Fox News On Recent Snowstorms

[Icekommander]

I'm pretty sure that their are people on both sides of the divide who know nothing of climatology. Heck most of what I know on globabl Warming comes from 10th grade social and science classes, which aren't much more enlightening in this regard than Fox News. I've based my own position on the fact that it seems pretty inescapable that the Ice Caps are melting, and everyone agrees that ice caps melting is bad.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Earth's temp can be graphed sinusoidally. We are coming out of a cold period (1750-1875).

Ehh... nope.

I rarely see anyone from the AGW side of the debate even acknowledge such a thing as cyclical ice ages, or the mini ice age (which we're rebounding from). Its the critics of AGW who look to climate history to put more modern trends into some context.

Not that rare, I'd say.

 

[madviking]

Ehh... nope.

Uhh... yea.

 

[civ_king]

Uhh... yea.

what are those lines representing?

 

[madviking]

This.

 

[civ_king]

(dark blue 1000-1991): P.D. Jones, K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett, and S.F.B. Tett (1998). , The Holocene, 8: 455-471. doi:10.1191/095968398667194956
(blue 1000-1980): M.E. Mann, R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes (1999). , Geophysical Research Letters, 26(6): 759-762.
(light blue 1000-1965): Crowley and Lowery (2000). , Ambio, 29: 51-54. Modified as published in Crowley (2000). , Science, 289: 270-277. doi:10.1126/science.289.5477.270
(lightest blue 1402-1960): K.R. Briffa, T.J. Osborn, F.H. Schweingruber, I.C. Harris, P.D. Jones, S.G. Shiyatov, S.G. and E.A. Vaganov (2001). , J. Geophys. Res., 106: 2929-2941.
(light green 831-1992): J. Esper, E.R. Cook, and F.H. Schweingruber (2002). , Science, 295(5563): 2250-2253. doi:10.1126/science.1066208.
(yellow 200-1980): M.E. Mann and P.D. Jones (2003). , Geophysical Research Letters, 30(15): 1820. doi:10.1029/2003GL017814.
(orange 200-1995): P.D. Jones and M.E. Mann (2004). , Reviews of Geophysics, 42: RG2002. doi:10.1029/2003RG000143
(red-orange 1500-1980): S. Huang (2004). , Geophys. Res Lett., 31: L13205. doi:10.1029/2004GL019781
(red 1-1979): A. Moberg, D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén (2005). , Nature, 443: 613-617. doi:10.1038/nature03265
(dark red 1600-1990): J.H. Oerlemans (2005). , Science, 308: 675-677. doi:10.1126/science.1107046
(black 1856-2004): Instrumental data was jointly compiled by the w:Climatic Research Unit and the UK Meteorological Office Hadley Centre. Global Annual Average data set TaveGL2v [2] was used.

 

[Berzerker]

Not that rare, I'd say.

You just made my point, you linked to subject matter I mentioned first. Thats what I just said, y'all dont bring this stuff (climate history) up in these debates until a critic does it first. Why is that?

 

[Arwon]

Because it's basically irrelevant, a distinction without difference, and a complicating factor that doesn't change the story. Of course climate varies over time due to various factors.

However the issue is that we're introducing a huge new factor - human carbon emissions - effectively conducting some sort of vast experiment with our only biosphere. It's a factor strong enough to cause warming even when other historic factors (sun, volcanic activity) are having a net-cooling effect. It's a vary rapidly operating factor, which pushes in a single direction only, and is likely to be quite detrimental on balance.

If you seriously think any climate specialist or historian worth their salt isn't well aware of other factors, you're kidding yourself. The point to be taken is that even without our contribution, climate can vary destructively. So it's insane to throw another huge destabilising force into an already delicate and perilous situation.

If you think demonstrating other factors at other times discredits what's obviously happening at the moment, that's just loony. Is the argument "temperature changed at other times due to different things therefore we should keep mindlessly pumping unpriced carbon into the atmosphere heedless of consequences"? If so, then make that argument. Don't just give us these mealy-mouthed nudge nudge insinuations that the dastardly experts are conspiring to mislead or distort through omission.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Uhh... yea.

The 2000's temperature is well above the Medieval Warm Period mean, so we can't explain today's temperature as a rebound from the Little Ice Age. And if we try to view the history as a sinusoid, there should be another peak at around 100 AD - which there isn't.