Extreme is the New Normal

[Alex123]

If an explanation is sufficient to explain something (such as climate change), there is no need to complicate it further. If nature by itself could change climate as it did, it is not required that some new external cause plays any or significant part in changing the climate.

I disagree with that. Using the smoking analogy, "people have been getting cancer and cardiovascular disease all along, so therefore smoking is not a factor" is not valid logic.

Your analogue is not perfect. There are different kinds of cancers, and cardiovascular disease can also be due to numerous factors.

When it comes to "temperature rise/fall" - it was occuring for billions of years without humans. So humans are NOT required for drastic temperature rises and falls. And neither are humans the only required cause for extinction of life. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. . Whether humans exist or not, bad stuff will occur.

Considering the past kind of climate- today's climate isn't extreme by a long shot. If past climate change occured without humans, then human influence is NOT required to explain climate change.

Those aren't the effects of GW that we are worrying about, but more extreme weather events (stronger storms, increased flooding, increased periods of drought), rise of sea level affecting coastal cities where most people live, etc. etc. It will still get plenty cold in winter at your house.

Weather cataclysms, mass die offs, hot/cold weather, happened dozens/hundreds of millions years ago. This is samsara. Bad stuff happens.


Some scientists suggest that 99% of documented species that were on Earth, have extinct. This is bad, but this is life.

Over 99% of documented species are now extinct...
Since life began on Earth, several major mass extinctions have significantly exceeded the background extinction rate. The most recent, Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, which occurred approximately 65.5 million years ago (Ma), was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. There probably were mass extinctions in the Archean and Proterozoic Eons, but before the Phanerozoic there were no animals with hard body parts to leave a significant fossil record.

Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from the threshold chosen for describing an extinction event as "major", and the data chosen to measure past diversity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_extinction" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So Extreme weather, extreme die-offs, extreme cataclysms have occured before humans, millions of years ago. IMHO, the climate change will happen even if humans were to completely disappear off the planet. I don't believe that this AGW scare should be used to justify additional taxation, additional technological restrictions, etc.

[octathlon]

OK, so your final position is that because climate change can and does happen naturally, you therefore will not consider any possibility that human activity could be a contributing factor to the current warming trend, no matter what evidence may be found through all the studies and analysis I described earlier. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

[Alex123]

OK, so your final position is that because climate change can and does happen naturally, you therefore will not consider any possibility that human activity could be a contributing factor to the current warming trend, no matter what evidence may be found through all the studies and analysis I described earlier. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

If someone can prove (please write it in this thread) that current climate change is due to humans as opposed to nature - I will accept that. I prefer the truth.

First, CO2 is not the cause of global warming:
...CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated. For a detailed explanation go to:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Second, Millions of years ago, extreme cataclysms have been occurring causing up to 99% of documented species to go extinct.
Over 99% of documented species are now extinct...
Since life began on Earth, several major mass extinctions have significantly exceeded the background extinction rate. The most recent, Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, which occurred approximately 65.5 million years ago (Ma), was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. There probably were mass extinctions in the Archean and Proterozoic Eons, but before the Phanerozoic there were no animals with hard body parts to leave a significant fossil record.

Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from the threshold chosen for describing an extinction event as "major", and the data chosen to measure past diversity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_extinction" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Kyoto Protocol calls for mandatory carbon dioxide reductions of 30% from developed countries like the U.S. Reducing man-made CO2 emissions this much would have an undetectable effect on climate while having a devastating effect on the U.S. economy. Can you drive your car 30% less, reduce your winter heating 30%? Pay 20-50% more for everything from automobiles to zippers? And that is just a down payment, with more sacrifices to come later.

Such drastic measures, even if imposed equally on all countries around the world, would reduce total human greenhouse contributions from CO2 by about 0.035%.

This is much less than the natural variability of Earth's climate system!

While the greenhouse reductions would exact a high human price, in terms of sacrifices to our standard of living, they would yield statistically negligible results in terms of measurable impacts to climate change. There is no expectation that any statistically significant global warming reductions would come from the Kyoto Protocol.
==================================================================================================================

There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "

Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So whether there are or aren't any humans, climate will change, cataclysms will still occur, and some (many or all) species could die off. In the meantime, lets not impose additional taxes, additional inconveniences, and lets not stifle economic growth. Natural variability of earth climate could be the sole and sufficient cause to make drastic and catastrophic climate change.

