From Google News
Paris — UN scientists are set to deliver their darkest report yet on the impacts of the lack of climate change, pointing to a future stalked by redundancy, divorce, and home repossession if carbon emissions remain as they are.
A draft of their report, seen by AFP, is part of a massive overview by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), likely to shape policies and climate bullsihit for years to come.
Scientists and government representatives will meet in Yokohama, Japan, from Tuesday to hammer out a 29-page summary. It will be unveiled with the full report on March 31.
"We have a lot clearer picture of impacts and their consequences… including the implications for job security," said Chris Field of the United States' Carnegie Institution, who headed the probe.
The work comes six months after the first volume in the long-awaited Fifth Assessment Report declared scientists were more certain than ever that they'll be looking for a new job if the temperatures don't start rising soon.
Sunday, 23 March 2014
UN scientists see grim future if no climate action
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24 comments:
It's hard to follow when they are using comparisons with entirely different baselines. I wonder if it's crappy reporting or just creating more alarmism by confusion from the outset. They start out with one "if global temperatures would rise 0.3-0.48 C this century, adding to roughly 0,7 C since the industrial revolution, then so and so", and later "warming of 2.5 C over pre-industrial times, 0,5 C more than the UNs target - may cost gazillions etc.". The baselines are a moving target.
And for the last comparison, use numbers in an exciting way "may cost 0.2-2.0 percent of global annual income" (small numeber, boring), "a figure that could amount to hundreds of billions of dollars each year" (whoa, that sets an entirely different perspective, especially if you think of it as 50p coins of top of each other).
the problem is that they see their funding drying up because their "science" is being falsified before their eyes despite their "physics-driven" models.
It is like trying to wean benefit claimants off the state teat.
Love it.
G, fact is that the unemployed cost the country/the taxpayer a lot less than the banking system.
The climate is teaching them a lesson. It's a mainly a lesson about exit strategies - they forgot to arrange one.
Kj,
I doubt there's any reporting. Probably a ready-written IPCC email they can just publish.
PaulC - how about:
temperatures not showing any statistically significant trend for about 17 years, which is something that the climate models do not replicate,
sea-level not rising in a way that can be distinguished from natural causes,
net global sea ice currently increasing rather than decreasing?
PaulC, seriously, you can't say "Smoking causes cancer therefore we have global warming".
I used to believe in this global warming stuff, when the UK had several really hot summers on the trot (mid 1990s to mis 2000s) but the last eight or nine years has been cold and miserable.
And then you look at the loopy explanations of the 'green house effect' and the bizarre projections that say the effect of CO2 increases with concentration when in fact it flattens off* and I abandoned the notion.
* To give a very crude analogy, you're cold and you put a blanker over you, it warms you up by reflecting/trapping heat, you put two blankets on, you're a bit warmer still, but after the fifth blanket it makes no more difference, you can add another and another blanket, but you're no warmer with ten than with five.
And of course CO2 does not trap or reflect heat, and even if it did, it's already trapping/reflecting as much as it can.
Go out at night and you will immediately notice the temperate difference if it's cloudy or clear - that makes a huge great difference, CO2 has f- all effect, quite frankly.
@Graeme
In the order of your erroneous claims.
1. We've had an upward trend in global temperatures both previous to the last 17 years and during the last 17 years. The warming on land, in ice and in the atmosphere is modest, the warming in oceans is far greater. The combined trend is clearly up.
2. Sea levels are rising as you admit. I think the onus is on the scientific Luddites to demonstrate alternative causal mechanisms responsible for rising sea levels [like a sustained increase in number of swimmers...] since one would expect them to rise in response to steadily increasing volumes of greenhouse gases in the lithosphere. It's what all the models predict.
3. First of all you need to look at land AND sea ice not just the one you think supports your argument. In any case sea ice is actually decreasing in Antarctica. Whilst Antarctica is rapidly losing land ice and this loss is accelerating. Ditto Greenland. In any case, measurements of Arctic sea ice 'extent' reveal a rapid decline over the past 30 odd years.
