Global warming and environmental catastrophe: science or myth?

[Rambuchan]

Do you not find it curious that the nation that denies its existance most fervorantly, is also the nation that contributes the most?

Do you know - it is only since coming on CFC OT that I met people who believe Climate Change is a myth (and no I haven't been living in a cave all these years). Call me a generaliser but it is only Americans who can't seem to make their mind up on this issue. I mean talk about living in another world! :shakehead


YOU GUYS NEED TO WAKE UP AND SMELL THE RISING TIDES AND STOP BELIEVING ALL THE CORPORATE BS!


And BTW - I went to some lengths to provide solid evidence that our Climate is changing and for the worse. I don't reeally want to cough it all up again but here is the link to that thread, with all its graphics, maps etc: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=122620

 

[carlosMM]

for all those who still doubt it:

check e.g.
www.realclimate.org
this site discusses recent scientific articles on global warming.

and, maybe you are interested in this:

THE ANTHROPOGENIC GREENHOUSE ERA
BEGAN THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO
WILLIAM F. RUDDIMAN​

Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, U.S.A.
E-mail: wfr5c@virginia.edu

Abstract. The anthropogenic era is generally thought to have begun 150 to 200 years ago, when the industrial revolution began producing CO2 and CH4 at rates sufficient to alter their compositions in the atmosphere. A different hypothesis is posed here: anthropogenic emissions of these gases
first altered atmospheric concentrations thousands of years ago. This hypothesis is based on three arguments. (1) Cyclic variations in CO2 and CH4 driven by Earth-orbital changes during the last 350,000 years predict decreases throughout the Holocene, but the CO2 trend began an anomalous
increase 8000 years ago, and the CH4 trend did so 5000 years ago. (2) Published explanations for these mid- to late-Holocene gas increases based on natural forcing can be rejected based on paleoclimatic evidence. (3) A wide array of archeological, cultural, historical and geologic evidence points
to viable explanations tied to anthropogenic changes resulting from early agriculture in Eurasia, including the start of forest clearance by 8000 years ago and of rice irrigation by 5000 years ago. In recent millennia, the estimated warming caused by these early gas emissions reached a global-mean
value of ∼0.8 ◦C and roughly 2 ◦C at high latitudes, large enough to have stopped a glaciation of northeastern Canada predicted by two kinds of climatic models. CO2 oscillations of ∼10 ppm in the last 1000 years are too large to be explained by external (solar-volcanic) forcing, but they can be
explained by outbreaks of bubonic plague that caused historically documented farm abandonment in western Eurasia. Forest regrowth on abandoned farms sequestered enough carbon to account for the observed CO2 decreases. Plague-driven CO2 changes were also a significant causal factor in
temperature changes during the Little Ice Age (1300–1900 AD).



1. Introduction
Crutzen and Stoermer (2000) called the time during which industrial-era human activities have altered greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere (and thereby affected Earth’s climate) the ‘Anthropocene’. They placed its start at 1800 A.D., the time of the first slow increases of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations above previous longer-term values. Implicit in this view is a negligible human influence on gas concentrations and Earth’s climate before 1800 AD. The hypothesis advanced here is that the Anthropocene actually began thousands of years ago as a result of the discovery of agriculture and subsequent technological innovations in the practice of farming. This alternate view draws on two lines of evidence. First, the orbitally controlled variations in CO2 and CH4 concentrations that had previously prevailed for several hundred thousand years fail to explain the anomalous gas trends that developed in the middle and late Holocene.
Climatic Change 61: 261–293, 2003.
© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

full article (zipped PDF): here

 

[Rambuchan]

Yeah nice one Carlos - I would be interested to see the evidence from all those who believe it is a myth. I know there is some but can these rumour and BS mongers really put their money where their thermometer is and prove conclusively that it IS NOT happening?

 

[carlosMM]

Yeah nice one Carlos -

thanx!

btw, this one was pointed out to me by Professor Mosbrugger of Tübingen University (sson to be director of the prestigious Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft), a known expert on Paleoclimatology.

I would be interested to see the evidence from all those who believe it is a myth. I know there is some but can these rumour and BS mongers really put their money where their thermometer is and prove conclusively that it IS NOT happening?

I have heard a LOAD of nonsense on the topic - usually their arguments fall apart for one or several of these reasons:
- they assume monocausalities in climate change
- their data is horribly outdated
- they try to extract data from publications that do not contain that data (e.g., try to pull 100-year resolution from a graph that depicts 10,000-year resolution)
- they lack understanding of the most basic principles of heat exchange systems in oceans and athmosphere
- they lack basic understanding regarding the amount of influence either way of gasses or particles with two opposing infleunces (e.g. underestimate greenhouse effect of cloud while overestimating the hightened albedo from them).


the list goes on........

