Fiddy

6/24/2008 6:18:22 PM

Damn, a whole page of arguing about water vapor and nobody points out the ANTHROPOGENIC in big letters on the side of the graph?

Unless TreeTwista can show how humans have increased water vapor in the atmosphere, then that last page was all nonsense.

6/25/2008 2:26:10 AM

Quote :

"Unless TreeTwista can show how humans have increased water vapor in the atmosphere, then that last page was all nonsense."

Well we all know there's no way this is true.

6/25/2008 2:30:38 AM

increased CO2 and increased greenhouse effect has a feedback cycle that does also cause increased water vapor in the air.

And the issue is not the greenhouse effect itself, this is necessary for life on earth. The issue is throwing this system that has developed an equilibrium with the natural cycles of earth for billions of years out of whack because of our excessive impacts.

6/25/2008 2:41:45 AM

alright, well now this thread is repeating itself.

6/25/2008 7:39:33 AM

This thread was actually a repeat of past threads.

It's meta-repeating now.

6/25/2008 7:53:26 AM

Quote :

"More CO2 increases the magnitude of the greenhouse effect by empirical evidence. This can be verified to account for an increase of some 1 degree C today and with unchecked future increases, 2-3 degrees in 100 years. Then, peer reviewed research shows a high likelihood that feedback effects will double or triple this effect. The dangers associated with this would be obvious to a 1st grader."

Wow. I didn't know that we had completely eliminated every single other factor in the environment and were able to figure out exactly how much CO2 affects the climate. Man, that is fucking awesome!

The whole point is that everyone is looking at the correlation between CO2 and temperature. Everyone. And everyone is claiming that that correlation shows that as CO2 historically goes up, temperature goes up, and that simply has NOT been proven. In fact, it's been shown that temperature more likely makes CO2 go up.

Yes, it has been shown that CO2 can help increase temperatures, but it HAS NOT been shown BY HOW MUCH. Every study that attempts to do so does so by looking at the historical data which has been super-fudged to support their pre-formed conclusion. You can hop into a lab and add some CO2, but without fucking modeling the ENTIRE environment, every fucking variable, then you have a misleading experiment.

You talk of people who speak against global fear-mongering and claim they are trying to make political gain from it. Yet what you fail to realize is that is all that global fear-mongering is: a political ploy for power. That's all it has ever been.

6/25/2008 7:36:24 PM

Would you look at that? Another reference to the 'continents fitting together' from Gore's movie!

Quote :

"Yes, it has been shown that CO2 can help increase temperatures, but it HAS NOT been shown BY HOW MUCH. Every study that attempts to do so does so by looking at the historical data which has been super-fudged to support their pre-formed conclusion. You can hop into a lab and add some CO2, but without fucking modeling the ENTIRE environment, every fucking variable, then you have a misleading experiment."

You're confusing the meaning of the uncertainties.


http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/WaterVapor/

We'll assume we're working with a business-as-usual CO2 escalation scheme, say there's a 40% chance temperature rise will be between 2 and 3.5 degrees C. ZOMG! The models are so uncertain, right?

What's being neglected here is the fact that we know with almost absolute certainty that temperature rises will be over 1.5 degrees - which would still have devastating effects. In other words, there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE that our grandchildren will wake up one day and say "wow that global warming thing was a total crock". Furthermore, the more GHGs we put out, the worse it is. That's not speculation

Quote :

"You talk of people who speak against global fear-mongering and claim they are trying to make political gain from it. Yet what you fail to realize is that is all that global fear-mongering is: a political ploy for power. That's all it has ever been."

Weather or not it is being used as a political ploy for power has no bearing whatsoever on the validity or severity of global warming.

6/26/2008 4:54:12 PM

Quote :

"This thread was actually a repeat of past threads. It's meta-repeating now. "

This thread has repeated itself at least 20x in the past 50 pages.

6/26/2008 4:57:17 PM

so is it the same people over and over again, or does it constantly feed off new blood?

6/26/2008 4:59:34 PM

Quote :

"What's being neglected here is the fact that we know with almost absolute certainty that temperature rises will be over 1.5 degrees - which would still have devastating effects. In other words, there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE that our grandchildren will wake up one day and say "wow that global warming thing was a total crock". Furthermore, the more GHGs we put out, the worse it is. That's not speculation"

how is it not speculation? its still basing your 1.5 degree increase on a model and what the model indicates will happen in the future...any time you predict something for the future its never certain, its always speculation

^some of the same some new

6/26/2008 5:04:57 PM

What do you mean by a 'model'? You could verify this with a small model (which is more like a simple calculation), you could do it with a medium sized model, or even a really super huge model with global feedback loops like the ones the IPCC uses.

