The following comment by Paul Williams provides a different perspective on the question asked by Walter Starck a couple of days ago.
“I think we argue over AGW because there’s so many unanswered questions, such as:
1. Where are the climatic catastrophes we’ve been hearing about?
2. Why are the AGW proponents using dodgy statistics to bolster their case? (Even though they’ve now “moved on”)
3. Why are they proposing ineffective “solutions” for climate change, such as Kyoto?
4. Why do they constantly say the debate is over, when it obviously is not?
5. Why do they attack their opponents, rather than their opponents arguments?”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Because they are wrong.
Since the debate is over could someone please post the final score? In particular the question I need answered to the nearest order of magnitude is; “What percentage of total observed global climate change is anthropogenic?”
If there is no answer the debate is not over and the skeptics are winning.
If there is only one answer the debate over.
If more than one person answers the debate is not over and the skeptics are winning.
This should be good.
mmmm
possibly a few droughts, heatwaves, circulation systems and many more intense tropical storms out of bounds already – and we’ve only just started so who says you’d even be expecting to see that much just now??
if Mann had Wegman to do his stats the answer would be the same, and ROTFL given the porkies spread by the other side with dodgy stats – the ratio is about 100:1 and intentionally deceptive
Is Kyoto a solution or a serious attempt at a first step which has exposed our global collective unwillingness to do anything in terms of cutbacks. the USA and Australia haven’t adopted it – so get over it.
Well the debate is obviously over – there are no other hypotheses that stand up and the evidence keeps pouring in every day
I think you’ll find sites like RC patiently making the case every day, explaining in detail the science vis a vis the shrillness, urgency and total lack of discrimination of much of the AGW side i.e. you guys will use anything for a try-on while insisting on ultra levels of examination that are not applied to alternative ideas. Much are of contrarian sites are just a hodge podge of every alternative hypothesis and crank story under the Sun.
SO in answer to the last question – because we’re only human one gets sick of the rampant b/s that occupies much of the contrarian campaign.
SO – try something new – don’t come on with all the world conspiracy greenie bashing stuff – just make the science case why the the alternative explanations are ALL correct or pick which ones are if you have any powers of discrimination; and also make the case why the radiative forcing discussion and all the empircal evidence is wrong.
The contraians to GCC via AGW are in an enviable position. They need not prove the negative. Indeed any serious proponent of anthropogenic climate forcing would never say anything other than that the burden is upon the advocates.
Still really simple. I ask a simple question and deserve a simple answer. IF the debate is over then we definitively know what percentage of GCC is attributable to AGW.
Come on. Everyone knows there is no correct answer. The difference is that skeptics say “there is no correct answer” and the proponents say “there is no correct answer but we are sure it is positive.” We can be sure the skeptics are telling the truth but cannot tell if the advoactes are telling the truth. How hard is it to understand why so many stick with the former?
Question is irrelevant as you know – the only explanation for the warming of the last 30 years is greenhouse.
Because their actual purpose is to create a worldwide “planned ecology.”
Robert’s question is ill-posed, since he hasn’t given any time range.
Given a specific time range, climate models give answers to this question, with a range of uncertainty around them. For the 20th century as a whole, most models suggest that greenhouse gases actually drove more warming than was observed, being offset by human-generated sulphate and other particulates. Combining the two offsetting effects gives a good fit to the observed warming, so the best point estimate answer for Robert’s question is 100 per cent.
The 2001 IPCC report identified a range of uncertainties about this, notably the apparent conflict between satellite and ground-based measurements which has since been resolved in favour of the ground-based measurements. It was the collapse of arguments based on the satellite discrepancy that led the last genuine sceptics to abandon opposition to the AGW theory.
So Robert, now that you have the final score, are you ready to join the winning team?
A question that I first saw raised by Bob Foster (I think), to which I have not yet seen an answer, is the discrepancy between the temperature record and the CO2 and aerosol forcings.
Here is a link to a global temperature graph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png
If we accept that this is reasonably accurate, then it is noticeable that there is an increase in temperature from about 1910 – 1940, then a fall to the late 70’s, followed by a rise to the present.
Yet atmospheric CO2 shows a steady increase over the measured period.
http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/mlo145e_thrudc04.pdf
And we’re told that atmospheric CO2 was even lower before 1958. So where is the correlation to temperature?
If there is an answer that does not rely on the output of GCMs, and is comprehensible to the average taxpayer, I’d be interested to hear it.
And I’m not trying to say there isn’t an answer. I genuinely would like to know. Maybe I’d even join the winning team.
Slightly off topic, but there is a category five tropical cyclone (typhoon Saomai) just north of taiwan and heading for China.
http://www.gdacs.org/reports.asp?eventType=TC&ID=SAOMAI&system=asgard&alertlevel=Orange
http://www.supertyphoon.com
The most probable cause for most of the cooling from the mid 40s to the mid 70s appears to be the vast and abrupt increase in upwelling of cold deep water in the equatorial eastern Pacific. The Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1976/7 (and the subsequent warming)was the reverse – a vast reduction in upwelling. These changes appear to be tied to solar/planetary inertial influences that can be here recognised in concurrent length of day changes on Earth.
The 300-year warming trend since the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715)represents a powerful increase in solar electromagnetic activity as evidenced by sunspot numbers. NASA’s 10 May 2006 press release tells us what some contrarians have been saying already – the next but one solar cycle (25, peaking in about 2022) “could be one of the weakest for centuries”. If indeed NASA is right, and others who predict solar cycle 26 will be as low or lower are also right, then the next predicted Ice Age minimum, will indeed come. How then will governments keep their people warm and fed? Surely, responsible governments should already be planning for this not-inplausible next Little Ice Age minimum. If it does come it will be fully developed by 2030. Buy some tinned food – its called the precautionary principle.