 

[FearlessLeader2]

Your graph is not in French. It is in Danish! I think I have to take this as proof that you don’t know where that graph came from.

But I think I know where it comes from. If I am not mistaking, it is from: Friis-Christensen, E., and K. Lassen, "Length of the solar cycle: An indicator of solar activity closely associated with climate," Science, 254, 698-700, 1991. That report has however been withdrawn because it contains factual errors. It has been proven that the authors have cheated while producing those results.

Fair enough as far as the language goes. Can you supply a link proving your claim of its withdrawal?

Google gives 41,000 hits on a search of the title.

 

[carlosMM]

I'll make this post a collection of all the errors or misunderstandings of the previous pages.

let's start with the usual suspects:

'earth has a changing climate, so the current change is harmless.​

​

Example post:

the earth has seen massive changes in temperature. A couple thousand years ago Europe was covered below massive layers of ice. I didn't here anyone complain about global warming when that ice melted. Once the country I live in was a tropical sea. All those changes without any human interference. And now it's becoming a couple degrees warmer and everybody panics.

last ice age is a bit MORE than a 'few' thousand years - he makes it sound as if it was yesterday and the climate just fine for growing wine in Spain and France and Germany.....

and this one, too:

Are humans influencing the environment? Almost certainly yes. Is it a bad thing? That has yet to be proven either way. Consider this: CO2 levels were higher 150 thousand years ago than they are today, as shown by ice cores: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png , ocean levels are at near record lows on a geological scale, global tempuratures have swung from being tropical nearly everywhere, with no polar ice caps, to glaciers extending far into North American and Europe.

and another one:

The climatic changes we are experiencing could be a perfectly natural phenomenon. before the last ice age there was a warm periode with higher temperatures than those we experience today, back then there were living lions and hippoes in what is today Germany.

true enough, climate changes. But the changes happen over relatively long time periods or tend to cause massive extinction events.
Thus, a recent massive and sudden change must be compared with historic massive and sudden changes, not with other periods. And besides, if you acknowledge that climate was vastly different in the past, pleas also keep in mind what the earth looked like in the past! (hint: totally different)


Also, these arguments tend to OVERLOOK the RATE OF CHANGE - today, greenhouse gasses rise MUCH faster than in 99.99% of history - and if you ask about the 0.001% they are associated with mass extinctions


Another fav of mine: the

'nature is far worse than humans'​

example post:

Well I was told in highschool by my geography teacher that if one volcano erupts and spreads its gases in the atmosphere it creates more global warming than a couple years of human behaviour.

first, this is not true - the teacher misunderstands what global warming is. (or he itnentionally doesn't distinguish between short-term and long-temr effects.

A few decades of pumping Co2 and methane into the athmosphere vastly outweighs your average volcanoe - and I doubt the teacher would call something like Yellowstone or the size of the Deccan Trapps volcanism harmless. So far-above-average volcanoes, those that wrecked massive havoc in the past, are to be compared to human greenhouse gas production, not the dinky harmless Mauna Loa eruptions. But this is a point conveniently ignored - the teacher insinuates a similarity that isn't there and ignores one that is there.


next:

denial of facts​

But at the same time I think global warming is nonsense. The temperature over the last 100 years has risen about 1/10th of a degree.

this is quite untrue, as any temp chart shows. interestingly, people make broad statements like this, but never do show a lot of data for this.

Actually, the temp rise is at least one degree - depending on where you go. Also, the temp rise is larger at the poles (the equator-pole gradient is becoming lower), thus this claim above is usually made about the equator, totally ignoring that this suggests it is worldwide - and isn't!

then, there is a

misunderstanding about feedback mechanisms and about opposing effects:​

[

And volcano dust actually cools the earth, by reflecting sunlight back into space.

true enough - but a volcanoe also spwes out a lot of greenhouse gasses. Thus, insinuating a volcanoe COOLS the earth LONG TERM is nonsense - the volcanic winter that e.g. did happen with the krakatau eruption and ruined argiculture even all the way to France was a few years long only! Afgter that, the gasses outweigh the dust in their effect!


And now we get to the

'I know scientists are stoopid' ​

arguments:

Likevise the small ice age proves to us that climatic changes occure every now and again. The Global warming we see today can probably be attributed the Milankovitch cycles, or another natural phenomenon.

See, what is he saying?

That people SMART ENOUGH to work out the Milankovic cycles and make compley models of climate are so stoopid that they forget to factor these same things into their models.

Really!