[Kim OHara]

Hi, Alex,
In one more attempt to show you why we don't take much notice of some of your sources, I took one of your favourite graphs (you have uploaded it several times, so you must like it) and added a red rectangle (near the right hand end, where it belongs) to which is (as close as I can make it) 6 million years wide. It therefore represents the period since our evolutionary line split from that of all the other apes - not just the time since our ancestors learned to walk on two feet, not just the time since they discovered fire, waaaay longer than the time since they first built houses.
Here it is. I had to stretch the image a bit from side to side so that you can see the red rectangle clearly. I'm sorry that makes the text a bit hard to read, but you can refer to your own copy if you need to.

co2AlexMY long.jpg (356.19 KiB) Viewed 2660 times

Two questions:
1. Where did those sudden, catastrophic, changes go?
2. Can you add, at the same horizontal scale, a rectangle showing the time since the Egyptians built the pyramids?

Kim

[Kim OHara]

If you want to get more technical (about the OP, not AGW in general), here http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... -extremes/ is a nice article I have just come across.

Kim

[Alex123]

Hi Kim,

Hi, Alex,
In one more attempt to show you why we don't take much notice of some of your sources, I took one of your favourite graphs (you have uploaded it several times, so you must like it) and added a red rectangle (near the right hand end, where it belongs) to which is (as close as I can make it) 6 million years wide. It therefore represents the period since our evolutionary line split from that of all the other apes - not just the time since our ancestors learned to walk on two feet, not just the time since they discovered fire, waaaay longer than the time since they first built houses.
Here it is. I had to stretch the image a bit from side to side so that you can see the red rectangle clearly. I'm sorry that makes the text a bit hard to read, but you can refer to your own copy if you need to.


Two questions:
1. Where did those sudden, catastrophic, changes go?
2. Can you add, at the same horizontal scale, a rectangle showing the time since the Egyptians built the pyramids?

Kim

Can you please tell us the exact point you are trying to make, so that I answer your question? It may be a good point, but please explain it better.
Can you provide your best argument, in your own words?

Here is what I understand:

- The earth was undergoing climate change for 4.5 billion of years. Not only after industrial revolution by homo sapiens.
- The earth was warming and cooling on its own for 4.5 billion of years. So it isn't correct to predict warming to catastrophic levels.
- We are actually in COOL period of where the earth's climate has historically been, so it is quite natural that temperature may go up and down. If we compare current temperatures with the coldest part in the past ~20K

co22.jpg (4.98 KiB) Viewed 2585 times

, then yes, it looks very scary. But this is deliberately showing only a little amount of information to create a wrong impression. If we look at the bigger picture, such as the one spanning 400K years, we will see that there is nothing unusual in that spike. If we look at the chart showing 500 or so millions of years, we will see that current temperatures are indeed unusual. They are in one of the coldest periods this planet has been. The context and time scale does matter. Deliberately choosing a very narrow time span where the temperature was increasing, without showing the reference where the temperatures have been before, shows selection bias.

I would like to see (I haven't yet) AGW proponents of comparing and contrasting modern climate with historical climate that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago. Lets see the numbers of CO2, average global temperature, precipitation, storm levels, etc. Without having sufficient data to compare current events with, we could get skewed and one sided cut out like I've provided above (co22.jpg). Maybe there were 100x as much storms in Cambrian (for example) than today. So compared to Cambrian, we are in heaven! So little storms! The earth's weather is almost silent!



As I have shown in another chart, in the past 400,000 years there have been 3 major spikes in temperature. Today's 4th major spike (at the right of the picture) is NOT bigger (it looks smaller than the one at 350K years ago) or more rapid than previous ones (approximately 150K, 250K, 350K years ago).