And yes, it's 'forcing', meaning we're looking for a change in temperature. If it turned out 1.5 degrees was the exact amount we increase temperature by, and at the same time, there's a natural factor that just happens to force it -1.5 degrees, like a big volcano pooping, then yeah, temperature will not change.

Until the crap from the volcano clears, and then it's 1.5 degrees hotter again.

[Edited on June 26, 2008 at 5:12 PM. Reason : ]

6/26/2008 5:11:26 PM

Quote :

"What do you mean by a 'model'?"

i mean the graph you posted...its using past data to predict what will happen throughout the 21st century...the temperature rises on that graph are predictions based on models that use past data...if it were a graph for the 20th century it would be real data...but anything past 2008 is speculation...so you cant say theres "almost absolute certainty" that ANYTHING will happen that far in the future

6/26/2008 5:21:59 PM

I'm a model
you know where I'm at
as I do my sexy turn down the catwalk

6/26/2008 5:29:14 PM

i thought it was "you know what i mean" but i might be wrong

right_said_schmoe

6/26/2008 5:30:02 PM

yeah, maybe... i didn't feel like looking it up

6/26/2008 6:09:15 PM

Well, if you were talking about this graph...



I can show you that 1.46 W/m2 forcing --> 0.28 deg C first level temperature increase. That graph, btw, is using about a 100 ppm increase in CO2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gases

predictions going up to 2100 give increases to around 740 ppm assuming no action is taken. That's using historical carbon emission trends. With the rate at which China, India, and the like are developing, I don't think they overestimated, and we're not hitting peak coal either.

For 740 ppm, if you use the IPCC most simple first order approximation,

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/222.htm

You get 5.2 W/m2 --> 1.0 deg C.

This comes from physics, not past trends. The correct conclusion is "If we do xxxx, then yyyy will happen". Past trends are applicable for the other natural changes in the Earth's climate. Only problem is, those are dwarfed by the changes we will be causing.

Uncertainties matter in terms of

We're fucked to
|
|
\/
We're really really really fucked

We're absolutely certain that we're fucked. And we know that as we sit here, we're fuckin ourselves even more. This doesn't rely on uncertain past trends. Nothing extrapolated, just basic physics.

6/26/2008 6:32:50 PM

talking about this graph

6/26/2008 6:46:47 PM

that's not based on models that use past data in any way, shape, or form.

It's current state of system, disturbance applied, future state of system.

6/26/2008 7:09:57 PM

eh, lets just bioengineer the stratosphere and be done with it. Much easier than trying to regulate the whole world's energy consumption.

6/26/2008 7:15:18 PM

Several times in during the history of man the earth has gone through cold spells and warm spells. Of almost all of them we cannot determine what caused these temperature changes. Now you're trying to tell us that we can take recent data and put it into models and give us an accurate forecast/prediction for the future? Forgive me for not believing.

6/26/2008 7:51:11 PM

He just spent multiple posts explaining that it's not based on past data.

Try and keep up, man.

6/26/2008 10:14:20 PM

I know, I was showing that how can they push their agenda about the "future" if they don't even understand the past.

6/26/2008 10:18:54 PM

6/26/2008 10:44:39 PM

Quote :

"Several times in during the history of man the earth has gone through cold spells and warm spells. Of almost all of them we cannot determine what caused these temperature changes. Now you're trying to tell us that we can take recent data and put it into models and give us an accurate forecast/prediction for the future? Forgive me for not believing."

This comes right back to the volcano thing i was going on about. In terms of the average temperature of the Earth, it's sporadic on a SHORT SCALE, but atmospheric CO2 has a half life of like 200 years. If you took a 100 year average for every century up until now, you would get a very low scatter.

Now, if life is used to a roller coaster ride every day and every year, what does it matter if it's consistently higher for a sustained period of time? Well, here's a complete, you know, just shot in the dark:

Ice. It melts.

6/26/2008 11:31:34 PM

^then by all means please explain why the ice didn't disappear during the Roman Warming Period? It was warmer then than it is now. And increased C02 (from humans) had nothing to do with it.

6/27/2008 3:23:47 AM

^^^ That is a funny-looking pic, though.

