this ice age is in any way unusual when contrasted from its exit from any past ice age.

Give me some evidence that this is not just business as usual with regard to the earth's climate cycles and you have something with which to argue. Anything short of that and you are just trying to convince me to pay homage to you because you know when the next eclipse is coming.

 

[Fonz]

Since clearly all the scientific reports that were done in the 70's are not on the internet, and for that matter all the scientific reports that were done in in 2005 are not on the internet, your point regarding them is no point at all. You may not realize it but everything is not on the net.

Since clearly I stated that all reports are on the net???

The fact is, there was only one done in the 70's on cooling. And no its not on the net. Your simply believing the lies you read in whatever anti-global warming websites you read.

And the national acadamies of science has a history of jumping on bandwagons when money is involved. They were firmly behind the eugenics craze before WWII.

Thats a logical fallacy, called poisoning the well, or argumentum ad hominem. Nice try though.

The fact is that the earth is coming out of an ice age, and has been for about 15,000 years and neither you, nor any of the pseudoscientists at the national academy, nor any other pseudoscientist presently collecting grant money for "climate change" research can provide even the smallest scrap of evidence to suggest that the rate at which the earth is coming out of this ice age is in any way unusual when contrasted from its exit from any past ice age.

Give me some evidence that this is not just business as usual with regard to the earth's climate cycles and you have something with which to argue. Anything short of that and you are just trying to convince me to pay homage to you because you know when the next eclipse is coming.

Ahhh, yes.

It is true that the Earth goes through cycles, but there are a couple of problems here. The first of these is the linear assumption, which is where people assume that since it was at point A in the past and point B now, it followed a linear path between them and will continue on it. In truth, the cycles are anything but linear. Let's take a look at what they actually look like:

Okay, first of all there's a lot of random variance at any time, but ignore that for now and look at the overall pattern. It's pretty cyclical alright, but it's not like a simple sine wave or saw blade. Rather, we see a pattern of a sharp rise in temperature of around 10°C taking place in a span of around 10,000 years followed by a gradual cooling over the next 100,000 years or so.

Now, let's look at our recent history on the far left side of the graph. We see that we've just come off of a spike which has stayed strangely level afterwards. (The timescale of the graph is too much to attribute this leveling to human activities.) What we would expect to happen next judging from the long-term cycles is that the temperature would plunge back down into another ice age.

There's another variant to this myth, however, that relates to a more recent cooling period: the "Little Ice Age," which took place within the last millenium. See the following image:

During the Medieval Warm Period you can see on this graph, Greenland was actually temperate enough that colonies were set up there, but they had to be abandoned in the later years. We're now approaching those temperatures again in the recent century. Does this mean we're due for a melting of it? Time will tell... (well, hopefully not)

But anyways, onto the claim they're making. They say that the present warming is simply the Earth correcting itself after that Little Ice Age. But wait, as seen on the previous image, which way should the Earth be correcting itself next? That's right, it should be going downwards. Looking at historical trends, we don't see as much of short-term (on the scale of a few centuries) cycles as we do just random fluctuations, so we don't really have any reason to assume that from a short-term trend we're due to come back up.

In fact, if you want to be really pessimistic, you could argue that the escape from the Little Ice Age occured in the middle of the world's industrialization, and it's possible that this is what caused us to come back to a peak, and possibly rise some more. But that's just speculation.

There's one other problem here, with the Medieval Warm Period itself. It's hard to accurately gauge temperatures that far back in time, and when we can, it's often only in a few places in the world. The best evidence we have shows that outside of Europe, it was indeed probable that many areas experienced the warm period, but it's not conclusive. In fact, Antarctic Ice Core samples showed an additional cold period from 1000-1100 AD.

But there's another big problem with using the Medieval Warm Period to extrapolate anything about cycles in the Earth's climate: It was also the time of an extremely hyperactive phase of solar activity known as the Medieval Maximum. The relationship between the sun's activity and the temperature on Earth is well-accepted, especially by Global Warming skeptics who try to use it to explain the rise now. You know what they fail to point out? We're at the same temperature as in the Medieval Warm Period now, but the sun is not in a hyperactive phase (at least, nowhere near how it was back then).

http://infophilia.blogspot.com/2007/03/convenient-myths.html

 

[palerider]

Since clearly I stated that all reports are on the net???