Actually, if you check the PDF I posted above, the cycles should atm COOL us, not HEAT us. OOPS!
Interestingly, the poster HAS HEARD of this paper, as shows the rest of his post:

Although I thing I heard a theory some time ago claiming that global warming was triggered by mankinds transistion to agricultural society. Apparently the gasses emmited over thousands of years by paddy fields should have fundamentaly altered the composition of Earth's atmosphere.

so why didn't he read all of it??????


now, this one goes partially in with the above ones, but I like to list is seperately:

'we play hardly a role and can't do anything anyways (groundless dismissal)​

The earth is currently starting on the warming trend of its 280 thousand-year warming and cooling cycle. Solar output is increasing almost identically with planetary temperature. It is conceivable that man-made pollutants are contributing to this effect slightly, but the warming itself is as inevitable and inescapable as the next tick of the clock. Nothing man is now capable of doing can stop it or even slow it appreciably.

Actually, he is right and wrong on the warming trend - we should be in the cool and aren't, and a warming is around the corner. but the warming we EXPERIENCE is not due to the waring trend that 'should' start soon.

Also, without proper arguments, this poster just claims the effect is minuscle (denial)

btw, I would like to note that this specific poster is a creationist who vigurously argued against modern methods of dating ols rocks for use in paleontology. interestingly the very same methods seem to be OK when the climate is concerned.

watch out for inconsistencies like these - they tend to show up when people pick a position they like and then try to find ways to support it afterwards, whether the facts support it or not


Another one in the denial line is the

'the evidence is inconclusive'​

​

usually based on 'experts' that aren't.

while global warming is a possibility, I don't think the evidence on the subject is anywhere near conclusive. The fact that the people right here in this thread (who are above average intelligence to begin with) are so bitterly divided about it demonstrates that pretty clearly.

Note how LAYPEOPLE serve as EXPERTS here

the rest of Basket Case's post goes into the above categories (denial, miscomparison with historic changes that are either vastly different in character or ignoring the effects they had) so I won't bother to address it - you cna figure that out for yourself.

 

[carlosMM]

Fair enough as far as the language goes. Can you supply a link proving your claim of its withdrawal?

Google gives 41,000 hits on a search of the title.

look for it in SCIENCE archives

 

[tR1cKy]

It's an interesting debate, and i'm having a good time reading the thread. There are some issues that haven't been covered yet and i'm interesting in what you think about it. Expecially:

1) High atmoshpere pollution is causing a minor solar exposion to some areas, thus opposing the warming effect.

2) Polar caps meltdown can toss huge quantities of cold water in the ocean, thus actually freezing the ocean and opposing the warming effect.

These are layman's views on the things. I don't know the detail, nor the magnitude of those phenomena. Cannot say how much it will impact on the warming effect and how. Any opinions or reports about it?

Anyway, thanks to everyone posting his/her opinion here. But i have a few remarks to do:

YOU GUYS NEED TO WAKE UP AND SMELL THE RISING TIDES AND STOP BELIEVING ALL THE CORPORATE BS!

As i said in post #1, propaganda is not welcome here.

some folks are tired of being ignored and perceived as big time loser, so they made some noise to get attention. can we say clowns?

Are you one of them, Dida? If not, please be more specific about who are the clowns, and why. Possibly in a polite manner. This post is spam or trolling, depending how you look at it.

Let's face it, human, especially civilized human, act in a way similar to cancer cells.

Please refrain from posting such nonsense. Thanks.

French is not Swahili.

Everyone knowing at least "bonjour" and "bonsoir" can see that it's not french, but a nordic language.

You know, there is a nice function that allows to track users' previous posts, and it's usable by everyone registered and logged here. Just click on my nick with the left button, choose "find more posts by tR1cKy" and you'll see it at work.

FearlessLeader2, you have a long, long, long, long record of abusing and insulting people on these forums, so forgive me if i'm a bit suspicious about you. Now, if you are here to contribute on the discussion, well, welcome aboard and feel free to post your views on the thing. If you're here to play your usual game, you'd better go away. Thanks.

 

[carlosMM]

1) High atmoshpere pollution is causing a minor solar exposion to some areas, thus opposing the warming effect.

minor - exactly!

thi sis an example where several effects have somewhat opposing effects - the reason why climate isn't simple!

Actually, high AND low athmosphere pollution cool the earth - but not significantly (for high), and we are cleaning up right now (for low).
OOPS!

2) Polar caps meltdown can toss huge quantities of cold water in the ocean, thus actually freezing the ocean and opposing the warming effect.

Compare to the total volume of oceans - also, remember that the water will be ABOVE freezing.
This is significant adn WILL slow the heating-up - but again, it is not significant mid- to long-term!


