global warming

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BlackBird
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Re: global warming

Post by BlackBird »

Dan74 wrote:
I am not sure what the point is. On one hand we have a statement of the lower sun activity in the Ordovician 480 million years ago compared to now and on the other a statement that over the last 30 years sun activity has been getting slightly slower.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2007/07/1 ... 1320070710

I am not a believer in man-made global warming. I think it is a very serious hypothesis with a lot of evidence on its side. And when there are serious indications that we are moving towards an environmental catastrophy with unprecedented effects on our civilization, it would be foolish to do nothing about it, especially when doing something also brings about benefits like decreased air pollution and cleaner ecosystem.

Another point for me as an academic is the mind-boggling hubris by part-time amateurs who believe themselves capable of out-thinking thousands of talented scientists who have dedicated their lives to the subject. Critical thinking is great, but some humility and realism would go a long way. We don't have to just accept things but if you are inclined to question, don't jump to conclusions - this is bad science.

Well said.
"For a disciple who has conviction in the Teacher's message & lives to penetrate it, what accords with the Dhamma is this:
'The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple. He is the one who knows, not I." - MN. 70 Kitagiri Sutta

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Buckwheat
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Re: global warming

Post by Buckwheat »

Hi Blackbird,
Regarding Ordovician, I believe what you are looking for is right here. http://skepticalscience.com/CO2-was-hig ... vician.htm

It seems that there was a fairly decent equilibrium with CO2 ~7000 ppm and low solar output. Then, for some reason, CO2 levels quickly droped to 4000 ppm. That sudden drop in CO2 levels reduced the greenhouse effect and an ice age ensued.
During the Ordovician, solar output was much lower than current levels. Consequently, CO2 levels only needed to fall below 3000 parts per million for glaciation to be possible. The latest CO2 data calculated from sediment cores show that CO2 levels fell sharply during the late Ordovician due to high rock weathering removing CO2 from the air. Thus the CO2 record during the late Ordovician is entirely consistent with the notion that CO2 is a strong driver of climate.
Sotthī hontu nirantaraṃ - May you forever be well.
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BlackBird
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Re: global warming

Post by BlackBird »

Buckwheat wrote:Hi Blackbird,
Regarding Ordovician, I believe what you are looking for is right here. http://skepticalscience.com/CO2-was-hig ... vician.htm

It seems that there was a fairly decent equilibrium with CO2 ~7000 ppm and low solar output. Then, for some reason, CO2 levels quickly droped to 4000 ppm. That sudden drop in CO2 levels reduced the greenhouse effect and an ice age ensued.
During the Ordovician, solar output was much lower than current levels. Consequently, CO2 levels only needed to fall below 3000 parts per million for glaciation to be possible. The latest CO2 data calculated from sediment cores show that CO2 levels fell sharply during the late Ordovician due to high rock weathering removing CO2 from the air. Thus the CO2 record during the late Ordovician is entirely consistent with the notion that CO2 is a strong driver of climate.
Hi Buckwheat

I was quoting from that exact article in my previous post.

metta
Jack
"For a disciple who has conviction in the Teacher's message & lives to penetrate it, what accords with the Dhamma is this:
'The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple. He is the one who knows, not I." - MN. 70 Kitagiri Sutta

Path Press - Ñāṇavīra Thera Dhamma Page - Ajahn Nyanamoli's Dhamma talks
Buckwheat
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Re: global warming

Post by Buckwheat »

BlackBird wrote:Alex is suggesting that they're contradicting themselves when they say in http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-a ... arming.htm
That since the sun's output and temperatures have been going in opposite directions, the sun is not responsible for global warming.
Hi Jack,
Of course solar out put is a HUGE factor in global warming. However, it does not account for recent warming. This article addresses exactly that point
http://skepticalscience.com/solar-activ ... arming.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation
Image

Historically, climate changes seem to correlate to either changes in solar output or greenhouse gasses. The correlation to solar output, historically, seems to be rather stong.

The "decoupling" of global temperatures from solar output in just one of many pieces of evidence suggesting that greenhouse gasses are responsible for the changes over the last 30 years.
Sotthī hontu nirantaraṃ - May you forever be well.
monkey_brain
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Re: global warming

Post by monkey_brain »

Kim O'Hara wrote:
monkey_brain wrote:
Kim O'Hara wrote: Hi, Alex,
I would be really happy if you could finish by saying either
(1) why you think your own knowledge, your own research and your own "found it on the internet" factoids outweigh the combined research of thousands of fully trained, hardworking and conscientious climatologists;
or
(2) that you have been wrong all along and now accept that AGW is real and is a significant threat to life on this planet.