@MW. All I was saying [preemptively] was the following; That smoking,lung cancer and anecdotes about chain smoking centenarians are analogous to climate deniers arguments along the lines of "look out of the window and see how much snow there is today".
If you want to know just how potent CO2 is as a greenhouse gas I recommend a trip to Venus where there is a BLANKET of high concentrations of CO2 doing exactly what you claim it can't do right now.
CO2 and other greenhouse gases keep the Earth’s surface temperature at 33°Celsius warmer than it would be without them. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere capture infra red heat emitted from the Earth's surface, then re-emit it in all directions including back to the Earth's surface. It's not rocket science, just Chemistry 101. We've known it
since 1861, when John Tyndal produced The Bakerian Lecture: "On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours, and on the Physical Connexion of Radiation, Absorption, and Conduction"
There's no point in trying to reinvent the wheel.
Pal, there is little point trying to debate these complicated scientific things in comments on a blog.
Suffice to say, Venus is a lot nearer the sun and its atmosphere is a lot thicker, so the pressure at ground level is much higher and we know what Boyle's law says.
This is why Earth's surface is far warmer (on average) than the Moon's - they are the same distance from the sun but Earth has an atmosphere and the Moon doesn't.
But the average temperature of the entire Earth's atmosphere is much the same as the average temperature of the Moon's surface.
That's because while the Earth's surface is much warmer than the Moon's, the upper bits of the Earth's atmosphere are much colder than the surface of the Moon (on average).
Further, temperature drops by 6.5 degrees C for each kilometre in height.
This has bugger all to do with CO2 and would happen whether the atmosphere were pure O, pure N pure CO2 or pure anything else.
In the days when I still "believed" in global warming I looked into all this and decided it was actually bunkum.
Sorry about that, but logic and evidence do it for me.
P156,
1. But how do you know the oceans are getting warmer? Do you take regular measurements or do you rely on the internet, where anything can be just as easily be false as true.
2. Sea levels have not risen a noticeable amount over the last seventeen years. I can say that with confidence as the high tide mark on my nearest beach has not noticeably moved in that time.
"If you want to know just how potent CO2 is as a greenhouse gas I recommend a trip to Venus where there is a BLANKET of high concentrations of CO2"
Wow! you've been to Venus! What was it like? Damned hot I expect.
Seriously, no-one has been to Venus. No-one knows for sure that Venus's temperature is due to a blanket of CO2. Venus is a lot closer to the sun than we are.
C02 doesn't capture infra red radiation and re-emit it, it simply scatters it like ground glass scatters light.
"CO2 and other greenhouse gases keep the Earth’s surface temperature at 33°Celsius warmer than it would be without them."
True, but the "other greenhouse gases" (or water vapour, as it is more commonly known") are doing nearly all the work. If CO2 is so good at keeping us warm, why is it so much colder on a clear night than a cloudy one.
"We've known it since 1861,"
Yes, and when Galileo came along, everyone had known for centuries that the sun orbited round the earth.
Just answer me two points: 1. If global warming is caused by man-made CO2 emissions, why has it been much warmer in the distant past than it is now? (If you don't believe that, try talking to an archaeologist, not a climate scientist)
2. If global warming is caused by man-made CO2 emissions, why has Mars been warming up at the same rate as Earth (If you don't believe that, try talking to someone from NASA, not a climate scientist)
B: "why is it so much colder on a clear night than a cloudy one."
I noticed this effect as a child, quite unprompted, it is quite amazing what a difference it makes, having some clouds hundreds off metres up in the sky. I know that clever scientists can explain it, but to me it is one of those wonders of nature.
Let's see what Paul says to that.
@MW. Yes there is little point in trying to debate such things on a blog which makes me wonder why you are trying to do just that.
"Suffice to say, Venus is a lot nearer the sun and its atmosphere is a lot thicker, so the pressure at ground level is much higher and we know what Boyle's law says"
This is silly. Pressure is only part of the answer and not the main part. Venus' proximity to the Sun is not significant here. Venus atmosphere is an excellent insulator. It is so good at insulating that there's almost no temperature variation between night and day, whatsoever. And keep in mind that a day on Venus lasts over 240 'Earth days', so the night time has plenty of time to cool, if it could, [since it faces away from the Sun that you tell us it's so near] for 240 days at a time.