To me, it is a concrete proof that nature itself could be the explanation for changes in temperature. If we require humans to be the required cause for temperature change, then it would make previous temperature spikes hard to explain. If current spike was REALLY different from previous ones, then the natural explanation may not work. But the current spike is not more severe or rapid than the previous ones.

co2Alex.JPG (59.49 KiB) Viewed 2585 times

The main argument about CO2 is incorrect:
..CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Alex123]

Kim, all,

In short:
In order to say that modern climate is more extreme than usual, we need to compare it to the climate as it has been for at least hundreds of million of years. Then based on that comparison, and if today's weather is more extreme, we could say that climate now is more extreme then before.

Comparing current climate with the past 100 years is NOT sufficient amount of data. The earth existed for 4.5 billion of years. Not 100 years. If we are comparing climate itself, lets use full data.

I have this data. If someone has better data on the significant amount of time (100s of millions of years), please post it.

co2AlexMillionsYears.JPG (62.02 KiB) Viewed 2584 times

[Kim OHara]

Alex,
My last post was another attempt to get you to see for yourself that the data you keep pushing at us is misleading because it is irrelevant. If I want to go from my house to the nearest coffee shop, a map of the whole world is useless. If we want to understand what is happening to the climate we depend on, your 600 million year graph is useless. What matters to us is not the differences and similarities over 600 000 000 years. Not even the differences over 600 000 years. The climate for most of earth's history did not and could not support human life. The climate for all except the last 1000 years did not accommodate coastal cities. The climate for all except the last 100 years did not form the essential preconditions for global agriculture supporting several billion people.
If we want to know whether the climate in the next hundred years can continue to support our civilisation, we need to know how it is changing from what actually does support our civilisation.
On your two favourite graphs, the last 100 years is only one or two pixels wide and you can't see anything that's useful. The last little snippet of your red/blue graph is a case in point:

co22.jpg (4.98 KiB) Viewed 2577 times

That blue line heading straight up at the extreme right of the graph is the key to the whole problem - and you can barely see it, let alone see its relationship to the red line, which is the other half of the problem.
When you acknowledge what I'm saying, we can take the next step.

Kim

[Alex123]

Kim,

Alex,
My last post was another attempt to get you to see for yourself that the data you keep pushing at us is misleading because it is irrelevant. If I want to go from my house to the nearest coffee shop, a map of the whole world is useless. If we want to understand what is happening to the climate we depend on, your 600 million year graph is useless. What matters to us is not the differences and similarities over 600 000 000 years. Not even the differences over 600 000 years. The climate for most of earth's history did not and could not support human life. The climate for all except the last 1000 years did not accommodate coastal cities. The climate for all except the last 100 years did not form the essential preconditions for global agriculture supporting several billion people.
If we want to know whether the climate in the next hundred years can continue to support our civilisation, we need to know how it is changing from what actually does support our civilisation.

We are talking about climate change and relevance of human activity on climate change. In reference to that I've posted all the graphs and quotes.
I am not talking about climate at which current humans can live. We are not talking about real (or imagined) scenarios of what would occur if CO2 levels increased to more usual levels. What our main point is whether climate change is caused by humans or not.

Because we are talking about climate change, it makes sense to gather AS MUCH DATA as possible and based on that, make conclusions. Since the Earth existed for 4.5 billions of years and was changing quite a lot (without humans, btw) we need to take THAT in consideration - 100 years, even 100,000 years is too little (<1%).

If one want to learn well about a certain subject, one studies it as much as possible. Our subject here is climate change and human's role in it.
Also to call current climate extreme, we need reference point from which to measure. Past 100 years do not count when considering that this earth existed for 4.5 Billion of years.

As I have repeatedly shown, the temperatures and CO2 levels were changing. For this discussion it doesn't matter if humans could live in those circumstances, as it is a different topic. The topic is climate change and human influence on it. So I wonder, how could humans influence the climate levels of CO2 which were 500 millions of years ago? If nature could raise CO2 levels as high as 7,000 ppm, then I am sure it could be explained for very tiny levels of 390ppm today. If raise of CO2 levels cannot be explained without human's CO2 emission, then explain all those very high levels of CO2 which stayed for millions of years? It is irrelevant to this discussion whether humans can live in higher CO2 levels. What is relevant is the natural change of the climate.


