The Spectator Is Hot for Global Warming Denial

If there is any credit due to the monstrous legacy of Britain's Margaret Thatcher it is that she -- with her background in science -- always accepted the reality of man-made global warming. The British Conservative Party never took the route of denial that Republicans in the U.S or the Liberal Party in Australia followed. The same cannot be said, alas, for Britain's predominantly right-wing press which has given a great deal of space to Global Warming time-wasting as it once did to denying the link between HIV and AIDS.

This week, the Spectator (a bit like a British counterpart to the National Review) has a front page splash: "Relax: Global Warming is All a Myth" with James Delingpole interviewing Australian denier, Ian Plimer, publicising his new book.

Global warming denial is not a set of scientific ideas -- it's a collection of bogus factoids which have a zombie-like ability to keep returning to life, seeking new brains to feed on no matter how many times they are shot down.

To give an example. Someone, somewhere at one time decided to claim that the carbon dioxide (CO2 -- our leading contribution to heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere) of volcanoes is greater than that of human industry and transport.

This claim is unambiguously false. Man-made carbon emissions exceed those of volcanoes by a factor of 130.

But no matter. When Martin Durkin's film The Great Global Warming Swindle was broadcast on the UK's Channel 4, there it was. Complete with a little cartoon of a volcano belching out CO2. In one of many edits for errors and distortions, the volcano claim was removed prior to the film's DVD release.

Now Ian Plimer has written a book, Heaven and Earth, getting a lot of people very excited, and guess what? The volcano factoid is back! Back from the dead, volcanoes are celebrated by deniers one again.

The process goes like this:

1. Global Warming Denier makes claim
2. Claim is comprehensively, indisputably debunked
3. Claim is withdrawn, while Denier publicly continues to assert they are the new Galileo and their critics are religious fanatics with no regard for facts
4. New Global Warming Denier makes exactly the same claim as if previous debate never happened

And on and on. Apparently forever. No matter how often the volcano factoid -- just one of many -- is shown to be false, it will come back. Maybe in a new book, film, newspaper article, bogus scientific paper produced by a think tank funded by industry, from the mouth of a TV pundit, or from a politician. It will survive in a fact-free vacuum, ready to be reborn as required.

The deniers constantly accuse those who understand the basic science of global warming enough to realize they are full of it, of being intolerant, fanatical adherents of dogma. But it is pretty clear who is, and who isn't, susceptible to changing their minds in the face of the facts.

Most of us would wish the deniers were right. The trouble is, the evidence is entirely against them. Unable make an argument, they will latch on to anything -- anything at all -- and reassure themselves with the same zombie factoids all over again.

Imagine a Universe Where Nothing Ever Had Any Consequences: Wouldn't That Be Nice?

Delingpole begins, "Imagine how wonderful the world be if man-made global warming were just a figment of Al Gore's imagination." Yes indeed, and imagine too how wonderful it would be if magical winged horses flew down from the sky each morning and made you breakfast and only Al Gore tried to stop them with a pernicious, envious flying-pony tax.

The ad hominem attacks on Al Gore are an obsessive constant of anti-environmentalist writing. Now Gore has become an ambassador for the science to the global public. But he didn't come up with it himself. His slide-show lecture is a collection of claims made by scientists with the relevant expertise. The message is theirs, not Gore's. The basic theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming was proposed by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius in 1895. He's the guy you want. Him and the tens of thousands of climate scientists whose work followed from it.

Research claims in science are submitted in the form of a paper to established journals where they are then critiqued by others in the field before publication. This process allows old ideas to be challenged, but only after new ones have been tested. It's a process designed to remove fraudulent or obviously weak claims. New ideas are welcome -- but they have to prove themselves.

It's fairly common in any field to have leading scientists disagree about the data and its interpretation. But with the basic facts of global warming -- that burning fossil fuels releases gases that trap more heat in the atmosphere on a scale great enough to change climate, there is no dispute. None. There is not a single peer-reviewed paper among hundreds.

Ian Plimer -- a geologist, not a climatologist -- can challenge the overwhelming scientific consensus if he wants. He just has to write a real scientific paper and send it to an established journal for peer review. Writing a book full of bogus claims for the benefit of readers who don't know anything about science is not "going to change forever the way we think about climate change."

So far, no peer-reviewed from paper from Pilmer. Or any other global warming denier. Why? Because their arguments don't stand up to 30 seconds' scrutiny from anyone who gives it real thought, let alone climatologists.

Mmmmm, Carbon Dioxide...Yum!