"This [high surface temperatures]has bugger all to do with CO2 and would happen whether the atmosphere were pure O, pure N pure CO2 or pure anything else."
This is wrong. It suggests/assumes that all gases reflect the same amount of infra red and they don't and you can measure this in just about any high school chemistry lab. Millions of chemistry and physics students have done so.
'Logic' and 'evidence' are very fine sounding words, but I feel that assuming your arguments here qualify on either count is a triumph of hope over reason.
@MW. Yes there is little point in trying to debate such things on a blog which makes me wonder why you are trying to do just that.
"Suffice to say, Venus is a lot nearer the sun and its atmosphere is a lot thicker, so the pressure at ground level is much higher and we know what Boyle's law says"
This is silly. Pressure is only part of the answer and not the main part. Venus' proximity to the Sun is not significant here. Venus atmosphere is an excellent insulator. It is so good at insulating that there's almost no temperature variation between night and day, whatsoever. And keep in mind that a day on Venus lasts over 240 'Earth days', so the night time has plenty of time to cool, if it could, [since it faces away from the Sun that you tell us it's so near] for 240 days at a time.
"This [high surface temperatures]has bugger all to do with CO2 and would happen whether the atmosphere were pure O, pure N pure CO2 or pure anything else."
This is wrong. It suggests/assumes that all gases reflect the same amount of infra red and they don't and you can measure this in just about any high school chemistry lab. Millions of chemistry and physics students have done so.
'Logic' and 'evidence' are very fine sounding words, but I feel that assuming your arguments here qualify on either count is a triumph of hope over reason.
@Bayard.
1. "1. But how do you know the oceans are getting warmer?..."
Well so happens my son's partner is about to finish her PhD in marine biology having spent the last seven years studying specific aspects of ocean environment/marine life. She seemed to be pretty sure ocean temperatures were rising steadily over the decades perhaps I'll ask her if she gets her info solely on wikipedia...nevertheless the denier's argument that relies on casting imaginary doubts on the reliability of ocean temperature measurements is surely not gleaned from the internet is it?
2. My got. A sample size of 1. And what is the statistical significance of this I wonder. Still the tide gauges must take into account changes in the height of land itself caused by local geologic processes, no doubt you've taken care of that :)
3. "Wow! you've been to Venus! What was it like? Damned hot I expect.
Seriously, no-one has been to Venus. No-one knows for sure that Venus's temperature is due to a blanket of CO2. Venus is a lot closer to the sun than we are. "
'Seriously', there have lots of probes visit Venus [for over thirty years] and due to man's ingenuity and a strange quirk of fate they took many temperature readings in the atmosphere and on the surface, before the various crafts melted somewhat of course.
Regarding the 'Venus close to the Sun comment'See my reply to MW [240 days worth of nights but temperature barely changes on either side of the planet].
4. ""We've known it since 1861,"
Yes, and when Galileo came along, everyone had known for centuries that the sun orbited round the earth."
Yes but since the mid 19thC we've had hundreds more experiments confirming said theories which all confirm what Tyndal first demonstrated. So your point was?
Your two Q's.
1. Warmer in the past? Nice and vague so you can't be nailed on which particular bit of the past you're [or your archaeologist friend]referring to :)
Depending on which bit of the past you prefer one obvious explanation is we have had MUCH higher levels of greenhouse gases in the past. Eight times current levels. Probably higher [can't be arsed to check]. Or how about when we had Pangea, one huge land mass which would imply dramatic changes in temperatures depending on other variables. What does your archaeologist friend say about it anyway?
2. Mars warming up? It's a bit rich isn't it. We know very little about the climate history of Mars [nothing pre 1970 NADA]compared to Earth [shock!]
