Leonidas wrote:

Scar wrote:
Why come back when you only want to keep repeating your dumb misrepresentation of global warming?

Written like a true AGW believer! Never submit a reply without ignoring the points raised and always include an insult.

To enlighten you: Early Christians believed in an imminent Day of Judgement. Here we are two thousand years later and it still hasn't happened. The 'predictions' of Nostradamus and other charlatans have to be 'reinterpreted' every few years when nothing happens. The High Priests of AGW are also in the business of predicting doom but like the others they have a crap track record with their predictions.

I shall continue to point out the mismatch between the AGW doom predictions and the real world of business as usual. Once again the challenge: Anything at all AGW related going on anywhere at all in this big wide world of ours? The longer nothing happens the more the whole edifice will crumble.

Why on earth should I address the same old long debunked lies you've been spouting for countless pages?
This post in itself is just another (or rather the same you've been repeating ad nauseum) straw-men and given that you've been lectured on how you are utterly wrong I can only assume it's deliberate.

I do not take liars seriously.

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:
Political action isn't what's needed, we simply have to cut GHG emissions. That's the needed action.

Cutting GHG emissions would have had no effect on the many prehistoric warming events. You cannot be sure it would have any effect on temperatures today. See further below.

Earth's mean annual temp has been rising far longer than 30 years and in fact has been trending upward at the rate of about .15 degrees C per decade for more than 100 years.

For about 150 years according to what I read, i.e. long before AGW allegedly began.

Your characterization of the warming that has occurred is misleading. There has not been a temp rise as rapid as what we are now experiencing in more than a million years.

You have clearly not read my earlier posts. Please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas

This includes:
Measurements of oxygen isotopes from the GISP2 ice core suggest the ending of the Younger Dryas took place over just 40 – 50 years in three discrete steps, each lasting five years. Other proxy data, such as dust concentration, and snow accumulation, suggest an even more rapid transition, requiring about a 7°C warming in just a few years. Total warming was 10° ±4°C.

The end of the Younger Dryas has been dated to around 9500 BC (11550 calendar years BP, occurring at 10,000 radiocarbon years BP, a "radiocarbon plateau") by a variety of methods...

There is simply no comparison. No temp change has happened over the past million years that even comes close to this rate.

You clearly have a very different idea of the Younger Dryas to that expressed in the report above. Are there reports that you can reference in support of your view?

Actually, no, the big picture does indeed show an ongoing rise in earth's mean annual temperature. Of course it fluctuates a bit round the trendline but the trend is as much upward today as it ever has been. You can't use a slight fluctuation downward over a very brief period of time to claim the trend has bent downward because as with any dynamic system there will be up and down fluctuations, but as long as they offset the trendline does not change, as it indeed has not.

Sensible comments. But assuming that a warming trend that started about 150 years ago, with some interruptions, will simply continue on and on is no more than an assumption. Things might turn out differently. It is always tempting to project an existing trend into the far future but very often this is not what happens. For example old assumptions about the population of China now look very dated.

There are no "benefits" to warming. When corn is subjected to temps higher than 84F for a sustained period its yields drop precipitiously, ditto most other field crops.

Weird! You write as if the world runs on a single crop and warming affects nothing else. A few benefits of warming:
1. Fewer deaths from hypothermia
2. Fewer accidents due to ice, snow and frost
3. Less crop damage due to frost etc
4. Lower insurance premiums due to the above
5. Longer growing season
6. More moisture in the air to produce more rainfall for people and crops

“Small amounts” of annual warming accumulate to become big amounts over time. The current rate is running about .2C degrees per decade. Take that out 89 years to 2100 and what do you get? Yes, 1.2C in 2100 over today.

I don't deny that that might be exactly what happens. But it does not equal disaster and we have plenty of time to see if this trend does resume/continue.

But there's more to it than this because the rate is accelerating, as caused by continued dumping of ever rising amounts of C02 into the atmosphere, currently running at 28,000 gigatons per year.

I see no evidence of accelerating warming. I thought you were saying the present periodic widespread cold periods were a downward fluctuation.

IPCC thus estimates that the earth's mean annual will be +4 to +6C over the preindustrial background come the year 2100, and the consequences of that will be nothing short of horrendous.

These figures contrast sharply with the figures you have given for what has happened so far. This is an example of what I see as political panic-mongering. I wonder if the widespread cold winters since 2007 will produce a re-evaluation in the next report.