Delingpole's article would not be complete without more than its fair share of zombie factoids, apparently taken from Plimer's book.

One favorite is the claim that "CO2 is not a pollutant but a plant food." So if we lock ourselves up in a room full of CO2 in order to celebrate its life-giving qualities, what will happen as we breathe in this fine plant food?

Well done to those aged nine and up who learned at school that you would suffocate and die. In some contexts, CO2 is a pollutant. Oh, and it's not actually a food.

Not that either point is relevant -- what matters is that CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere. A lot of it traps more heat. Lots of extra heat is a potential problem for those who live on Planet Earth. Talking about the wonders of CO2 in some other, irrelevant context is a painfully transparent attempt to sound science-y while distracting your reader.

Also in there we have the claim: "...the CO2 in the atmosphere -- to which human activity contributes the tiniest fraction -- is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO2 held in the oceans, surface, rocks, air, soils and life."

Returning to the facts -- before the emergence of human industry, there were 280 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere. Now, as the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration informs us, there are 387 ppm. Not "the tiniest fraction," but a significant jump -- the predicted result of pouring billions of tonnes of the stuff into the atmosphere every year at an ever-increasing rate.

Plimer and Delingpole are propounding the withdrawn-from-their-backsides Law of How Small Things Don't Have Major Effects. It's an idea that has no real basis in science and relies of emotional demagoguery -- look at those tiny parts per million! They're so small! They wouldn't hurt a fly! The testable, provable effectiveness of small amounts of CO2 molecules in trapping heat is swept away using irrelevant appeals to ignorance.

The same logic would lead us to conclude that viruses and bacteria are harmless because they are very, very small. Why, the anthrax virus must be only a tiny fraction of your body weight. Therefore, it is safe to eat, as proven by percentages.

Global Warming Doesn't Exist And It's Not Even That Bad Anyway

Plimer and Delingpole, like most professional deniers, are men of contradictions, as we have already seen. At the beginning of the piece, Pilmer explains why his background as a geologist is even better in understanding the climate than a climatologist, who actually studies it: "They're only interested in the last 150 years. Our time frame is 4,567 million years. So what they're doing is the equivalent of trying to extrapolate the plot of Casblanca from one tiny bit of the love scene. And you can't. It doesn't work."

OOOH! Smackdown! How could anyone be so foolish as to make conclusions out of a mere 150 years of data, when the planet's climate has been developing and changing over billions of years?

Well, apparently Plimer can, within three paragraphs:

"There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998."

Climatologists can't work in a time frame of 150 years, says Plimer, but Plimer can work in a time frame of the 11 years since 1998. Never mind, it will still get published in the Spectator.

While we're at it, are those claims actually true? Do climatologists work in a frame of 150 years? Did global warming stop in 1998? Well, no. And also no.

Climatologists have used a number of methods to learn how climate has changed over longer time periods and shown that the current warming exceeds anything humanity has experienced in at least a thousand years. Among them, Michael Mann famously produced a graph of temperature in the Northern Hemisphere over the last thousand years and deniers have dedicated a great deal of their time failing to discredit it. How could Delingpole have forgotten the denier nemesis, the hated, wicked, tricksy, false and demonstrably accurate "Hockey-Stick Graph"?

As for 1998 -- that was an unusually hot year, exceeding even the temperature of the previous record-holder way back in 1997. Average temperatures in 1998 were exacerbated by the short-term effects of a record-breaking El Nino in the Pacific Ocean, as well as the long-term trend towards global warming. Nonetheless, global average temperatures have continued to rise since 1997 and NASA recorded fractionally higher temperatures in 2005 -- when there was no additional El Nino effect. A graph makes the upward trend, and the denier cherry-picking, clear.

Medium and short term trends (such as the ocean cycle) can work both ways -- they can cool the planet down for a while, even as CO2 and other greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere. But they don't effect the long-term trend as greenhouse gases accumulate.

If climate scientists had ever said, "Because global warming is taking place, it will never be cold anywhere, ever again and each day will be hotter than the last", then the observation that some years have been cooler than 1998 would matter. Since they don't, loudly and often, there are no excuses for the "It's-cold-today-so-global-warming-is-a-fraud!" time-wasters.

Global Warming Doesn't Exist and Historically It's Always Been Fun for Everyone

Global warming is part of a natural cycle, nothing to do with people. Also, global warming has stopped. Global warming is associated with nice things like warm, sunny days and wine-growing. Also, the world is getting cooler. The ice caps have melted before anyway. Also, global warming has caused mass extinctions in the past quite naturally.