6/27/2008 3:29:47 AM

You mean this medieval warming period?

6/27/2008 7:23:49 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080627/sc_livescience/northpolecouldbeicefreethissummer;_ylt=Ao9MKhC.qJzB9ROSCSrCfAas0NUE

6/27/2008 1:20:47 PM

I thought the BBC was saying that was going to happen in 3-5 years.

6/27/2008 1:33:24 PM

Quote :

"You're confusing the meaning of the uncertainties."

You mean like the ten-thousand percent uncertainties in the original studies which launched the whole global-fearmongering shenanigans?

Quote :

"What's being neglected here is the fact that we know with almost absolute certainty that temperature rises will be over 1.5 degrees"

1) How do you know with "almost absolute certainty?" Do you have a fucking time machine?
2) HOW DO YOU KNOW THE WARMING IS DUE TO CO2 AND NOT A MYRIAD OF OTHER FACTORS?

Quote :

"Weather or not it is being used as a political ploy for power has no bearing whatsoever on the validity or severity of global warming."

Then it should also have no bearing when someone is using anti-AGW as a political or financial ploy, should it? Their words are equally valid, right?

Quote :

"or even a really super huge model with global feedback loops like the ones the IPCC uses."

You mean like those great models that produced a hockey-stick 99% of the time, even with random noise for data inputs?

Quote :

"This comes from physics, not past trends. The correct conclusion is "If we do xxxx, then yyyy will happen". Past trends are applicable for the other natural changes in the Earth's climate. Only problem is, those are dwarfed by the changes we will be causing."

And, again, this assumes that all other things are equal. An assumption which is patently false.

^^^ Hey, way to pull out the graph based on the model that presents a hockey-stick 99% of the time, no matter what data is fed to it.

Quote :

"In terms of the average temperature of the Earth, it's sporadic on a SHORT SCALE, but atmospheric CO2 has a half life of like 200 years. If you took a 100 year average for every century up until now, you would get a very low scatter."

And that is where you are WRONG. You assume that there is a "normal" earth temperature, and that simply isn't truth. The earth's temperature goes through CYCLES. And, shocker, a guy in the 70s predicted that there would be a maximum in the temperature cycle, oh... around 2002-2003. Hmmm... And this was all based on solar activity, NOT CO2.

6/27/2008 11:53:01 PM

So did any of the above not come from a chain email?

6/28/2008 12:12:52 AM

nice rebuttal. and it's typical of the AGW-crowd. When faced with actual facts, they resort to name-calling and other childish measures. Hardly the face of what one would expect a "scientific" argument to be.

and no, none of it came from a chain e-mail. Much of it, in fact, came from congressional testimony.

6/28/2008 12:23:06 AM

Quote :

"When faced with actual facts, they resort to name-calling and other childish measures."

Where were these facts?

-you questioned the motives of the scientific community
-you pulled a tree-esque "can we really know anything, maaaaan?"
-you dusted off the old hockey stick argument-- which is close enough to a fact, I guess, that I feel I should offer a rebuttal:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/dummies-guide-to-the-latest-hockey-stick-controversy/

Surprise! burro's exaggerating things by a factor of 1,000,000

6/28/2008 8:13:18 AM

Quote :

"You mean like the ten-thousand percent uncertainties in the original studies which launched the whole global-fearmongering shenanigans?"

You are so full of shit. I've shown over and over again that I don't have to rely on complicated models to verify global warming to a certain degree, and water vapor and ice melting feedback will almost certainly magnify the effect.

I'M RIGHT HERE, TALK TO ME, NOT YOUR STRAWMAN!

Quote :

"1) How do you know with "almost absolute certainty?" Do you have a fucking time machine? 2) HOW DO YOU KNOW THE WARMING IS DUE TO CO2 AND NOT A MYRIAD OF OTHER FACTORS?"

1) I have a calculator.
2) You're intentionally mentioning A FACTOR so I can't reply to this. How about methane, right, that methane that does the same thing as CO2.

Quote :

"Then it should also have no bearing when someone is using anti-AGW as a political or financial ploy, should it? Their words are equally valid, right?"

wut? The argument itself is what should matter.

Quote :

"You mean like those great models that produced a hockey-stick 99% of the time, even with random noise for data inputs?"

You're referring to a temperature reconstruction graph. The 'hockey-stick' part comes from measured data. Really, there's no way this makes sense unless you completely messed up the graphs.