:namaste:
Kim
Are there really thousands of climatologist working on the issue of AGW? It seems surprising to me that there should be so many working on a single issue in climatology, which is just a small part of earth science. How many thousand are there?

Paul J
Just about every aspect of modern climatology is affected by AGW.
Numbers will depend on your definition of "climatologist". 1200 volunteered to contribute to the latest IPCC report (see http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/ar5.html) and they would have been among the most highly qualified ... give each of them a half a dozen junior staff and half a dozen post-grad students and a dozen undergrad students and you're in the right ballpark.
:reading:
Kim
Hold on. Looking at the chapter summaries of the working groups, the vast majority of the work is not concerned with the crux of the issue--what are the cause(s) of recent warming, and will it continue in the future, and to what extent. Impacts on Agriculture in Africa, say, doesn't call on quite the same expertise, nor need it be controversial in the way the main issue is. And if a research team that projects warming into the future relies on the work of a research team that worked on the methodology of using tree ring cores to generate historical temperatures, or whatnot, it is still the first team that gets counted as relevant climatologists for our purposes.

It looks like just parts of working group I fits the bill here.

Paul J.
Buckwheat
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Re: global warming

Post by Buckwheat »

Hi Jack,
Sorry, I hadn't read all your posts before responding to an earlier one. Hopefully, I've got a satisfactory response by now. If you still have questions, let me know.

I am not closed to the idea that AGW is false. There have been episodes where science got it wrong in the past, such as the very, very slow acceptance of plate techtonics. However, the evidence presented so far seems compelling. I'd love further inquiries from people who want to look more deeply into the issue, such as Jack, but most of this thread was not inquiry, but posturing. It still got me to dig deeper into the data for a bit, but I want to spend more time digging into the issue and less time hearing an AGW denialist say over and over that it's all wrong due to his back of the napkin calculations. As an engineer, we have a term for that: WAG (Wild Ass Guess)

Thanks,
Scott
:anjali:
Sotthī hontu nirantaraṃ - May you forever be well.
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BlackBird
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Re: global warming

Post by BlackBird »

I more or less agree now Buckwheat. It was not a contradiction because they were never denying Solar activity has an important effect on temperature, simply asserting that the current warming is evidently not caused by solar output, since that has in fact been dropping.

Thanks for clearing that up

metta
Jack
"For a disciple who has conviction in the Teacher's message & lives to penetrate it, what accords with the Dhamma is this:
'The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple. He is the one who knows, not I." - MN. 70 Kitagiri Sutta

Path Press - Ñāṇavīra Thera Dhamma Page - Ajahn Nyanamoli's Dhamma talks
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Kim OHara
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Re: global warming

Post by Kim OHara »

monkey_brain wrote:
Kim O'Hara wrote:
monkey_brain wrote: Are there really thousands of climatologist working on the issue of AGW? It seems surprising to me that there should be so many working on a single issue in climatology, which is just a small part of earth science. How many thousand are there?

Paul J
Just about every aspect of modern climatology is affected by AGW.
Numbers will depend on your definition of "climatologist". 1200 volunteered to contribute to the latest IPCC report (see http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/ar5.html) and they would have been among the most highly qualified ... give each of them a half a dozen junior staff and half a dozen post-grad students and a dozen undergrad students and you're in the right ballpark.
:reading:
Kim
Hold on. Looking at the chapter summaries of the working groups, the vast majority of the work is not concerned with the crux of the issue--what are the cause(s) of recent warming, and will it continue in the future, and to what extent. Impacts on Agriculture in Africa, say, doesn't call on quite the same expertise, nor need it be controversial in the way the main issue is. And if a research team that projects warming into the future relies on the work of a research team that worked on the methodology of using tree ring cores to generate historical temperatures, or whatnot, it is still the first team that gets counted as relevant climatologists for our purposes.

It looks like just parts of working group I fits the bill here.

Paul J.
Don't like that? Try this: http://desmogblog.com/2012/11/15/why-cl ... -pie-chart.
Anther back-of-the-envelope calculation - simply because I don't know where you would find the number you want - but ...
14 000 scientific papers in 20 years (rounding off a bit since we're not going to be very accurate anyway).
That's 3500 per year.
Assume each researcher publishes 5 papers per year (which I think is fairly reasonable), and you get 700 researchers.
But 2 - 5 authors per paper is pretty normal. Call the average 2 to be on the low side and you have 1400 researchers getting published; call it three and you have 2100. Then add in the postgrad students, the undergrads if you like ...
:shrug:
I'm happy to let my "thousands" stand. If you want to disagree, show me some evidence for your position and I will happily defer to the truth.