It is high time IPCC (and governments) acknowledge that ours is not a self-contained climate, Earth is not an autonomous planet, and we don’t travel in an empty universe.
It is also high time that the IPCC stopped adopting standards of practice that are not in accord with the norms. I refer of course to the way in which the economic stuff has been handled, which was highlighted at great length previously on this blog by Ian Castles.This is particularly so when the emphasis is always to the melodromatic and extreme.
The pro-warmers might be more credible if for once they could acknowledge that there might also be some benefits of being warmer,with slightly higher levels of C02, and these benefits have economic value. But no, they cant even yield to common sense on that point.
But to then come up with an idiotic solution called Kyoto, as the answer to an already dubious problem, shows that whatever the final answer might be, it sure as hell has been handled appallingly badly by the IPCC and the Brigade of Euro spivs driving it.
Another UN/Europe stuff up.
Robert Cote,
I don’t think anyone knows what percentage of global climate change can be attributed to humanity.
It is instructive to remember the comment made some years back by the Canadian Environment minister whjo reckoned that so what if the science behind global warming is wrong, Kyoto was always about redistributing wealth, not climate. Climate was the vehicle to implement that redistribution except that it has now been derailed.
Fosbob – whip over to James Annan and put on a bet then !
Malcolm Hill – same old same old.
Louis Hissink
I think you have hit the nail on the head re “redistributing wealth not climate” When you think about it Natural Variation, Solar Activity,and of course water vapour are just as likely/more likely to be the cause of any warming as CO2
but you can’t have any wealth redistribution on the back of that argument!
Paul, your question was answered a couple of comments up. The decline 1940s to 1970s is attributed to a combination of sulphur + particulates and natural cyclical fluctuations. The upward trend for C20 as a whole can be explained entirely by the net impact of anthropogenic forcings.
Have you got that paul?
If the temperature goes down it is”natural cyclical fluctuations”.
If the temperature goes up it is”anthropogenic forcings”.
Makes perfect sense!
Well – it’s an interesting point – what is “a natural cyclical fluctuation”. There seems fair paleo and modelled evidence that the three Milankovitch mechanisms are cyclical and overlapping at big time scales. But apart from that – what exactly is a natural fluctuation – chaos – something we don’t understand? Would have thought that El Ninos and the like are “quasi-periodic” but not cyclical/predictive/repetitive – predictive perhaps in an limited way close up to the event in an emerging season but not over years in advance.
So we’re saying the climate could just “warm up” globally or “cool globally” for no real reason?? Don’t sit well with me – but interested in any serious comments.
John, for that to be the case, the forcings from aerosols would have to show an increase up until 1975/6, followed by an abrupt decrease and a continuation at a lower level or a continued decline. At least that seems reasonable to me.
Yet the aerosol forcings, as far as I know, don’t do that. There is a bit of a dip for about three years from 1980, then a continuation of the curve of increased forcings.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/simodel/trop.aer/
With the booming Chinese economy, it would not be a surprise if aerosol forcings are still increasing.
1998 was the warmest recorded year last century, but it seems highly unlikely that aerosol forcings were particularly low that year. I think we would have heard a bit about it if that was so.
So I’m struggling to accept the “GHG forcings overpowered aerosol forcings” theory. If it is as you say, surely there is some understandable evidence to back it up, rather than the output of GCMs.
In the meantime, there is the correlation of temperature with changes in upwelling of deep Pacific ocean water, which is in turn correlated with changes in Rate of Change of Length of Day, correlated in turn with changes in solar system angular momentum. (Not sure if I’ve got that right!).
While correlation is not causation, shouldn’t it carry more weight than LACK of correlation?
C20 – hmmm must be a new gas! Wonders never cease.
However one must realise that it was only less than a year ago that we discovered that the plant kingdom produced CO2 during the night and O2 during the day – reversing things. Anthropogenic forcings have not this factor incorporated into the model.
And in any case there is no discrete CO2 gas phase in the air which can be treated as a distinct physical factor. Others have argued that the behaviour is applicable at the molecular scale, but that is a furphy as we have no experimental data on the behaviour and physical properties of CO2 at the molecular scale. Principally because we cannot measure it. CO2’s molecular properties are inferred from its macroscopic properties.
That said, the molecular forcing of CO2 in air is much like the assertion that some air bubbles in the ice cubes cooling your beverage influence the temperature.
And that a flea on an elephant’s tail is capable of influencing its progress along its habitual path. The elephant is unaware of the flea but the flea, in its hubris, THINKS it affects the elephant.
From such intellectual molehills mountains are formed.
And the flea gives the elephant jungle fever and the elephant dies. Strange how something so small could upset the balance.
Jungle fever – a variant of global warming fever?
GIVEN the answers above, no one knows what physical factors influence climate.
Anyone who does, needs to be, initially, catergorised differently.
John Quiggin,
Re your points that:
“For the 20th century as a whole, most models suggest that greenhouse gases actually drove more warming than was observed, being offset by human-generated sulphate and other particulates. Combining the two offsetting effects gives a good fit to the observed warming, so the best point estimate answer for Robert’s question is 100 per cent.”
and
“The upward trend for C20 as a whole can be explained entirely by the net impact of anthropogenic forcings.”
Do you have any scientific references for your conclusion? In particular, has the IPCC ever drawn it, and if so, where?
Also, when you say that the upward trend for the 20th century can be explained entirely by the net impact of anthropogenic forcings, can that trend also be explained otherwise?