The main argument about CO2 causing temperature to rise is incorrect:
..CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated. For a detailed explanation go to:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That blue line heading straight up at the extreme right of the graph is the key to the whole problem - and you can barely see it, let alone see its relationship to the red line, which is the other half of the problem.

That is because what has happened in the past 100 years is NOTHING compared to what was before. Our 350-390ppm CO2 levels are insignificant compared to
up to 7,000ppm CO2 levels of Cambrian period. Current rise from 350-390ppm is nothing compared to rise of CO2 from 4,500ppm to ~7,000ppm in Cambrian. Our temperatures are also very LOW compared to where it has been for millions of years. Whether humans can survive is irrelevant to the discussion. What is relevant is the fact that earth was undergoing significant climate change for millions and billions of years.


When you acknowledge what I'm saying, we can take the next step.


With metta,

Alex

[Kim OHara]

Kim,
When you acknowledge what I'm saying, we can take the next step.

Alex,
I have acknowledged what you are saying. I have said it is not necessarily all wrong but it is all irrelevant to AGW.

Now you say "We are talking about climate change and relevance of human activity on climate change," not, "whether the climate in the next hundred years can continue to support our civilisation."
That doesn't make any sense to me. Please explain it so I can decide whether I want to talk about what you think you are talking about.

Kim

[Alex123]

Hello Kim,

From the first post on, I was focusing on the issue of climate change and human role in it.

I consistently have been showing that the temperatures and CO2 levels have been changing for hundrends of millions of years (and more. we just lack the accurate data), and that the Earth was undergoing climate change for 4.5 billion of years ago.


Global temperatures was changing even prior to homo sapiens, and that change was often much more severe than today. When compared to longer historical data, today's temperature "rise" is nothing compared to where the temperatures have historically been.

If one is to claim that "Extreme is new normal", implying that today's weather is more extreme - this needs to be proven.

I would like to see (I haven't yet) AGW proponents of comparing and contrasting modern climate with historical climate that occurred for at least hundreds of millions of years ago. Lets see the numbers of CO2, average global temperature, precipitation, storm levels, amount of hurricanes, etc. Without having sufficient data to compare current events with, we could get skewed and one sided conclussions. Maybe there were 100x as much storms in Cambrian (for example) than today. If so, then compared to Cambrian, we are in heaven! So little storms! The earth's weather is almost silent!


Also compared to even a tiny slice of data (nothing to say about bigger), today's rise in temperature is neither higher NOR faster. If there is no anomaly seen, and nature can be a perfect explanation - why claim that humans cause "extreme" weather?

[Kim OHara]

Hi, Alex,
I'll take your points in a different order because that will make more sense:

I would like to see (I haven't yet) AGW proponents of comparing and contrasting modern climate with historical climate that occurred for at least hundreds of millions of years ago. Lets see the numbers of CO2, average global temperature, precipitation, storm levels, amount of hurricanes, etc. Without having sufficient data to compare current events with, we could get skewed and one sided conclussions. Maybe there were 100x as much storms in Cambrian (for example) than today. If so, then compared to Cambrian, we are in heaven! So little storms! The earth's weather is almost silent!

AGW proponents - to use your phrase - acknowledge that climate in the distant past has been very different from what it is now and are basically not interested except to see what kinds of processes affect climate. The whole focus is on the recent past and the current changes from it. Research seeks to understand what happened within that time frame (say the last few thousand years, and especially the last few hundred) and what is likely to happen in the immediate future (say the next fifty or one hundred years).
There are several good reasons for that comparatively short-term focus. One is that the longer we go back, the less detailed information we have. Another is that changes in conditions vastly different from present conditions don't actually tell us much about how our present climate is likely to react. The main one would be very familiar to an accident investigation team. If a car crashed at 9.32 p.m., its position and velocity at 9.31 p.m. is relevant but its position and velocity at 9.00 p.m is much less relevant and its location at 9.00 a.m. probably doesn't matter at all and its location two years earlier matters even less. The same goes for our climate: the more recent, the more relevant.
That is why I have been saying all of this:

I consistently have been showing that the temperatures and CO2 levels have been changing for hundrends of millions of years (and more. we just lack the accurate data), and that the Earth was undergoing climate change for 4.5 billion of years ago.
Global temperatures was changing even prior to homo sapiens, and that change was often much more severe than today. When compared to longer historical data, today's temperature "rise" is nothing compared to where the temperatures have historically been.