Your characterizations of the situation are consistently and persistently disingenuous and misleasing and quite ill-informed.

I have a similar opinion about you but that gets us nowhere in debating the issue.

I wrote:
Once again the challenge: Anything at all AGW related going on anywhere at all in this big wide world of ours? The longer nothing happens the more the whole edifice will crumble.

Scar wrote:
Why on earth should I address the same old long debunked lies you've been spouting for countless pages?

This post in itself is just another (or rather the same you've been repeating ad nauseum) straw-men and given that you've been lectured on how you are utterly wrong I can only assume it's deliberate.

Can't come up with anything eh? I'm not surprised. No problems with heat, sea-level, hurricanes or any of the other AGW consequences that we have been told again and again over the past few decades will doom us. Some of these things will happen from time to time of course and then the usual tabloid science will be wheeled out. I think that is the way the Old Testament prophets operated. They waited for a natural or man-made disaster and then explained that everybody must mend their wicked ways or there would be more and worse punishment to come.

This of course only works with true believers like you.

Leonidas wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:
Political action isn't what's needed, we simply have to cut GHG emissions. That's the needed action.

Cutting GHG emissions would have had no effect on the many prehistoric warming events. You cannot be sure it would have any effect on temperatures today. See further below.

Sure I can, all I have to do is understanbd and appreciate the effect that dumping tens of thousands of gigatons of C02 into the atmosphere over the past 150 years has had. You think this has had no effect? If you do then you don't understand the greenhouse effect, which is climate science 101. Which means you don't belong in this discussion and should go away and learn a few things before making yourself even more foolish than you already have.

Leonidas wrote:

Earth's mean annual temp has been rising far longer than 30 years and in fact has been trending upward at the rate of about .15 degrees C per decade for more than 100 years.

For about 150 years according to what I read, i.e. long before AGW allegedly began.

Coinciding perfectly with man's production of C02 from burning coal on large scales and cutting down forests in huge swaths and later burning a lot of petroleum. This relationship is well established. You were the one talking 30 years, not me.

Leonidas wrote:

Your characterization of the warming that has occurred is misleading. There has not been a temp rise as rapid as what we are now experiencing in more than a million years.

You have clearly not read my earlier posts. Please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas

This includes:
Measurements of oxygen isotopes from the GISP2 ice core suggest the ending of the Younger Dryas took place over just 40 – 50 years in three discrete steps, each lasting five years. Other proxy data, such as dust concentration, and snow accumulation, suggest an even more rapid transition, requiring about a 7°C warming in just a few years. Total warming was 10° ±4°C.

The end of the Younger Dryas has been dated to around 9500 BC (11550 calendar years BP, occurring at 10,000 radiocarbon years BP, a "radiocarbon plateau") by a variety of methods...

There is simply no comparison. No temp change has happened over the past million years that even comes close to this rate.

You clearly have a very different idea of the Younger Dryas to that expressed in the report above. Are there reports that you can reference in support of your view?

The resolution of data that pertains to the Younger Dryas isn't sufficiently fine to assert that events happened in time frames of five years. The entire event is still under intense study and much is yet to be learned about it. We'll probably never get resolutions in the data that support five year events in robust ways.

Leonidas wrote:

Actually, no, the big picture does indeed show an ongoing rise in earth's mean annual temperature. Of course it fluctuates a bit round the trendline but the trend is as much upward today as it ever has been. You can't use a slight fluctuation downward over a very brief period of time to claim the trend has bent downward because as with any dynamic system there will be up and down fluctuations, but as long as they offset the trendline does not change, as it indeed has not.

Sensible comments. But assuming that a warming trend that started about 150 years ago, with some interruptions, will simply continue on and on is no more than an assumption. Things might turn out differently. It is always tempting to project an existing trend into the far future but very often this is not what happens. For example old assumptions about the population of China now look very dated.

It's not an "assumption" it's a prognostication based on scientific evidence using scientifically valid means, with 95 per cent probability. If you think the projections IPCC has set forth for the years 2100 are |assumptions" then clearly you have not read the science that produced them, which is freely available in AR4 from IPCC's website. I suggest you give this material a good close look before asserting that IPCC's projections are "assumptions." They are as far from assumptions as it is possible to get.