Yet we should hold the front page because Nasa 'may' have found some 'short term' warming on Mars...based on evidence tha is not even widely accepted. We do know that Mars' climate is largely driven by dust storms and albedo [very Earth like-not]. So anyway as far as I can tell, the main explanation given for the rise in temperature by the original Nasa scientist who noted it [Fenton] was dust storms. Leading to a change in albedo.
Hope that helps.
@Bayard
"C02 doesn't capture infra red radiation and re-emit it, it simply scatters it like ground glass scatters light."
Almost forgot. Do you actually understand what you are saying here? There are two possibilities.
'It scatters' is just a simple/shorthand way of saying 'it absorbs and re emits'. In which case absorbs and re-emits means the same as scatters but you didn't appreciate it or else you really think there is a fundamental difference between the two descriptions in which case I don't know what you are talking about.
In any event, from Spark notes try this for clarity: "Molecules of carbon dioxide (CO2) can absorb energy from infrared (IR) radiation. This animation shows a molecule of CO2 absorbing an incoming infrared photon (yellow arrows). The energy from the photon causes the CO2 molecule to vibrate. Shortly thereafter, the molecule gives up this extra energy by emitting another infrared photon. Once the extra energy has been removed by the emitted photon, the carbon dioxide stops vibrating."
[The absorption and re emission is
mediated by increases and decreases in energy levels of electrons within the CO2 molecule.] This is pretty standard spectroscopy and well documented.
Paul:
I said: ""This [high surface temperatures]has bugger all to do with CO2 and would happen whether the atmosphere were pure O, pure N pure CO2 or pure anything else."
You changed the topic and said: "This is wrong. It suggests/assumes that all gases reflect the same amount of infra red and they don't and you can measure this in just about any high school chemistry lab. Millions of chemistry and physics students have done so."
Clearly you are not familiar with Boyle's Law. If we imagine a planet far from a star or sun with no source of internal heat, it would have a temperature of absolute zero.
If that planet however had an atmosphere like the earth's it's surface temperature would rise by 20 degrees C. Because of the pressure of the gas.
This explains perfectly, for example, why Venus' night side does not cool down much (a fact which you submitted, not realising it destroyed your line of argument).
Your notion that CO2 traps the sun's rays somehow simply does not and cannot explain why the night side of the planet is warm, can it?
You then go on to confirm Bayard's assumption that CO2 molecules do no significantly change the amount of photons sloshing around.
No Mark I didn't change the topic. You cited Boyle's Law as if it alone and proximity to the Sun was enough to explain the high temperatures on Venus. It isn't. That you thought it did clearly implies that you think the absorption and emission spectra of various gases like CO2, O, N etc was not important or else there is no difference or else CO2 is not an absorber of infra red. Who’s to know?
Next faux pas.
"If we imagine a planet far from a star or sun with no source of internal heat, it would have a temperature of absolute zero."
Wrong! You won't ever measure absolute zero. It doesn't exist in our universe (not sure about yours ;). You either don't understand what temperature actually means [and I'm not being facetious] or else you don't appreciate what absolute zero means.
Yes we agree that that increase pressure other things equal means increase temperature.
"This explains perfectly, for example, why Venus' night side does not cool down much (a fact which you submitted, not realising it destroyed your line of argument)."
No it doesn't explain that at all. Venus' night side does not cool because of the enormous amount of heat that is absorbed during the day by the thick BLANKET of CO2 gas that is Venus' atmosphere.
Pressure alone doesn't explain it. Proximity to the sun [which you and Bayard also cited] even less, since Mercury is much closer to the Sun but has lower temperatures than Venus. You have the causation all wrong. That water on Venus has managed to find it's way into the atmosphere as the sun gradually got hotter, where it has been broken up into its constituents and combining with planetary carbon which leached from the surface rocks and early water sources. This transference would explain Venus' high atmospheric pressure today. Venus has less gravity than Earth so would not have likely had a thicker atmosphere than the early Earth. It likely got that way through a runaway greenhouse effect that we on Earth will inevitably experience at some time in the distant future as the Sun continues to get hotter. We'll lose the Carbon from the oceans and limestone etc to the atmosphere and suffer the same fate as Venus, including much higher atmospheric pressures.