:coffee:
Kim

P.S. I scrolled down that (linked) page after hitting "submit" and found, "The articles have a total of 33,690 individual authors." It looks like my estimate of papers per researcher was way too high.
:reading:
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Alex123
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Re: global warming

Post by Alex123 »

Hello Kim, Buckwheat, all,

Lets agree that we need to take care of environment, reduce our excess usage, conserve energy, develop better greener technologies.

Lets agree to disagree about human role in global warming. I am not in principle against it, I just don't find arguments presented to me here for it compelling.
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Alex123
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Re: global warming

Post by Alex123 »

Buckwheat wrote:Hi Blackbird,
Regarding Ordovician, I believe what you are looking for is right here. http://skepticalscience.com/CO2-was-hig ... vician.htm

It seems that there was a fairly decent equilibrium with CO2 ~7000 ppm and low solar output. Then, for some reason, CO2 levels quickly droped to 4000 ppm. That sudden drop in CO2 levels reduced the greenhouse effect and an ice age ensued.

But these reduced CO2 levels are 3,000-4,400ppm range vs current 396.80ppm. What I am saying is that the data shows that even with CO2 levels 7.5x-11x current amount, there can be ice age. So the threat of growing CO2 levels is over-exaggerated. Solar activity, and other astronomical events are other important factors.

Of course we need to conserve energy and environment. But not because of AGW belief, but because it is nice humane thing to do.
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Alex123
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Re: global warming

Post by Alex123 »

Kim O'Hara wrote:Don't like that? Try this: http://desmogblog.com/2012/11/15/why-cl ... -pie-chart.
Anther back-of-the-envelope calculation - simply because I don't know where you would find the number you want - but ...
14 000 scientific papers in 20 years (rounding off a bit since we're not going to be very accurate anyway).
And in middle ages most people believed that Earth was flat and it felt right. Just because millions believe in wrong idea, it doesn't make it right.

Quantity is NOT quality.

Also, using "climate deniers" label is very misleading AND OFFENSIVE. Nobody denies climate change. And if someone is skeptical of human's role in it, one has no right to call them "denier" which sounds like holocaust denier. I am close to being offended by being implied of being a nazi.
Last edited by Alex123 on Sun Mar 24, 2013 12:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Spiny Norman
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Re: global warming

Post by Spiny Norman »

Alex123 wrote:Lets agree that we need to take care of environment, reduce our excess usage, conserve energy, develop better greener technologies.
Absolutely, it's worth doing anyway, and I'm often struck by how wasteful we are in the developed world.
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Buckwheat
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Re: global warming

Post by Buckwheat »

Alex123 wrote:
Kim O'Hara wrote:Don't like that? Try this: http://desmogblog.com/2012/11/15/why-cl ... -pie-chart.
Anther back-of-the-envelope calculation - simply because I don't know where you would find the number you want - but ...
14 000 scientific papers in 20 years (rounding off a bit since we're not going to be very accurate anyway).
And in middle ages most people believed that Earth was flat and it felt right. Just because millions believe in wrong idea, it doesn't make it right.

Quantity is NOT quality.

Also, using "climate deniers" label is very misleading AND OFFENSIVE. Nobody denies climate change. And if someone is skeptical of human's role in it, one has no right to call them "denier" which sounds like holocaust denier. I am close to being offended by being implied of being a nazi.
Nobody thinks your a Nazi, Alex.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth
The paradigm of a spherical Earth was developed in Greek astronomy, beginning with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most Pre-Socratics retained the flat Earth model. Aristotle accepted the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds around 330 BC, and knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on.[5][6][7][8] The misconception that educated Europeans at the time of Columbus believed in a flat Earth, and that his voyages refuted that belief, has been referred to as the Myth of the Flat Earth.[9] In 1945, it was listed by the Historical Association (of Britain) as the second of 20 in a pamphlet on common errors in history.[10]
Sotthī hontu nirantaraṃ - May you forever be well.
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Alex123
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Re: global warming

Post by Alex123 »

Buckwheat wrote:Nobody thinks your a Nazi, Alex.

Thank you, Buckwheat.

In any case, just because many people believe in a certain idea - that alone doesn't make it right. I hope we agree about it.
Buckwheat
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Re: global warming

Post by Buckwheat »

Where is the evidence that papers rejecting AGW are more rigorous or higher quality than those supporting AGW? Or are you just going on a hunch?
Sotthī hontu nirantaraṃ - May you forever be well.
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