Now, I can check if our prof has his climate lecture stuff online, if you want it - you can get sources from it, too - want me to?

 

[Steph]

Except if the difference in salinity can stop the Gulf Stream and trigger a new ice age in Northern Europe, freeze the ice back, and the sea level could in fact lower.

It is a realistic scenario? A kind of boomerang effect?

I'm not a climate expert, I've just read it somewhere.

 

[carlosMM]

Except if the difference in salinity can stop the Gulf Stream and trigger a new ice age in Northern Europe, freeze the ice back, and the sea level could in fact lower.

It is a realistic scenario? A kind of boomerang effect?

well, there you hit upon a big problem: these kinds of effects are very hard to judge. Thus you will find competing opinions in the scientific community about them.

AFAIK, there will NOT be enough precipitation to build up an ice cap up north once the gulf stream 'stops' - after all it is the gulf stream that brings most of the warm, easily vaporized water to our latitudes.

Thus, it would turn coold in winter, but therewould be minimal albedo. Thus, we simply get a slight strengthening of the equator-pole gradient, while the general and strong trend is to weaken it. Guess what will win out.....

 

[Pikachu]

Fair enough as far as the language goes. Can you supply a link proving your claim of its withdrawal?

Google gives 41,000 hits on a search of the title.

From P. Thejll and K. Lassen, “Solar forcing of the Northern hemisphere land air temperature: New data”, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 62, 1207-1213, 2000:

We conclude that since around 1990 the type of Solar forcing that is described by the solar cycle length model no longer dominates the long-term variation of the Northern hemisphere land air temperature.

K. Lassen was one of the authors of the article you got your graph from. As you can see he now admits that he was wrong. For a more throughout refutation, try: P. Laut, J. Gundermann, “Solar cycle lengths and climate: A reference revisited”, Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics 105, 27489-27492, 2000

In the light of this new result we analyze the question how the article by Friis-Christensen and Lassen was able to create the impression of a 'strikingly good agreement', as the authors described it. We show that the main reason is an unacceptable mixing of filtered and nonfiltered data in the graphical representation. Hereby, an artificial agreement of the solar data with the global warming since 1970 was established.

 

[10Seven]

Hazy on sources, but it's my understanding that whilst there were about 15 oceanic 'elevators' driving the Gulf Stream It's late, thats the atlantic current one right? Well, of the 15 only 3 are still in existence...

As I said, hazy on sources, but I do recall they seemed both very reliable, and based on a great deal of data - thank goodness for Cold War subwars

 

[brennan]

If the Gulf Stream goes it will just mean that there is less heat flowing from Equator to the Northern Latitudes, there will be no global cooling down, only regionally in the North Atlantic, and the heat will be building up somewhere else. Bad argument.

 

[tR1cKy]

Bad argument.

Why? The goal of the tread is not to negate or confirm the global warming. It's more about its consequences. Less heat on the north would mean more heat on the equatorial area. It should translate into a wider temperature gap between the (today) temperate regions and the tropics. What about the consequences on the climate? This is interesting. I can imagine the european glaciers stop melting, the agricolture on some european regions quite at stake, and an advancement of the Sahara desert and such. It's actually a point that deserves to be discussed further. Say your opinion on the matter if you like.

EDIT: CarlosMM: that would be interesting. Please post the links. A brief resume would be also welcome, if you have the time.

 

[brennan]

Not treading on your toes, just pointing out that it will only have a regional affect and not reduce the global temperature.

 

[Steph]

I wonder something. Let suppose we indeed have an ice age in Northern Europe and it leads to a lowering of the sea.

Do ypu think we could use the new lands to build? Or will it remain untouched, just to avoid being flooded at the end of the ice age?

 

[Rambuchan]

I have argued plenty on this topic here in the past. I'd recommend following the link I provided to the other Climate Change thread.

As i said in post #1, propaganda is not welcome here.

That's my opinion. If an opinion is considered propaganda by you then you ain't going to get much discussion. I'm actually saying we should be away of the corporate propaganda, which persuades people to start up threads wondering if Climate Change really is happening or not.

 

[tR1cKy]

For the moment, Rambuchan, the thread seems well alive
I concede that's your opinion, but then you posed it in a bad way, too much resembling environmentalist propaganda. I don't need to be reminded that "i need to wake up", thanks.

EDIT: talking about netiquette, posting things in bold capital letter is generally considered as screaming loud. Not exactly the best way to deal with people.

 

[Rambuchan]

Sorry about that Tricky, didn't realise you would get so bugged out about it. So how are you feeling about the matter so far anyway? Myth or science?