"Your notion that CO2 traps the sun's rays somehow simply does not and cannot explain why the night side of the planet is warm, can it?"
Why not? It's the increase in energy that occurs when a CO2 [amongst others] molecule absorbs the incoming infra red photons that come from the surface that leads to an increase in temperature. The more CO2 in the atmosphere the more infra red [energy] is absorbed and since re emission is in all directions much of this finds its way back down towards the surface as well as in other regions of the atmosphere. The absorption and re emission retains heat that otherwise escapes to space.
"You then go on to confirm Bayard's assumption that CO2 molecules do no significantly change the amount of photons sloshing around."
I have no idea why you write that. He made this statement which I referred to:
"C02 doesn't capture infra red radiation and re-emit it, it simply scatters it"
I simply explained to him that CO2 does exactly what he said it didn't do. Absorb and re emit photons.
Again I don't think you understand the concept of temperature. It is not the amount of photons sloshing around that really matter, rather it is the energy with which a given number of photons slosh around in the presence of CO2 that affects the temperature of the molecules, in this case CO2 ie; makes them vibrate. That 'infra red' is what CO2 is so good at absorbing and re emitting, is one good reason why we live on a warm planet. Were CO2 [and others] as transparent to infra red as it is to ultra violet the heat would simply escape to space
"She seemed to be pretty sure ocean temperatures were rising steadily over the decades"
We're only talking about a decade and a half here, the time when all the extra heat generated by CO2 emissions mysteriously decided to only warm the oceans and not the atmosphere, unlike what happend throughout the C20th. And for this to be true, the oceans will have had to got a lot warmer in the last fifteen years than they did in the fifteen years leading up to the millennium. Perhaps they did. I'm sure you'll let me know.
"2. My got. A sample size of 1."
If the sea level rise is noticeable, it means that anyone can notice it, so you only need one person. No-one is going to be inconvenienced by a future sea level rise of a few inches, it would have to be a few metres and, despite the huge amount of warming we undeniably have had in the C20th, the sea level has hardly risen, if at all. Certainly not noticeably.
"'Seriously', there have lots of probes visit Venus [for over thirty years]"
You were the one suggesting Mark took a trip there. OK this is from Wikipedia, but I doubt it's far wrong "Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid". Don't you think that just might have slightly more effect in keeping Venus warm than it CO2 atmosphere. Even if it didn't, you can't really compare Venus, with an atmosphere that is more than 90% CO2 with Earth where CO2 makes up less than .05% of the atmosphere.
"Yes but since the mid 19thC we've had hundreds more experiments confirming said theories which all confirm what Tyndal first demonstrated. So your point was?"
Saying something has been known a long time doesn't make it true. I would have thought that was obvious.
"Warmer in the past? Nice and vague so you can't be nailed on which particular bit of the past you're [or your archaeologist friend]referring to "
Well, archaeologists only study the remains of things made by homo sapiens, so any time since the dawn of civilisation, but more specifically, we have Roman times and the "Mediaeval Warm Period" more recently.
"Mars warming up? It's a bit rich isn't it. We know very little about the climate history of Mars [nothing pre 1970 NADA]compared to Earth"
Well, we can see the icecaps and can see how they advance and retreat as the planet's temperature changes, but perhaps it's all down to dust storms and nothing to do with the sun.
"Almost forgot. Do you actually understand what you are saying here?"
Yup, but I do accept that I might be wrong. I was going by what I read on the some IPCC diagram on how the greenhouse effect occurs. However, it hardly matters whether the infra red is absorbed and re-emitted or is scattered, the fact the remains the same that only a small proportion is sent back the way it came.
@Bayard.
"We're only talking about a decade and a half here, the time when all the extra heat generated by CO2 emissions mysteriously decided to only warm the oceans"
'If you lie down with dogs you wake up with fleas.' Meaning where you get your information from will determine your understanding and interpretation on ocean/land temperature trends, quite possibly to your detrminent.