There are no "benefits" to warming. When corn is subjected to temps higher than 84F for a sustained period its yields drop precipitiously, ditto most other field crops.

Weird! You write as if the world runs on a single crop and warming affects nothing else. A few benefits of warming:
1. Fewer deaths from hypothermia
2. Fewer accidents due to ice, snow and frost
3. Less crop damage due to frost etc
4. Lower insurance premiums due to the above
5. Longer growing season
6. More moisture in the air to produce more rainfall for people and crops[/quote]
This reveals a horrendous degree of ignorance of the realities. How many people die from hypothermia every year?

None of these things even come close to countervaling or trading off with the harsh consequences we'll have if the planet warms 5 or 6C between now and 2100. More rainfall? Sure, in torrential downpours in places that haven't ever experienced a lot of precipitation, causing flooding and wiping crops out. Longer growing season? Food crops have already been optimized for the climate regimes in which they grow.

You must not have any awareness of what a plus 5 or 6C increase in earth's mean annual even means.

Leonidas wrote:

“Small amounts” of annual warming accumulate to become big amounts over time. The current rate is running about .2C degrees per decade. Take that out 89 years to 2100 and what do you get? Yes, 1.2C in 2100 over today.

I don't deny that that might be exactly what happens. But it does not equal disaster and we have plenty of time to see if this trend does resume/continue.

But there's more to it than this because the rate is accelerating, as caused by continued dumping of ever rising amounts of C02 into the atmosphere, currently running at 28,000 gigatons per year.

I see no evidence of accelerating warming. I thought you were saying the present periodic widespread cold periods were a downward fluctuation.

Only lasted about a year, if that. Have you ever looked closely at a graph of earth's temp for Pete's sake?

Leonidas wrote:

IPCC thus estimates that the earth's mean annual will be +4 to +6C over the preindustrial background come the year 2100, and the consequences of that will be nothing short of horrendous.

These figures contrast sharply with the figures you have given for what has happened so far. This is an example of what I see as political panic-mongering. I wonder if the widespread cold winters since 2007 will produce a re-evaluation in the next report.

No they won't ... because the trendline continues to rise.

I've cited two figures, one an average from 1850 to 2000 (+1.5C/decade) and one for 2007 to 2100 (+2.5C/decade). These numbers do not "contrast sharply" and are entirely consistent and merely depict the accelerating rate as caused by increasing emissions of C02 and further loading og this gas in the armosphere. Note that it's concentration is rising. I happened to be atop Mauana Kea in Hawaii just three weeks ago, where they measure atmospheric C02 (the only place in the world this is done). Climate scientists there reported to me they are seeing spikes as high as 420ppm, and the concentration has been steadily rising (in large part because C02 is a long lived gas in the atmosphere). It currently stands at 390ppm.

You do realize that even if we stopped emitting C02 tomorrow the earth would continue to warm for at least 100 years and perhaps longer, before all the C02 we've emitted broke down and dissipated. You do realize that if we do not cut emissions radically over the coming decade that we'll be unable to prevent a rise in earth's mean annual temp of somewhere between 3 and 6 degrees C by 2100 and that such an increase will be very difficult for us to handle? This isn't "political panic mongering," this is facing the facts of the matter.

Leonidas wrote:

Your characterizations of the situation are consistently and persistently disingenuous and misleasing and quite ill-informed.

I have a similar opinion about you but that gets us nowhere in debating the issue.

It isn't an "opinion," it's a knowledgeable deduction, supported by reasoned argument.

Now, do me a favor and don't respond to this post because I'm through wasting my valuable time on someone who can't seem to grasp a few simple ideas or apprehend the difference between a scientific projection and an assumption.

Leonidas wrote:

I wrote:
Once again the challenge: Anything at all AGW related going on anywhere at all in this big wide world of ours? The longer nothing happens the more the whole edifice will crumble.

Scar wrote:
Why on earth should I address the same old long debunked lies you've been spouting for countless pages?

This post in itself is just another (or rather the same you've been repeating ad nauseum) straw-men and given that you've been lectured on how you are utterly wrong I can only assume it's deliberate.

Can't come up with anything eh? I'm not surprised. No problems with heat, sea-level, hurricanes or any of the other AGW consequences that we have been told again and again over the past few decades will doom us. Some of these things will happen from time to time of course and then the usual tabloid science will be wheeled out. I think that is the way the Old Testament prophets operated. They waited for a natural or man-made disaster and then explained that everybody must mend their wicked ways or there would be more and worse punishment to come.