Quote :

"And, again, this assumes that all other things are equal. An assumption which is patently false."

The thing that's unique about now, versus the last 60 million years is humans. Refer back to the reconstructed temperature graph, and carefully explain to me how a decade-wise averaged temperature was within around 0.4 of a common value for thousands of years, a simple CO2 radiative forcing calculation shows a 2100 increase of 1 degree, and you think we're just fine?

Natural fluxations: 0.4 or so
global warming: 1.0 plus feedback effects

Kapeesh? Address this very real argument that I ALREADY MADE instead of reposting your spam mail.

Quote :

"^^^ Hey, way to pull out the graph based on the model that presents a hockey-stick 99% of the time, no matter what data is fed to it."

this graph. The reconstructed temperature graph, with lines from multiple sources, gives the hockey stick for our recently measured data. YOU ARE A GODDAM LUNATIC WHO ISN'T EVEN THINKING.

Quote :

"And that is where you are WRONG. You assume that there is a "normal" earth temperature, and that simply isn't truth. The earth's temperature goes through CYCLES. And, shocker, a guy in the 70s predicted that there would be a maximum in the temperature cycle, oh... around 2002-2003. Hmmm... And this was all based on solar activity, NOT CO2."

Solar activity



earth's temperature goes through CYCLES



Sorry for using real information instead of propaganda.

[Edited on June 28, 2008 at 10:06 AM. Reason : ]

6/28/2008 10:04:59 AM

ahhh yes, the 'multiple sources' which all use the same flawed methodology as the original hockey stick. very persuasive. either that or they continue to use data which we already know incorrectly skews the resultsin favor of the pre-formed conclusions, anyway. very 'scientific

6/28/2008 10:44:08 PM

You are a fucking tool.

I swear to God, you have at some point lost the ability to think for yourself. Which one of us is using self-fulfilling conclusions? Just think about that for a second.

My position, and my arguments change all the time with the new information I get. You, on the other hand, is the any way you can say that bull shit without your conclusion being completely insensitive to the data? By the way, where IS your data? Oh that's right, YOU DON'T HAVE ANY! But you can exercise critical thinking, by thinking of a way that any graph someone else presents you with fits into the ideas you already had.

6/29/2008 10:54:21 AM

You cannot compare disparate data sets without proof that they correlate, which we do not have. As such, if we exclude the black line because it only goes back a hundred years and instead just look at the other lines then we very quickly see that current temperatures are not historically abnormal. Yes, they are on the warm side, but it is not yet anything the world did not experience around 1100 AD.

6/29/2008 10:58:57 AM

Current temperatures right now aren't abnormal because additional radiative forcing only contributes like 0.3 degrees C, plus the disputable feedback effects. Over a short time scale (we have only had a finite time to measure the temperatures), yes, that will be well within normal fluctuations. Nor is it unexpected that all the lines come together at the same point, because that's what we know accurately.

The reconstructed temperature in no way gives evidence for AGW, no one said it did. However, it gives strong evidence that induced temperature rises of 1-6 degrees C is NOT a normal fluctuation on decade to century scale time scale. i.e., pessimistic scenarios of global warming into the next century would royally fuck the entire planet over, because it's obviously not used to it, and even conservative predictions don't look all too peachy.

6/29/2008 12:01:29 PM

Quote :

"As such, if we exclude the black line because it only goes back a hundred years and instead just look at the other lines then we very quickly see that current temperatures are not historically abnormal. Yes, they are on the warm side, but it is not yet anything the world did not experience around 1100 AD."

Why would you exclude the most accurate dataset available? I mean, thermometers actually existed at that point.

6/29/2008 12:19:43 PM

I think I understand what LoneSnark was trying to say with that, and I agree, but it didn't have any consequence on what I was saying.

The lines are discrepant up until recently, where they include actual data. So obviously, there could have been very violent upswings of the same nature of the 2004-ish swing in say, the Medieval Warm Period, but if there were, this graph would not capture it.

And just to be nit-picky, thermometers existed through most all of the graph. Satellites existed recently that could get a near perfect measure of average surface temperature.

6/29/2008 12:29:15 PM

Quote :

"pessimistic scenarios of global warming into the next century would royally fuck the entire planet over, because it's obviously not used to it"

How is that obvious?

All we know is (again, using that graph) the planet has thrived in temperature anomalies up to 0.1 on the scale. All we know is we have never witnessed a tipping point where high temperatures "royally fuck the entire planet over", all we know for sure is that such a point is above 0.1, it is not obvious whether it is at 0.11 or 10.11.