All of those claims appear in Delingpole's piece. Is there anyone who can't see the contradiction between them? Global warming is not happening, but it also is happening and it's a natural process that shouldn't bother anybody. And it isn't happening. And it happens all the time in Earth's history! And it stopped in 1998!

The one fact that those in deep denial have is that the climate of the Earth does indeed change over time without man-made causes and has done many, many times in the planet's history. It's not a magical process, though. The climate changes because of a forcing. A forcing can be any of a number of things -- including changes in solar activity and variations in the Earth's orbit and rotation.

The evidence shows now that human beings, by releasing the energy stored in fossil fuels into the atmosphere, can also create a climate forcing. The only forcing that explains current warming. There isn't a contradiction between these facts.

Now if the global warming currently taking place were not caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases, it would still be a very serious matter and cause for, yes, alarm. But the deniers' main interest -- their only consistency -- is to say anything that will prevent people from thinking that industry or government need to act. They have a particular need to ridicule the thought that global warming is a potential destroyer of the lives of hundreds of millions of people. You will never come across a denier who says that global warming is not man-made but nonetheless worrying and we should prepare for it.

They are in the difficult and multi-contradictory position of insisting that climate change is a natural process which is always going on and also there is no need to worry.

Usually the trick is to look at various moments of past natural climate change and pick out cutesy-wutesy anecdotes like how in the Mediaeval Warm Period (MWP), people in the North of England used to grow grapes for wine or how during the Little Ice Age around the 17th-19th centuries, people in London used to hold ice fairs on the frozen River Thames, which currently does not freeze over at all.

Delingpole does not disappoint those on the look out for these zombie-stories:

"...the Earth's warmer periods -- such as when the Romans grew grapes and citrus trees as far north as Hadrian's Wall [in England] -- were times of wealth and plenty."

Sigh. The actual scientists at RealClimate.org persist in pointing out that, actually, wine is still made in the North of England, and it wins international prizes for its quality. Readers could play a drinking game where you whip out a bottle of English wine whenever you hear a denier make this fatuous claim yet again.

But over in Central America you can look at the still-standing ruins of the once-mighty Mayan civilization, its glorious cities abandoned during the MWP. There isn't a consensus on this, but some scientists have claimed that the period of warming triggered centuries-long droughts in their part of the world, not wealth and plenty -- a suggestion you won't hear deniers mention during discussions of natural climate change. Perhaps the Mayans all left Central America for England where they could grow wine and live happily ever after.

And the MWP was limited in its scope -- it affected the North Atlantic region, not the entire globe.

In the same paragraph of factoids where Delingpole lists wine from the North of England, he also states breezily that, "extinctions of life are normal". So just relax, guys, and enjoy your extinction!

Nasty Rich Socialists Want to Stop the Poor From Enjoying Global Environmental Catastrophe

Finally, and inevitably, we have a consideration of the mysterious and dark motives of environmentalists, particularly the nasty rich socialists who want stop the world's poor from enjoying environmental catastrophe.

Delingpole's article covers the life of Plimer growing up in working-class Australia, a part that interests me because my own Dad grew up there at the same time. It didn't turn my Dad into a global warming denier, so it can't be especially relevant. Unless this is part of some inverted, bizarre Class War which is contrasting Plimer's working-class authenticity with the supposed wealth and privilege of members of Greenpeace. Which, of course, it is.

The point of this biographical detail is that environmentalism is the product of the disordered minds of the rich, those terrible "metropolitan liberals" who live in cities and are liberal, proving their infamy for everyone to see. American readers will know this script.

"Eco-guilt is a first-world luxury," Plimer asserts, arguing that some people he has met in rural Turkey and Iran have no time for this science nonsense. Real working-class people want to improve their lives by burning more fossil fuels. They must not be held back by hateful rich left-wingers who envy rich people and are rich, seeking to impose their fanciful notions of environmental aesthetics enviously on the poor. (NB: I am not caricaturing that argument in the slightest -- read it yourself and see.)

This is a particularly obnoxious lie, another complete reversal of the truth. Global warming is a major concern of the world's poor who will be (and are being) hit hardest by it. It is denial that is a luxury for those who can afford to protect themselves from environmental catastrophes from New Orleans to India to Darfur. Here is Johann Hari (declaration -- a friend of mine), interviewing a Bangladeshi teenager in a country where the effects of global warming are obvious and ominous:

I clambered back on to one of the 42 school-boats in this area. Young children were in the front chanting the alphabet, and teenagers at the back were browsing through the books. I asked a 16-year-old boy called Mohammed Palosh Ali what he was reading about, and he said, "Global warming." I felt a small jolt. He was the first person to spontaneously raise global warming with me. Can you tell me what that is? "The climate is being changed by carbon dioxide," he said. "This is a gas that traps heat. So if there is more of it, then the ice in the north of the world melts and our seas rise here."