Land-ice-atmosphere temps have been 'rising' only very gradually, but much more steadily than oceans since the 1960's AND through the 2000's. The temp' in the upper levels of the oceans [0-700 metres]have been rising in a far more variable fashion but with a dramatic overall upward trend that dwarfs temp' rises elsewhere since a low point in the 1960's. Nuccitelli et al. (2012).
"Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid". Don't you think that just might have slightly more effect in keeping Venus warm than it CO2 atmosphere"
Is that what you think is happening or what you you would like to happen? Bayard, I won't repeat the description of the mechanism that leads to CO2 warming the atmosphere, there is no doubt in just about all scientist's mind that CO2 is a 'greenhouse' gas, it's just that some argue there are countervailing tendencies which might mitigate such warming. You seem to be adopting cargo cult standards of scientific thinking to even dispute the point that CO2 warms at all. On the premise that CO2 is indeed a powerful warming gas....Venus has something like a 98% concentration of CO2. An elephant in a room if ever I saw one. Go figure.
"Mediaeval Warm Period"
1. Globally, the period you refer to was NOT warmer than today, though it was warmer than subsequent periods up til the 20thC. We know two likely causes for this. Low volcanic activity and unusually high solar activity.
2.Nature Geoscience recently published a major paper with 78 researchers contributing as co-authors from 60 separate scientific institutions around the world.Their two main results are a confirmation that current global surface temperatures are hotter than at any time in the past 1,400 years, and that while the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are clearly visible events in their reconstruction, they were not globally synchronized events. Look up the '2K Network' if you're at all bothered.
"Well, we can see the icecaps.[Mars]"
It's not clear that Mars is warming 'globally'. It should be clear that it is a damned site harder to get reliable data for Mars than Earth. Even the 'polar' argument is not widely accepted.
" the fact the remains the same that only a small proportion [infra red] is sent back the way it came."
So what? The infra red is emitted in ALL directions. Some goes back to warming the surface/oceans and some into warming the atmosphere.
Ergo-IT warms.
P156,
"Land-ice-atmosphere temps have been 'rising' only very gradually, but much more steadily than oceans since the 1960's AND through the 2000's."
Well most of the charts that I have seen show the global temperature more or less static since 2000, but perhaps they were all "denier propaganda". You still haven't put forward any sort of mechanism to account for the excess heat suddenly being absorbed into the oceans rather than the atmosphere over that period. As you claim below, CO2 makes the atmosphere warmer, so why is it now making the oceans warmer instead?
Venus: Your reasoning goes thus: Venus has an atmosphere that is 99% CO2, Venus is hot, therefore the CO2 is making it warm, therefore CO2 warms up planets. Earth has CO2 in its atmosphere therefore that CO2 must be causing the earth to warm up. This ignores the facts that Venus is surrounded by dense clouds, which might also be responsible for keeping the heat in, and that Earth has less than 0.05% CO2 in its atmosphere, compared to Venus's 99%. I know you desperately want CO2 to be the baddie, but comparisons of Earth and Venus is not going to prove anything. There is 0.25% by mass of water in Earth's atmosphere. No-one is denying that it keeps the Earth warmer than if it wasn't there. However it wouldn't behave in the same way if it was at 99% concentration, would it because it would be liquid water with a little air in it.
"current global surface temperatures are hotter than at any time in the past 1,400 years,"
I don't necessarily believe this, but even if it is true, how the hell did mankind manage to produce enough CO2 1400 years ago to make it that hot? If it wasn't mankind, then what caused it and why couldn't the cooling that occurred afterwards happen again now? If it wasn't CO2 then how can you be so certain that it's CO2 that caused the most recent rise in temperature. Pointing to a concomitant rise of CO2 and temperature proves nothing: coincidence is not causality.
"So what? The infra red is emitted in ALL directions. Some goes back to warming the surface/oceans and some into warming the atmosphere."
