I am a scientist, although not a 'climate' scientist. I would like to discuss the following points for my own edification.

My biggest challenge with 'ClimateChange' is that at one point it was referred to as the 'Anthropogenic Component of Global Warming', and subsequently 'Global Warming'. As the name changes, each time getting less specific and less measurable, more laws and regulations pass putting more financial burdens on my compatriots. It appears to be almost a 'slight of hand' trick on a geopolitical scale.

In my little mind, I like to reduce huge complex problems to simple problems so I can begin to understand the variables even if they are only approximations. So, instead of planet earth and the sun I think of a lightbulb heating a ping pong ball (no atmosphere whatsoever) versus a tennis ball (some atmosphere and an ability to retain heat).

In this very simple model, I ask myself "What factors must be known first and foremost". To me...the temperature of the lightbulb and the distance of the lightbulb from each planet far outweighs the significance of the ability of either ball to retain heat. The next most significant factor in that model is the color of the lightbulb and the color of the balls. White reflects more, black absorbs more. I know that the heat transferred is the temperature of the object to the fourth power. Does anyone have a nice equation for modeling the temperature of a ball by the lightbulb?

The single largest contributor is the temperature of the lightbulb, and as I understand it we don't really know how the Sun has behaved historically, and we know that it does change significantly. Can someone edify this point?

They just discovered mile wide methane bubbles coming up from under the arctic ocean, I have to believe that this methane source was not previously included in the methane inventory model. The whole concept of regulating/throttling the western economy is based upon the concept that human industrial production is the primary contributor/detractor to global warming (which I think is actually the sun?). If, as I believe, industrial processes contributions to climate change are insignificant relative to geophysical contributions, then isn't regulating industrial activity akin to spitting in the wind? When we pass a carbon tax, I assume that it is because we have proven that the Anthropogenic Component of Global Warming is the prominent contributor to Global Warming...correct? Can someone point me to proof of this fact?

Shouldn't we spend time increasing production to cope with rising tides? (Sorry Venice and Netherlands) .

OnCue wrote:My biggest challenge with 'ClimateChange' is that at one point it was referred to as the 'Anthropogenic Component of Global Warming', and subsequently 'Global Warming'. As the name changes, each time getting less specific and less measurable, more laws and regulations pass putting more financial burdens on my compatriots. It appears to be almost a 'slight of hand' trick on a geopolitical scale.

All these terms have been around for quite some time and I don´t think there´s been a movement towards one over the other.

OnCue wrote:The single largest contributor is the temperature of the lightbulb, and as I understand it we don't really know how the Sun has behaved historically, and we know that it does change significantly. Can someone edify this point?

Do we? The energy output changes by about 0.1% during the 11a solar cycles. We´ve got a record through Isotopes for the past 10ka or so and again the changes aren´t that drastic.

OnCue wrote:They just discovered mile wide methane bubbles coming up from under the arctic ocean, I have to believe that this methane source was not previously included in the methane inventory model. The whole concept of regulating/throttling the western economy is based upon the concept that human industrial production is the primary contributor/detractor to global warming (which I think is actually the sun?).

The main issue with stating that it´s the sun is that it doesn´t fit the data. Now, we´ve got the short term patterns, which simply don´t produce a long term trend (because they are cyclic) and we have the longer term patterns, which right now would - everything else being equal - lead to cooling. We´ve also got the cyclic changes in the earths orbit - also cooling right now.
On the other hand atmospheric CO2 is increasing less than our anthropogenic output (a part is dissolved in the oceans). And it is a greenhouse gas, which leads to warming and an increase in atmospheric water vapour. Which is also a greenhouse gas. The sun does play a small role, but this is part of the climate models. And they are highly sensitive to CO2 emissions. And what do you think makes frozen methane bubble up?

OnCue wrote:If, as I believe, industrial processes contributions to climate change are insignificant relative to geophysical contributions, then isn't regulating industrial activity akin to spitting in the wind? When we pass a carbon tax, I assume that it is because we have proven that the Anthropogenic Component of Global Warming is the prominent contributor to Global Warming...correct? Can someone point me to proof of this fact?

Check the IPCC report. There´s a rather large section called "the physical science basis" which you might want to digest.

OK I tried reading the IPCC report once but found it hard to get through because it lacked ANY facts. I will grab that section specifically and read it again. I will also post the data on the sun. I believe there is a strong correlation between the number of sun spots and the radiant intensity. Thanks for the feedback!

OnCue wrote: I am a scientist, although not a 'climate' scientist. I would like to discuss the following points for my own edification.

My biggest challenge with 'ClimateChange' is that at one point it was referred to as the 'Anthropogenic Component of Global Warming', and subsequently 'Global Warming'. As the name changes, each time getting less specific and less measurable, more laws and regulations pass putting more financial burdens on my compatriots. It appears to be almost a 'slight of hand' trick on a geopolitical scale.