I asked if he had seen this warming in his own life. "Of course! The floods in 1998 and 2002 were worse than anything in my grandfather's life. We couldn't get any drinking water, so the dirty water I drank made me very sick. The shit from the toilet pits had risen up and was floating in the water, but we still had to drink it. We put tablets in it but it was still disgusting. What else could we do?"

Eco-guilt isn't a luxury. It's the normal, non-sociopathic emotion you get when you realize what the effects of our carbon-intense lifestyles are on others.

There are no arguments in Plimer's article that stand up. His book has already been doused elsewhere in the acid of scrutiny by people who know what they're talking about. It has not fared well.

But it won't stop the arguments it contains from doing their work. Too many people, really, really do not want to believe that life on Earth is changing and that drastic changes in our economy and society will be necessary, possibly costing industry a lot of money. That's why the story of the volcanoes that produce more CO2 than burned fossil fuels lives on and are destined to be repeated over and over.

Expect too, to hear about wine in Northern England again, how CO2 is only a small part of the atmosphere, that climate change is cyclical and unthreatening but also world-changing, that CO2 is good for plants so we can put it in the atmosphere without consequences, that global warming stopped in 1998. I'm only surprised they left out the one about the time when all scientists in the 70s in the world thought there was going to be an ice age except for the majority who didn't.

And when every one of those is knocked down again by the facts, you'll hear deniers proudly boast that they are bold truth-tellers who refuse to tow the party line (watch out for that one in the comments below!), wrongly persecuted for their courageous stance by the mindless sheep who accept the overwhelming weight of the evidence. When this appears in the national press, it merits a stern, clear response.

Meanwhile, global average temperatures and man-made greenhouse gases both rise inexorably.

 

Comments

[Kruddler]

Example 3:

Harries (2000) wrote that our knowledge of high cirrus clouds is very poor
and that “we could easily have uncertainties of many
tens of Wm-2 in our description of the radiative effect
of such clouds, and how these properties may change
under climate forcing.”

Harries, J.E. 2000. Physics of the earth’s radiative energy
balance. Contemporary Physics 41: 309-322.

Example 4:

Randall et al (2003) say: “At this time, no existing GCM includes a satisfactory
parameterization of the effects of mesoscale cloud circulations.”

Randall, D., Khairoutdinov, M., Arakawa, A. and Grabowski, W. 2003. Breaking the cloud parameterization deadlock. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 84: 1547-1564.

[realpolitic]

The IPCC report says as well that the understanding of cloud cover is poor to date. You should read it sometime!

[Kruddler]

You're too funny. I have read the IPCC report. It worries me that it relies so heavily on projections that the IPCC admits and you say yourself have fundamental deficiencies. Fully one-third of the summary for policymakers deals with projections.

[Kruddler]

Example 1.

Wielicki et al. (2002) tested the ability of four state-
of-the-art climate models and one weather
assimilation model to reproduce the observed decadal
changes in top-of-the-atmosphere thermal and solar
radiative energy fluxes that occurred over the past
two decades. No significant decadal variability was
exhibited by any of the models; and they all failed to
reproduce even the cyclical seasonal change in
tropical albedo.

Wielicki, B.A., Wong, T., Allan, R.P., Slingo, A., Kiehl,
J.T., Soden, B.J., Gordon, C.T., Miller, A.J., Yang, S.-K.,
Randall, D.A., Robertson, F., Susskind, J. and Jacobowitz,
H. 2002. Evidence for large decadal variability in the
tropical mean radiative energy budget. Science 295: 841-
844.

Example 2:

Grabowski (2000) found that there were serious problems related to
the degree to which computer models failed to
correctly incorporate cloud microphysics. Consequently, he says, “model results must
be treated as qualitative rather than quantitative.”

Grabowski, W.W. 2000. Cloud microphysics and the
tropical climate: Cloud-resolving model perspective.
Journal of Climate 13: 2306-2322

[realpolitic]

Yes, again the IPCC report says that cloud cover is not well understood to date!

[Kruddler]

Realpolitic says: "Models are a small part of climate change knowledge."