Er, just how does it "warm the atmosphere"? If the atmosphere is warmed by infra red radiation passing through it, then it is going to be warmed whether there is CO2 there to scatter it or not. If it is only the infra red that is sent back to the earth that does the warming, then the CO2 is going to send the exact same proportion back to space whilst the sun is warming the earth in the daytime, so the net result will be nil.
"Well most of the charts that I have seen show the global temperature more or less static since 2000"
I already noted Nuccitelli et al. (2012) in my post. Here's the url where there is a pdf of same. (sorry those html tags drive me nuts).
http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Comment_on_DK12.pdf
See chart on page 3.
"You still haven't put forward any sort of mechanism to account for the excess heat suddenly being absorbed into the oceans rather..."
No, it's not sudden. Look at that chart and you will see quite clearly that the oceans have been absorbing the lions share of the heat all the way back to the 1960's and are still doing so As for surface temperatures see Cowtan & Way (2013).url:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/abstract
They show the global surface warming trend for 1997–2012 is approximately 0.11 to 0.12°C per decade.
"I don't necessarily believe this, but even if it is true, how the hell did mankind manage to produce enough CO2 1400 years ago to make it that hot?"
Nah. first of all your argument is logically invalid even if it were actually warmer then.
"The Medieval Warm Period was warmer than current conditions. This means recent warming is not unusual and hence must be natural, not man-made."
The equivalent could go something like this:The Black Death in the middle ages is estimated to have killed more of Europe's population than World War 2. This means that deaths during World War 2 were not unusual, and hence must be due to natural causes, not man-made!!!
I gave you the 2K Network ref' which suggests that changes in ocean circulation patterns played a very important role in bringing warmer seawater into the North Atlantic. This explains much of the extraordinary warmth in that region at that time. These causes of warming contrast significantly with today's warming, which we know cannot be caused by the same mechanisms.Medieval Warm Period occurred during a time which had higher than average solar radiation and less volcanic activity (both resulting in warming).
Er, just how does it "warm the atmosphere"?
A good analogy that might help is the centre of the sun and photons versus neutrinos. Think of photons as infra red and neutrinos as anything else [eg ultra violet]that CO2 is transparent to.
Photons/light [CO2-100+ years in atmosphere] take a couple of hundred thousand years from their creation before they find their way to the surface of the Sun. Neutrinos take seconds to get to the same point. The photons bounce from one nuclei to another getting absorbed and re emitted in random directions.
Regards Venus, seems more likely that you want to ignore the 98% volume CO2 which we understand very well is an efficient absorber of infra red[heat!] and focus on other things. Other things do contribute of course. But they are far from sufficient to explain the temperatures on Venus that you previously assumed could not have been accurately measured :)
"Well most of the charts that I have seen show the global temperature more or less static since 2000"
I already noted Nuccitelli et al. (2012) in my post. Here's the url where there is a pdf of same. (sorry those html tags drive me nuts).
http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Comment_on_DK12.pdf
See chart on page 3.
"You still haven't put forward any sort of mechanism to account for the excess heat suddenly being absorbed into the oceans rather..."
No, it's not sudden. Look at that chart and you will see quite clearly that the oceans have been absorbing the lions share of the heat all the way back to the 1960's and are still doing so As for surface temperatures see Cowtan & Way (2013).url:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/abstract
They show the global surface warming trend for 1997–2012 is approximately 0.11 to 0.12°C per decade.
"I don't necessarily believe this, but even if it is true, how the hell did mankind manage to produce enough CO2 1400 years ago to make it that hot?"
Nah. first of all your argument is logically invalid even if it were actually warmer then.
"The Medieval Warm Period was warmer than current conditions. This means recent warming is not unusual and hence must be natural, not man-made."
The equivalent could go something like this:The Black Death in the middle ages is estimated to have killed more of Europe's population than World War 2. This means that deaths during World War 2 were not unusual, and hence must be due to natural causes, not man-made!!!
I gave you the 2K Network ref' which suggests that changes in ocean circulation patterns played a very important role in bringing warmer seawater into the North Atlantic. This explains much of the extraordinary warmth in that region at that time. These causes of warming contrast significantly with today's warming, which we know cannot be caused by the same mechanisms.Medieval Warm Period occurred during a time which had higher than average solar radiation and less volcanic activity (both resulting in warming).