This of course only works with true believers like you.

Hey Leonidas, repeating the same lies and straw-men again and again won't make them come true.

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:Sure I can, all I have to do is understanbd and appreciate the effect that dumping tens of thousands of gigatons of C02 into the atmosphere over the past 150 years has had. You think this has had no effect? If you do then you don't understand the greenhouse effect, which is climate science 101. Which means you don't belong in this discussion and should go away and learn a few things before making yourself even more foolish than you already have.

I find it absolutely astonishing how again and again AGW posters mainly focus on shutting down all debate. They don't try to persuade, they try to shut up non-believers, and they are generally unpleasant and insulting at the same time.

Once again there is an obvious parallel with religious belief. The early Christians looked to persuade. But once Christianity was an established religion any dissent was treated as heresy and even persuasion and debate was ruthlessly suppressed. It seems to me that exactly the same emotions are in play here.

As for the greenhouse effect I have never disputed that there is such an effect. Indeed I understand that without it the Earth would be uninhabitable. However AGW proponents take things a lot further than a simple assessment of the Greenhouse effect. As you have illustrated in your previous post they assume a future acceleration of warming. I understand that this is because of the feedback assumptions they put into their computer models. These models have already been found wanting on a number of occasions as I have illustrated earlier in this thread. Scepticism is therefore the only reasonable response to the doom scenarios that they produce.

Coinciding perfectly with man's production of C02 from burning coal on large scales and cutting down forests in huge swaths and later burning a lot of petroleum. This relationship is well established. You were the one talking 30 years, not me.

I think 30 years comes from the AGW community. Before that some of them were talking about the threat of a coming ice-age.

The resolution of data that pertains to the Younger Dryas isn't sufficiently fine to assert that events happened in time frames of five years. The entire event is still under intense study and much is yet to be learned about it. We'll probably never get resolutions in the data that support five year events in robust ways.

If there is so much uncertainty about what happened even in an intensely studied period only 10,000 years ago then it is probably best that you do not claim that the recent trivial warming is the most rapid for a million years.

None of these things even come close to countervaling or trading off with the harsh consequences we'll have if the planet warms 5 or 6C between now and 2100.

Probably true, if the planet warms that much and that quickly. But there are still benefits of warming.

More rainfall? Sure, in torrential downpours in places that haven't ever experienced a lot of precipitation, causing flooding and wiping crops out. Longer growing season? Food crops have already been optimized for the climate regimes in which they grow.

Yes I thought you would respond with the downside to warming. There is indeed a downside to any change but the picture is always mixed. A longer growing season from Europe, across Russia and the Ukraine and into North China, the USA and Canada would massively increase world agricultural output.

Only lasted about a year, if that. Have you ever looked closely at a graph of earth's temp for Pete's sake?

Only a year? Oh, we are back to the nonsense of the warmest year and decade. I have already referenced reports that say this is nonsense and why. I have yet to see a reference to any report supporting this claim and continue to wonder if this claim is simply a tabloid write-up of a press release, i.e. not any sort of science at all.

I've cited two figures, one an average from 1850 to 2000 (+1.5C/decade) and one for 2007 to 2100 (+2.5C/decade). These numbers do not "contrast sharply" and are entirely consistent and merely depict the accelerating rate as caused by increasing emissions of C02 and further loading og this gas in the armosphere.

Two figures, the first based on actual measurements of what has happened, the second a prediction of what is going to happen. Remarkably the moment when the real actual measurements stop and predictions about the future begin is exactly the moment when warming will allegedly accelerate massively. So far there has been no such acceleration in warming since 2007.

Note that it's concentration is rising. I happened to be atop Mauana Kea in Hawaii just three weeks ago, where they measure atmospheric C02 (the only place in the world this is done). Climate scientists there reported to me they are seeing spikes as high as 420ppm, and the concentration has been steadily rising (in large part because C02 is a long lived gas in the atmosphere). It currently stands at 390ppm.

None of that is in dispute. It is what effect it has that is the subject of debate.

You do realize that even if we stopped emitting C02 tomorrow the earth would continue to warm for at least 100 years and perhaps longer, before all the C02 we've emitted broke down and dissipated. You do realize that if we do not cut emissions radically over the coming decade that we'll be unable to prevent a rise in earth's mean annual temp of somewhere between 3 and 6 degrees C by 2100 and that such an increase will be very difficult for us to handle? This isn't "political panic mongering," this is facing the facts of the matter.