And yet the IPCC report 2007 summary for policymakers covers climate projections in pages 12-17 of it's 18-page document.

Realpoilitic also says: "Models have shown past changes in climate very well!" and has demanded that I cite evidence to the contrary. Here are some examples below:

[Kruddler]

oops, the examples are above, not below.

[realpolitic]

"Scientists extensively use mathematical models of Earth's climate, executed on the most powerful computers available to examine hypothesis about past and present-day climates. Development of climate models is fully consistent with approaches being taken in many other fields. "

From Climate Models
An Assessment of Strengths and Limitations
U.S. Climate Change Science Program
july, 2008

[Kruddler]

Of course they are. They still seem to have some way to go though.

[realpolitic]

Kruddler, do you get your information on climate change from anywhere from the far-right denial site Junk Science? Then you wonder why you are so misinformed!

[Kruddler]

I prefer Nature, Science, Geophysical Research letters and other articles. The only links I've provided to JunkScience have been to the data that's freely available anywhere such as the satellite and surface temperature data. It's convenient to use as it contains all the up-to-date data on the one page. I presume your angry "far-right-denial" claptrap is an attempt to stifle any sort of questions toward the AGW religion you espouse.

[realpolitic]

Right, you've linked to JunkScience a dozen times and then, alternatively, to one study, that you interpreted wrong. But then you are a victim, so stifled. How can you have any open-minded questions anyway if you say AGW is a religion? See, you betray yourself even in such a short statement. Surely, the right-wing sites are where you belong and will never get past.

[Franb]

From one schoolteacher to another, Alex -- well done. This was a fabulous summary in which you offer us your own travelguide to ground familiar to each of us who have taken up the cudgels for sanity in policy dealing with that most virtal of all human assets -- the biosphere.

A fabulous effort!

[realpolitic]

35%

Increase in the global carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1992.

388.50 ppm

Average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in May 2008, a record high.

541 – 970 ppm

The projected concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 2100 under a business as usual scenario where we don't dramatically reduce global warming emissions.

260 – 280 ppm

Average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere before industrial emissions.

50 – 200 years

Length of time carbon dioxide stays in the earth's atmosphere before it is absorbed into carbon sinks.

1000 years

Length of time changes in the earth's surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level will remain even after carbon dioxide emissions are completely stopped.

34%

Percentage that 2008's Arctic seasonal sea ice melt outpaced normal levels.

70%

Increase in the rate of Greenland's ice melt over the last five years.

1.7 days

Number of days earlier seasons are coming than 50 years ago.

1.5 million

Number of acres of forests in Colorado destroyed by the pine beetle, which is better able to survive warmer winters and is wrecking havoc in America's western forests.

$427 million

Amount spent by the oil and coal industries in the first six months of 2008 in political contributions, lobbying expenditures and advertising to oppose climate action.

0

Number of global warming bills passed by the Senate.

0

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=35792

[SFTor]

This piece contains several claims that are incorrect or inaccurate.

1. He says that there is no argument about the warming effect of CO2. This is simply not true. There is plenty of argument about the causality and the degree, and most of the argument is about positive feedbacks and not CO2. We know that the CO2 absorption bands are almost completely saturated, which means that additional CO2 causes very little warming. The cooling effects of aerosols has been overstated, hence the climate models are too sensitive. The role of water in climate is uncertain, although we begin to suspect that it is a net negative.

2. "Ad hominem attacks" on Al Gore: Al Gore has toured the country for years with AIT. This presentation/video contains a number of inaccurate/incorrect claims. He has vested interests in companies that will benefit from cap-and-trade. He has not corrected his erroneous claims.

3. He revisits the Hockey Stick Graph, which is no longer featured in communications by the IPCC. He tries to explain away the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, like Mann does. As these happened in historical times, their fingerprints are everywhere in human history. The same can be said for the Minoan and Roman Warm Periods. He suggests they only affected the North Atlantic region. No, they didn't, they were worldwide, as he holds when he links the MWP to drought in South America. There were two major MWP droughts in California, too.

[Kruddler]

Point 1: Here's a good scientific discussion on CO2 absorption

http://www.john-daly.com/artifact.htm

Point 2: Here's a nice review of all 35 errors in Al Gore's movie

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html

Point 3: Mann's hockey stick graph has serious flaws

I prefer this paper: Moberg, Anders; Sonechkin, Dmitry M.; Karlén, Wibjörn (2005), "Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data", Nature 433: 612–617

The pertinent graph I found here:

http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Moberg2005.html

:-)

[guinganbresil]

I read the Hug article before and it raises serious questions about the magnitude of the effect of increased CO2 on GW. There is a link to objections (imagine that - both sides...) that is worth reading as well.