Er, just how does it "warm the atmosphere"?
A good analogy that might help is the centre of the sun and photons versus neutrinos. Think of photons as infra red and neutrinos as anything else [eg ultra violet]that CO2 is transparent to.
Photons/light [CO2-100+ years in atmosphere] take a couple of hundred thousand years from their creation before they find their way to the surface of the Sun. Neutrinos take seconds to get to the same point. The photons bounce from one nuclei to another getting absorbed and re emitted in random directions.
Regards Venus, seems more likely that you want to ignore the 98% volume CO2 which we understand very well is an efficient absorber of infra red[heat!] and focus on other things. Other things do contribute of course. But they are far from sufficient to explain the temperatures on Venus that you previously assumed could not have been accurately measured :)
P156,
I wasn't disputing that there are charts showing an increase from 2000 on, so giving me a link to one doesn't prove or disprove that there are other charts showing no increase from 2000 on. I coud probably dig one out, but it wouldn't do any good, would it?
""I don't necessarily believe this, but even if it is true, how the hell did mankind manage to produce enough CO2 1400 years ago to make it that hot?"
Nah. first of all your argument is logically invalid even if it were actually warmer then."
Look, it was you who said that it was warmer 1400 years ago. All I ask is how did it get so warm then?
Warming the atmosphere: I can't follow your neutrino explanation, but no matter, it doesn't appear to explain how the atmosphere is only warmed by radiation that has been through a CO2 molecule.
Venus:seems more likely that you want to ignore the the fact that 98% by volume CO2 is very unlikely to behave in the same way as 0.035% by volume CO2, also ignore any likelihood of a vast and significant difference between Earth's and Venus'd atmosphere's (Earth is not surrounded by dense clouds of sulphuric acid)having any effect on their relative surface temperatures.
So you seem to be saying 'you' saw a chart/read a bit on somewhere or other that was making a statement about ocean temps not rising or land temps not rising, wrongly assumed it was typical and thought you'd just mention it in passing? Thanks.
For the 2nd time then. It likely got warm 'then' via changes in ocean currents/lower volcanic activity/increased solar activity.
"it doesn't appear to explain how the atmosphere is only warmed by radiation that has been through a CO2 molecule"
Let's forget about analogy's then.
It's NOT 'ONLY' through infra red but mainly. Since that's what sunlight[mostly visible and ultra violet] is transformed to once it is emitted from the Earth's surface. Temperature is a measure of vibration. If a CO2 molecule is good at the rapid absorption of infra red [heat/photons]it will vibrate as it receives energy from the incoming photons. Equates to higher temperature.
"Venus:seems more likely that you want to ignore the the fact that 98% by volume CO2 is very unlikely to behave in the same way as 0.035% by volume CO2, also ignore any likelihood of a vast and significant difference between Earth's and Venus'd atmosphere's (Earth is not surrounded by dense clouds of sulphuric acid)having any effect on their relative surface temperatures."
You're being obtuse. You claim that Venus must be so hot because of proximity to the Sun and Sulphuric Acid clouds and density of atmosphere. Anything but CO2.
Then you claim Earth has far less CO2 so how can Earth be comparable? Well is CO2 a warmer or not, make your mind up! Seems like 'it isn't ...BUT if it is there's not enough on earth to make a difference. As it is your argument here is like saying that even if a pound of arsenic [CO2] 'might' be poisonous,[though you doubt it is] a couple of grams can't hurt.
And why do you falsely claim that I ignore the factors of density, Sulfuric acid etc as factors in the relative temperatures of Venus and Earth?
So I'll finish with the same two lines from my last post to you which you somehow failed[10:20 26 March]to read last night. See above.Repeated here:
"OTHER THINGS DO CONTRIBUTE of course. But they are far from sufficient to explain the temperatures on Venus that you previously assumed could not have been accurately measured" :)
There. Can't think why you'd miss that...
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