While losing miles of coastline would be a disaster for mankind, it is one we would have no trouble recovering from. So the only question is when the biosphere will suddenly fall apart at some temperature. As we have never seen such temperatures on a micro-scale (trees at the equator seem to be immune to any temperature as long as it keeps raining regularly). So, like humans, it seems to me radically higher temperatures would be a disaster for some species and a boon to others, clearly not "royally fuck the entire planet over" worthy.

That is, obviously, until it gets so hot that it stops raining (boiling off the oceans).

[Edited on June 29, 2008 at 3:13 PM. Reason : .,.]

6/29/2008 3:11:05 PM

^ Yes, because this is clearly something we can afford to fuck up...

6/29/2008 3:17:09 PM

And at a probability of fucking it up near zero, your statement is relevant.

6/29/2008 3:30:43 PM

I'm trying to think how increasing the temperature of the Earth by 10 degrees C (18 F) could be called 'okay' by any measure.

The Earth has survived some pretty big asteroids in it's history too. I guess if it's convent for mankind then we're hunky-doorie smashing a 10 km wide asteroid into the ocean as well.

I mean, I'm fairly Republican on some issues... but raising the entire temperature of the Earth even 1 or 2 degrees is going too far for me.

6/29/2008 3:51:01 PM

so there's a high likelihood that the North Pole will be ice free -- this summer -- for the first time in recorded history.

Global warming?

naaaah.

6/29/2008 3:54:07 PM

Quote :

"I'm trying to think how increasing the temperature of the Earth by 10 degrees C (18 F) could be called 'okay' by any measure."

I know of no credible scientist even entertaining the idea that any amount of CO2 we throw into the atmosphere would warm it by 10 degrees C because each additional molecule of CO2 has a decreasing impact, which means as CO2 levels rise the temperature will stabilize (eventually almost all the light at CO2 absorption frequencies is already being absorbed). Even Al Gore in his science fiction movie went with substantially less than 10 friggin degrees C.

6/29/2008 4:24:34 PM

Quote :

"10 degrees C (18 F) "

10 C is 50 F

6/29/2008 4:40:20 PM

DURRRR

We are talking about temperature changes, not absolute temperature.

a delta of 1 degree C = 1.8 degrees F

delta 10 C = delta 18 F, which would be catastrophic to the world by any measure.


However, I'm a strong believer in bioengineering as a partial solution if temperatures keep moving up. It's not the most elegant solution, but we absolutely have the technology and know-how to depress temperatures several degrees via reflection of sunlight if need be.


[Edited on June 29, 2008 at 4:54 PM. Reason : 2]

6/29/2008 4:49:17 PM

Quote :

"I know of no credible scientist even entertaining the idea that any amount of CO2 we throw into the atmosphere would warm it by 10 degrees C because each additional molecule of CO2 has a decreasing impact, which means as CO2 levels rise the temperature will stabilize (eventually almost all the light at CO2 absorption frequencies is already being absorbed). Even Al Gore in his science fiction movie went with substantially less than 10 friggin degrees C."

Where I got that from:

Quote :

"All we know is (again, using that graph) the planet has thrived in temperature anomalies up to 0.1 on the scale. All we know is we have never witnessed a tipping point where high temperatures "royally fuck the entire planet over", all we know for sure is that such a point is above 0.1, it is not obvious whether it is at 0.11 or 10.11."

Which, you know, was a part of this conversation

Quote :

"While losing miles of coastline would be a disaster for mankind, it is one we would have no trouble recovering from. So the only question is when the biosphere will suddenly fall apart at some temperature. As we have never seen such temperatures on a micro-scale (trees at the equator seem to be immune to any temperature as long as it keeps raining regularly). So, like humans, it seems to me radically higher temperatures would be a disaster for some species and a boon to others, clearly not "royally fuck the entire planet over" worthy."

--
If you happened to want to know what I think...

estimates really do range somewhere from 1.5 to 6 degrees for 2100, no action taken. There are very real feedback effects out there, and obviously it won't be the absolute bottom of the range (which as i've been saying is provable with short calculations). But some groups have doing these reports have gone a little to far, and recent literature on the subject has started to reflect that I think. If I had to put my money on something, it would be 2 to 3 degrees. Which is plenty.

6/29/2008 5:15:40 PM