RealClimate discusses the saturation effect, but their explanation seems to rely on the upper atmosphere acting as a black body radiator which I have not been able to verify (I thought it would emit/absorb spectral lines as a cold gas...

RealClimate: "What happens if we add more carbon dioxide? In the layers so high and thin that much of the heat radiation from lower down slips through, adding more greenhouse gas molecules means the layer will absorb more of the rays. So the place from which most of the heat energy finally leaves the Earth will shift to higher layers. Those are colder layers, so they do not radiate heat as well. "

[realpolitic]

As usual, your analysis of gore's movie is based on misinformation. Climate scientists do not think that the lag in the heating of the oceans is a flaw in climate warming science. In fact scientists predict lags in temperature rise and lags in the rise in heat content of oceans. You guys live for misinfor mation.

All Mann's hockey stick graph says is that co2 levels were relatively contant the last thousand years or so and then shot up this century. He assumes the Midleval Warm Period and Little Age were regional evets through proxy data. Anyone who looks at the chart of the rise in greenhouse gases over the last thousand years, as the one on the middle of the page in the link below, can see this conclusion of the hockey stick graph is true.

Kuddler has misinidentified himself as a scieentist many times. Anyone who falls for such nonsensical talking points is no scientist and probably did not take a science class.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/the-simple-arithmetic-of_b_221689.html

[realpolitic]

Man, all the deniers and flat earth theorists always seem to be in the same place at the same time! I wonder how that happens!

[Kruddler]

It's a pity the green industry didn't think of the problems with mercury-filled eco-bulbs in the first place. CO2 bad, Hg good??

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6211261.ece

[Kruddler]

Also on the subject of CO2-temperature correlations:

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/NCDCanom1880.html

1882 – 1910 Cooling
1910 – 1944 Warming
1944 – 1975 Cooling (despite significant human emissions of CO2)
1975 – 2001 Warming
2001 – Cooling (despite increased human emissions of CO2).

Please explain.

[realpolitic]

No, it has not been cooling since 2001. That is denier fantasy! According to NASA..

"The ten warmest years all occur within the 12-year period 1997-2008."

According to British Met Office...

"Over the last ten years, global temperatures have warmed more slowly than the long-term trend. But this does not mean that global warming has slowed down or even stopped. It is entirely consistent with our understanding of natural fluctuations of the climate within a trend of continued long-term warming."

"These natural fluctuations include the El Niño Southern Oscillations (ENSO) in the Pacific Ocean. In El Niño years - those when cold surface water is not apparent in the tropical eastern Pacific - global temperature is considerably warmer than normal. A particularly strong El Niño occurred in 1998 resulting in the warmest year on record across the globe. In La Niña years - when cold water rises to the surface of the Pacific Ocean - temperatures can be considerably colder than normal. .. A La Nina was present throughout 2007 and much of 2008; despite this temporary cooling, 2008 is currently the tenth warmest in the global record."

[Kruddler]

Ah, so UAH and RSS satellite temperatures are false then, are they? As well as Hadley CET? And your "ten-warmest-years" bit is specious reasoning since this is an effect of temperature rises since records began, hardly a winning argument about CO2 being responsible for temperature changes.

[realpolitic]

"As a result of such fluctuations, global average temperature trends calculated over ten-year periods have varied since the mid-1970s, from a modest cooling to a warming rate of more than 0.3 °C per decade. Similar behaviour is also seen in individual model predictions of future climate change where the long-term warming trend is forecast to exceed 2 °C per century. Even then, due to the natural variations in climate, we expect to see ten-year periods both globally and regionally with little or no warming and other ten-year periods with very rapid warming. This complex behaviour of the climate system shows why we need to examine much longer periods than ten years if we are to fully understand and quantify how the climate is changing."

"These longer-term analyses have shown that current warming is being caused mainly by human emissions of greenhouse gases which have accumulated in the atmosphere and intensified the greenhouse effect by absorbing more of the thermal radiation emitted by the land and ocean. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in its most recent assessment in 2007 that increases in man-made greenhouse gas concentrations have 'very likely' caused most of the overall increase in global average temperatures since the mid 20th century."

[Kruddler]

And I'm still waiting for answer on what caused the pre-1950 warming.

[realpolitic]

"This long-term warming trend is set to continue as the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to increase. Inevitably this will lead to further impacts on our lives and the world's natural ecosystems. Heatwaves and droughts are likely to become more prevalent; snow cover is projected to continue to diminish; and sea ice to continue to shrink."