The fact is, there was only one done in the 70's on cooling. And no its not on the net. Your simply believing the lies you read in whatever anti-global warming websites you read.

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to this thread. It is turkey season and I have a limited amount of time for long responses.

You, yourself have cited two reports done in the 70's and now you are claiming one? Even if there were only one report done in the 70's (a point which I don't conceede) it would be clear evidence of the media's willingness to take partial information that proves nothing and run with it as if it were delivered by God on the mountain top. Exactly the same thing that is happening today.

And I have two degrees in the hard sciences, and don't require information be digested and fed to me in small bites via the internet.

Thats a logical fallacy, called poisoning the well, or argumentum ad hominem. Nice try though.

Geez I wish people here would learn what constitutes a logical fallacy and when it is appropriate to suggest that one has been made. When I pointed out that the national academy was not infallable, and had, in the past, supported pseudoscience, it was in response to your "appeal to authority" in suggesting that the pseudoscience must be true because the scientists at the national academy said so. There was a logical fallacy in the exchange, but you are the one who made it.

Nice try though.

It is true that the Earth goes through cycles, but there are a couple of problems here. The first of these is the linear assumption, which is where people assume that since it was at point A in the past and point B now, it followed a linear path between them and will continue on it. In truth, the cycles are anything but linear. Let's take a look at what they actually look like:

Let me stop here and ask you a question. How much scientific value do you believe can be gained about a cyclical event when all of your research involves comparing one cycle to itself?

That is what you are doing here, and if the scientists who made it were trying in any way to prove that the earth's exit from this ice age is unusual because of man's influence then they are no more than pseudoscientists.

Have you ever looked at the time scale on the bottom of your little chart? 400,000 years. Do you know why such charts as those never go back much further than 600,000 to a million years max? It is because if you go back any further, there was no ice...ANYWHERE. Your chart simply shows the fluctuations in temperature during the ice age that we are still coming out of. How valuable do you reallybelieve that information is if you are trying to prove that man is somehow responsible for altering the exit from this ice age if it is not compared to other exits from other ice ages?

Okay, first of all there's a lot of random variance at any time, but ignore that for now and look at the overall pattern. It's pretty cyclical alright, but it's not like a simple sine wave or saw blade. Rather, we see a pattern of a sharp rise in temperature of around 10°C taking place in a span of around 10,000 years followed by a gradual cooling over the next 100,000 years or so.

Show me some evidence that suggests that the exits from the ice ages of the precambrian, or the silurian, or the permian ages proceeded any differently without man's influence. You are comparing one cycle of a cyclical event to itself and trying to prove that this cycle is different from the others because of us. You can only prove we are responsible for differences if your attempt at proof is in the context of cycles that happened before we came on the scene.

In order to prove that we are causing a change, you need to provide evidence that exits from previous ice ages did not involve wild temperature fluctuations as they (the ice ages) neared their ends. So far, I haven't seen any scientist who buys AGW theory even begin to try and provide such evidence. After all, how much grant money do you believe they would get if they said that the earth warms up till all the ice is gone, holds that temperature for a few million years and then enters another ice age?

Now, let's look at our recent history on the far left side of the graph. We see that we've just come off of a spike which has stayed strangely level afterwards. (The timescale of the graph is too much to attribute this leveling to human activities.) What we would expect to happen next judging from the long-term cycles is that the temperature would plunge back down into another ice age.

Recent history is irrelavent unless it is compared to the same time frame from a previous ice age exit. You are comparing a thing to itself in an attempt to prove that it is different from other like things. That is not science.

The hockey stick You are bringing the hockey stick here? That piece of drivel has been so thoroughly discredited that even the most rabit AGW'ers don't use it as evidence any more. Get some real evidence.

 

[palerider]

i found nothing of value to debate in your off topic rant sorry?

You know what is funny Rokerijdude? The idea that you have bought anthropogenic global warming theory hook line and sinker with nothing that constitutes proof and a great deal of information out there that suggests just the opposite and yet; on the pot thread, you are howling for absolute proof that pot causes cancer and you refuse to even consider credible science that suggests that it might because it isn't absolute proof.

Science is science and one wonders why in one area of science you will accept information that doesn't constitute proof but in another area of science, you flatly reject information that doesn't constitue proof.

Says a lot about how your bias effects your thought processes don't you think?