No, this is the output of AGW computer models, the same models that so far have a very poor track record when compared with what actually happens.

Now, do me a favor and don't respond to this post because I'm through wasting my valuable time on someone who can't seem to grasp a few simple ideas or apprehend the difference between a scientific projection and an assumption.

Yes, I do appreciate that you would like there to be two sorts of people in the world; true believers and those who keep their mouths shut. I am afraid you will be endlessly disappointed, especially if the real world continues to show no sign of all the predicted bad consequences of AGW.

Scar wrote:
Hey Leonidas, repeating the same lies and straw-men again and again won't make them come true.

Best you stop doing it then and only debate when you can offer something other than abuse.

Leonidas wrote:

Scar wrote:
Hey Leonidas, repeating the same lies and straw-men again and again won't make them come true.

Best you stop doing it then and only debate when you can offer something other than abuse.

I can't debate when there is nothing of substance on offer. I can not debate that which has long ceased to be debatable. Global warming is real. I do not debate lying deniers. Pointing out you lying and building straw-men is a statement of fact, not abuse.

Scar wrote:
I can't debate when there is nothing of substance on offer. I can not debate that which has long ceased to be debatable. Global warming is real. I do not debate lying deniers. Pointing out you lying and building straw-men is a statement of fact, not abuse.

Oh do try to keep up. Of course Global Warming is real. How many times do I have to repeat that? This debate is not about the reality of Global Warming it is about the CAUSE of Global Warming and the doubtful validity of the scaremongering predictions about the future from those who think all natural warming and cooling mechanisms have gone on an extended holiday after 4.5 billion years.

Yadda yadda yadda.... yeah, you do think repetition would make it true.

"Waaah waah it's not fair! Waaah! Why should I be ridiculed for talking out my ass?"

Here's a hint: it's probably because you're talking out your ass.

Oh and if you want to complain about rudeness without being a hypocrite it's probably best not to compare people to religious bigots. Just an idea.

mcgruff wrote:"Waaah waah it's not fair! Waaah! Why should I be ridiculed for talking out my ass?"

Here's a hint: it's probably because you're talking out your ass.

Oh and if you want to complain about rudeness without being a hypocrite it's probably best not to compare people to religious bigots. Just an idea.

Yunno, it has dawned on me just what Leonidas's problem is, and it's very clearly that he's not either read or studied a lick of climate science for at least a decade. I say this because while he agrees that warming is occurring, admitting that thermometers don't lie, he remains unconvinced as to the cause.

Well, climate science has news for him because the cause has been unequivocally known for at least a decade and probably longer and it is GHG pollution in our atmosphere. There simply has been no doubt about this for at least the past decade, and yet Leonidas continues to argue otherwise, without ever offering a shred of proof or even a theory as to what else could be causing it ... other than "the climate has changed in the past," which is just slightly unhelpful.

So that's it, I think we've smoked him out, he's not reading the science, failing to keep abreast of findings that have occurred over the past decade in climate science. Of course it might also be true that he holds stock in Exxon and suffers a dreadful conflict of interest, but of course we don't know.

It is true of course that it takes one hell of a lof of time and effort to keep up with the goings on in climate science, it's no easy task. But, if one wishes to participate in a discussion like this one that's what they have to do, they have to keep up. It's either that ... or shut up.

That's right guys: getting annoyed when the repeatedly offered up the scientific evidence is ignored, misunderstood and misrepresented is the same as shutting down the debate. Funny that christians have been mentioned, because the have similar accusations about the evolution 'debate' being shut down.

ginckgo wrote:That's right guys: getting annoyed when the repeatedly offered up the scientific evidence is ignored, misunderstood and misrepresented is the same as shutting down the debate. Funny that christians have been mentioned, because the have similar accusations about the evolution 'debate' being shut down.

And any "debate" over the veracity of evolution is a good analogy to any "debate" over the cause of global warming. Nobody in their right mind would argue that evolutionary theory as we know it is a load of hooey, and in the very same way they'd not argue that GHG pollution isn't the cause of the warming we are observing.

It's best to put that debate behind us and move on to other more crucial facets of the issue, and there are many and they demand our attention and deserve our discussion.