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080923c.html

[Kruddler]

Realpolitic states that CO2 correlates with temperature.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif

Ummm.....

[realpolitic]

Well, it is more truthful to say that these guys state it...

National Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Engineering
Institute of Medicine
National Research Council

They also state.... "Most scientists agree that the warming in recent decades has been caused primarily by human activities that have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (see Figure 1). Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, have increased significantly since the Industrial Revolution, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels for energy, industrial processes, and transportation. Carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in at least 650,000 years and continue to rise.

Finally, here is their graph showing a tight correlation between temperatures and co2 levels for the last several hundred thousand years on pg. 11 of 28!

http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/climate_change_2008_final.pdf

Now, it is Kruddler's turn to deny it by pointing to a right-wing blog!

[Kruddler]

Again, correlation does not mean causation, particularly since the data you point to has CO2 lagging. I also note that you hand-balled my comment to "higher authorities". Don't you have an opinion on the lack of correlation over more meaningful time periods?

"most scientists agree" is becoming quite a mantra, isn't it :-) Well I'm a scientist and I don't agree. (here's where you get to make personal attacks)

[realpolitic]

Kruddler, scientists know co2 is a greenhouse gas because of physics. They know greenhouse gases retain heat in the atmosphere. Deniers are not denyng physics now too, are they?

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/summary.htm

"When light from the Sun reaches the Earth, roughly 30 percent of it is reflected back into space by clouds, atmospheric particles, reflective ground surfaces, and even ocean surf. The remaining 70 percent of the light is absorbed by the land, air, and oceans, heating our planet’s surface and atmosphere and making life on Earth possible. Solar energy does not stay bound up in Earth’s environment forever. Instead, as the rocks, the air, and the sea warm, they emit thermal radiation, or infrared heat. Much of this thermal radiation travels directly out to space, allowing Earth to cool."

"Some of this outgoing radiation, however, is re-absorbed by water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other gases in the atmosphere (called greenhouse gases because of their heat-trapping capacity) and is then re-radiated back toward the Earth’s surface."

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/global_warming_update2.php

[Kruddler]

Here's some new science. Hang on!! I thought the science was settled??

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/15/9373/#more-9373

The article is in Science (some may not have access, hence the above link)

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/325/5937/153

[realpolitic]

Is this firm statement settled enough for you!

It is written by The National Science and Technology Council, the U.S. Global Change Research Program undertaken for the the President and the Congress. The Council put together this state of knowledge report: “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.” This report summarizes the science of climate change and the impacts of climate change on the United States, now and in the future.

"Observations show that warming of the climate is unequivocal. The global warming observed over the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. These emissions come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas), with important ontributions from the clearing of forests, agricultural practices, and other activities."

http://downloads.globalchange.gov/usimpacts/pdfs/climate-impacts-report.pdf

But since it is not written by a right-wing blog it means little to Kruddler.

[Kruddler]

Well if it's written by these guys then it must be true!

"But since it is not written by a right-wing blog it means little to Kruddler."

That's just childish realpolitic. I'm asking QUESTIONS based on actual data, not going on some abusive rant bashing all those who don't espouse my view. I'm apolitical so right wing/left wing accusations mean nothing to me. I'm discussing scientific data that has been published or that is publicly disseminated by the US government or institutions (such as satellite data). I've read most of the evidence put forth by both sides and find the evidence used by the IPCC a little flimsy. Now you can carp on about the numbers of scientists or credentials, but I and alot of scientists like me have serious doubts and are entitled by free speech to air them. I'm sorry if this offends your world-view.

[realpolitic]

Kruddler, you know way too little to be a scientist and much of what you know is misinformation. The conclusions of this report are repeated in every other major study. Nothing written in a right-wing blog is peer-reviewed science. Science is not a battle of free speech and to suggest so shows how weak your evidence is. When you look at a major study, with hundreds of references drawn from peer-reviewed research, supported by many other such studies, and your response is "Well, if they say it it must be true," it is the typical anti-intellectual, incredibly childish response of deniers like yourself. You probably did not even glance at it at all. The world goes on without you!