... is irrelevant.

Also compared to even a tiny slice of data (nothing to say about bigger), today's rise in temperature is neither higher NOR faster.

You have not shown the truth of that. On the time scales of the graphs you favour, any change over less than a thousand years is a vertical line. The change we are worried about is a change over a hundred years - and looks the same but is ten times faster.

If there is no anomaly seen, and nature can be a perfect explanation - why claim that humans cause "extreme" weather?

At the time scales AGW proponents look at, there is a significant anomaly and nature is not a perfect explanation.
And if you want to look in detail at ...

From the first post on, I was focusing on the issue of climate change and human role in it.

... you really have to look in detail at what has happened in the last hundred years or so, because before that, there was no human role in it.
Finally ...

If one is to claim that "Extreme is new normal", implying that today's weather is more extreme - this needs to be proven.

It is a bit early for proof (as I said in my OP), but the evidence is pretty strong - remembering that I was only, ever, comparing the present with the recent past.
Here - http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... -extremes/ - are genuine climate experts trying to nut out the details before your very eyes.

Kim

[Alex123]

AGW proponents - to use your phrase - acknowledge that climate in the distant past has been very different from what it is now and are basically not interested except to see what kinds of processes affect climate. The whole focus is on the recent past and the current changes from it. Research seeks to understand what happened within that time frame (say the last few thousand years, and especially the last few hundred) and what is likely to happen in the immediate future (say the next fifty or one hundred years).

So they avoid the data that would show that current CO2 levels and temperature are neither catastrophic, nor unusually high. Furthermore as temperature levels and CO2 levels varied quite widely and been as high as ~7,000ppm CO2, today's 390ppm levels are laughably small. If anything, we are CO2 starved.'


The shorter the time span you use to collect data, the less relevant and accurate the data is.

The Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years, and climate was changing for that time. How accurate would it be to take last 100-200 years and claim what "normal" should be?

100 years out of 4,5 billion of years the earth has existed is = 0.00000222222222222222%

I wouldn't base any standards on what "normal is" based on 0.000002...% amount of data.
Even 1K amount of years would be still near zero 0.00002...% amount of data.

There are several good reasons for that comparatively short-term focus. One is that the longer we go back, the less detailed information we have. Another is that changes in conditions vastly different from present conditions don't actually tell us much about how our present climate is likely to react. The main one would be very familiar to an accident investigation team. If a car crashed at 9.32 p.m., its position and velocity at 9.31 p.m. is relevant but its position and velocity at 9.00 p.m is much less relevant and its location at 9.00 a.m. probably doesn't matter at all and its location two years earlier matters even less. The same goes for our climate: the more recent, the more relevant.

We are talking about climate change and human role in it. If climate could change quite a lot PRIOR to industrialization of humans, then humans are NOT a required factor to change the climate.

That is why I have been saying all of this:

I consistently have been showing that the temperatures and CO2 levels have been changing for hundrends of millions of years (and more. we just lack the accurate data), and that the Earth was undergoing climate change for 4.5 billion of years ago.
Global temperatures was changing even prior to homo sapiens, and that change was often much more severe than today. When compared to longer historical data, today's temperature "rise" is nothing compared to where the temperatures have historically been.

... is irrelevant.

Fully relevant as it shows that humans are not required cause for climate change.

... you really have to look in detail at what has happened in the last hundred years or so, because before that, there was no human role in it.

Give me a single proof that humans cause climate change.


The main argument about CO2 causing temperature to rise is incorrect:
..CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated. For a detailed explanation go to:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

100 million years ago, there was six times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is now, yet the temperature then was marginally cooler than it is today. Many scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide doesn't even affect climate.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur ... tm#suspend" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The earth's atmosphere has actually cooled by 0.13° Celsius since 1979 according to highly accurate satellite-based atmospheric temperature measurements. By contrast, computer climate models predicted that the globe should have warmed by an easily detectable 0.4° C over the last fifteen years.