[dobermanmacleod]

The real problem isn't the relatively small number of flat earthers who deny global warming. The real problem is the vast majority of people who prescribe a severe carbon diet to stop it. The IPCC underestimated the current rate of ocean rise by 1.6 times, and predicted Arctic ocean ice would be with us well past mid-century. On the other hand, any global carbon diet would be dependent upon clean coal, but capturing and burying just 10% of the carbon dioxide emitted over a year from coal-fire plants at current rates would require moving volumes of compressed carbon dioxide greater than the total annual flow of oil worldwide (a massive undertaking requiring decades and trillions of dollars). Furthermore, the US government predicts that global emissions will rise 50% by 2030 (and global emissions are supposed to be cut 50% by 2050?). In fact, while the energy bill passed by the US House of Representatives ("ACES") calls for an 80% cut in emissions by 2050, this would mean per capita emissions will have to fall to about 2.5 tons. It is likely that US per capita emissions were never that low – even back in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood. In my opinion, the alternative to geoengineering is a massive cull of humanity, and denying this is as bad as denying that global warming exists at all.

[aislabie]

I hope to avoid being a denier but I keep finding that in attempting to keep the scientific evidence as the basis I am faced with the frequent conclusion that apparently credible scientists are not all in the same AGW position.
I am not a scientist so I have to tease out which scientists are more credible and which are not - and it does not seem to fall clearly enough to one side or the other.
How am I to determine that these http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25182520-2703,00.htmll) scientists are wrong? Or this one http://www.nzcpr.com/guest147.htmm) , or even this one http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m6d2-Examinercoms-exclusive-global-warming-debates-Roger-Pielke-Sr-part-11)? Why is ignoring the apparently well qualified Roy Spenser http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/airborne-bacteria-discredit-climate-modeling-dogmaeling-dogma)

An attitude that I think undermines what may be a slam dunk case for AGW is the routine "over-egging" of the argument.I read "corals reefs are are in deep trouble and could disappear in (name your preferred years)". I worry about acidification of the ocean. BUT the current situation is that the Barrier Reef is expanding at 2% per year, down from 4% per year 30 years ago. A decline in growth is bad but with the cause unproved it is a world away from the kind of credible approach which would improve the AGW support

[realpolitic]

According to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority..

"Mass coral bleaching has occurred worldwide, devastating reefs in some regions including the Maldives, Seychelles and Palau. The Great Barrier Reef has not suffered extensive damage due to coral bleaching. However, approximately five per cent of reefs in the Great Barrier Reef were severely damaged in each of the 1998 and 2002 mass coral bleaching events. Projections of future water temperatures suggest coral bleaching could become an annual event in the course of this century."

http://www.ask.com/bar?q=great+barrier+reef+climate+change&page=1&qsrc=0&ab=0&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gbrmpa.gov.au%2Fcorp_site%2Fkey_issues%2Fclimate_change

[Kruddler]

Projections! They can't predict next weeks' weather, let alone the weather in 10 years. My link to the science paper above is a great example of how much climate modellers don't know.

[realpolitic]

Kuddler, the Great Coral reef has suffered significant bleaching twice in last decade. Would you have preferred three or four bleachings? Reefs around the world are stressed. All the denying in the world does not change the facts.

[SFTor]

OK, here is what I don't understand:

We are currently experiencing temperatures that are about average for the time period we have measured them from space---1979 to 2009.

We have recently been told by people who ought to know that computer models have "no predictive skill beyond two weeks."

Researchers at Rice University are telling us that "there is something fundamentally wrong with how we correlate temperature and CO2."

We aren't seeing any warming to speak of, and we apparently do not have reliable models that can predict warming. The planet is facing other serious problems, especially in its oceans, that seem to go unheeded.

Where is all the certainty coming from? Why are we obsessing about this?

[research]

In the current two types of climate we have had: Ice age cycles, and constant 125 degree warmer about 3 million years ago, CO2 HAS correlated with Warming and more importantly with Climate type change. WE HAVE altered Climate CO2 and other GHG to exceed anything we have seen in 3 million years. So it is reasonable to expect the Climate to Switch from the current Ice Age Cycles to something else, or at least to switch from interglacial to glacial.

[research]

15 degree warmer, ops.

[realpolitic]

""We have recently been told by people who ought to know that computer models have "no predictive skill beyond two weeks.""

Who are these people? Your statement is a silly strawman argument! Models have shown past changes in climate very well! They are improving all the time exponentially!

[SFTor]

here, I hope this answers your question.

http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL038082.pdf

[realpolitic]

SFT, the papaer just states that no model over time is absolutely correct and so a variety of models must be used. According to the study: "However, the feedback strength and forcing is not stationary, favoring no particular model or groups of models consistently." Because models are not perfect does not mean they are not very useful. It is another straw man argument by conservatives.