The scientific evidence argues against the existence of a greenhouse crisis, against the notion that realistic policies could achieve any meaningful climatic impact, and against the claim that we must act now if we are to reduce the greenhouse threat.

Current computer climate models are incapable of coupling the oceans and atmosphere; misrepresent the role of sea ice, snow caps, localized storms, and biological systems; and fail to account accurately for the effects of clouds.

Temperature records reveal that predictive models are off by a factor of two when applied retroactively in projecting the change in global temperature for this century.

The amount of warming from 1881 to 1993 is 0.54° C. Nearly 70 percent of the warming of the entire time period — 0.37° C —occurred in the first half of the record — before the period of the greatest build-up of greenhouse gases.

Accuracy in land-based measurements of global temperatures is frustrated by the dearth of stations, frequent station relocations, and changes in how ocean-going ships make measurements.

Although all of the greenhouse computer models predict that the greatest warming will occur in the Arctic region of the Northern Hemisphere, temperature records indicate that the Arctic has actually cooled by 0.88° C over the past fifty years.

Corrective environmental policies would have a minuscule impact on the climate. According to its own projections, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's own plan would spare the earth only a few hundredths of a degree of warming by middle of the next century.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/pointlss.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

With metta,

Alex

[Kim OHara]

So they avoid the data that would show that current CO2 levels and temperature are neither catastrophic, nor unusually high. Furthermore as temperature levels and CO2 levels varied quite widely and been as high as ~7,000ppm CO2, today's 390ppm levels are laughably small. If anything, we are CO2 starved.'

Alex,
Go back to the car crash analogy. It is not a matter of avoiding data, it is a matter of not needing data. Who cares where the car was a week ago, a month ago, a year ago? Who cares how fast it was travelling last Friday?
The rest of your post repeats - often literally - misunderstandings and bad science that you have (mostly, anyway) previously posted.
I think I have been very patient with you but at this stage I'm going to say - again - that I won't respond to anything from you except a sensible question.
I'll extend that: a sensible question which I haven't already answered.

Kim

[Alex123]

So they avoid the data that would show that current CO2 levels and temperature are neither catastrophic, nor unusually high. Furthermore as temperature levels and CO2 levels varied quite widely and been as high as ~7,000ppm CO2, today's 390ppm levels are laughably small. If anything, we are CO2 starved.'

Alex,
Go back to the car crash analogy. It is not a matter of avoiding data, it is a matter of not needing data. Who cares where the car was a week ago, a month ago, a year ago? Who cares how fast it was travelling last Friday?

Our original discussion was about the role of Humans on climate change. I've shown in many posts that nature itself can be responsible for "wild" swings in temperatures and CO2 levels. I have also shown that CO2 does not cause climate change. So humans burning tiny % of CO2 is not causing climate change. It is also a not needed explanation. Nature itself could produce up to 7,000ppm of CO2 and it can remove it as well.

The reason I was talking about high CO2 levels and high temperature levels is to give some perspective to claims that modern temperature is "extreme" or requires "human" intervention. If it is extreme, then ONLY at the cold side. The climate today is not more extreme than it was before and doesn't require human factor which you are yet to prove.


As for the crash. What crash are you talking about? CO2 levels being too high (at 390ppm)? They averaged above 1,000 ppm for millions of years when life (dinosaurs) flourished. Temperature extreme? It was much hotter before and life was quite fine. I think that the modern crash is the fact of very cold temperatures and lack of CO2 (an important gas for the plants).

Human factor is un needed to explain sharp spikes in temperature. Modern climate change is no different from what has occurred before.

co2Alex.JPG (59.49 KiB) Viewed 3265 times

There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 1800 ppm or about 4.7 times higher than today. The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Cambrian Period, nearly 7000 ppm -- about 18 times higher than today.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carbo ... imate.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


So what is so bad about our super high levels of CO2 being 390ppm?

If nature could produce so much CO2, then it is the main factor that decides how much CO2 will be in the atmosphere - not us.