Note that the IPCC has been around 20+ years and its name has always included the term "Climate Change," the "CC" part of "IPCC."

In the 90's the media began using the term "global warming" because they figured it would be more understandable to the public. In the early 2000's The George Bush administration in the US was advised to use the term "climate change" rather than "global warming" because it "sounded less scary."

But both terms have been used almost interchangeably, with a noticeable increase of the term "climate change" over "global warming" in the past few years.

The scientific hypothesis that describes how Greenhouse gasses (GHGs) cause the earth to become warmer is called "Anthropogenic Global Warming," and it too has been with us for many years. Use of the term "global warming" in this name is specific because the hypothesis directly addresses warming as caused by GHGs.

There is no real confusion on these terms in the scientific community; there may be confusion about them in media and in the minds of the public, people such as yourself.

OnCue wrote:
In my little mind, I like to reduce huge complex problems to simple problems so I can begin to understand the variables even if they are only approximations. So, instead of planet earth and the sun I think of a lightbulb heating a ping pong ball (no atmosphere whatsoever) versus a tennis ball (some atmosphere and an ability to retain heat).

In this very simple model, I ask myself "What factors must be known first and foremost". To me...the temperature of the lightbulb and the distance of the lightbulb from each planet far outweighs the significance of the ability of either ball to retain heat. The next most significant factor in that model is the color of the lightbulb and the color of the balls. White reflects more, black absorbs more. I know that the heat transferred is the temperature of the object to the fourth power. Does anyone have a nice equation for modeling the temperature of a ball by the lightbulb?

You're a scientist. I'd think this would be well within your own skill set.

OnCue wrote:
The single largest contributor is the temperature of the lightbulb, and as I understand it we don't really know how the Sun has behaved historically, and we know that it does change significantly. Can someone edify this point?

We do know how the sun has behaved historically, through analyzing certain isotopes that were left behind in sedimentary rocks and in evidence recovered from ice cores. The sun's radiance does NOT change "significantly" over time; it is variable but the variations are exceedingly minor.

OnCue wrote:
They just discovered mile wide methane bubbles coming up from under the arctic ocean, I have to believe that this methane source was not previously included in the methane inventory model.

The presence of methane clathrates on the ocean floor or in subsurface ocean bottoms has been known for some time and I'm sure it has been accounted for in various databases used by GCMs (climate models). The recent discovery of large-scale leakages comes as no surprise because oceans are warming too and guess what? You got it! Warm(er) water melts ice, hence causing any methane it contains to be released.

The Arctic, where this methane bubbling was discovered, has warmed more than any other region on the earth since the current warming trend got started around 1850, or about 2C degrees.

OnCue wrote:
The whole concept of regulating/throttling the western economy is based upon the concept that human industrial production is the primary contributor/detractor to global warming (which I think is actually the sun?). If, as I believe, industrial processes contributions to climate change are insignificant relative to geophysical contributions, then isn't regulating industrial activity akin to spitting in the wind?

This is where you trip up and fall down.

The earth's mean annual temperature (MAT) has risen about a degree C since 1850 and is contnuing to rise at the rate of about .2C degrees per decade. This has pushed earth's natural MAT, or what's known as its "preindustrial norm," up by that extent. This is a significant increase, most especially in such a short period of time. Going back a million years or so, Earth's MAT has rarely increased that much that fast, and perhaps never has.

What caused this rapid increase?

Man dumping tens of thousands of gigatons of GHGs into the atmosphere over the past 160-odd years, which has pushed its concentration in the atmsophere from about 280ppm in 1850 to 390ppm today, and rising.

Hence, efforts to curb our GHG emissions reflects attempts to get earth's MAT back on its normal trajectory and off this literally skyrcketing rate of increase it's exhibiting at the moment ... and will continue to exhibit should we fail in our efforts to reduce GHG emissions. But even if we stopped emitting GHGs entirely tomorrow, earth's MAT would continue to go up for a thousand years or so, owing to the huge load of GHGs that we've dumped into the atmosphere

To calibrate a one degree C increase you can compare it to the increase that occurred beginning some 15,000 years ago and proceeding for some 10,000 years thereafter, which was enough to bring the last great Ice Age to and end. That increase was no more than about 7 or 8 degrees C. But it was sufficient to melt ice sheets that has moved as far south as New York City and the State of Illinois in the American Midwest, melt them comletely back to the Arctic.

Also note that this 7 or 8 degree C rise took some 8 or 10 thousand years to occur, as compared to the one degree C rise we've caused in just a little more than 160 years,

OnCue wrote:
When we pass a carbon tax, I assume that it is because we have proven that the Anthropogenic Component of Global Warming is the prominent contributor to Global Warming...correct? Can someone point me to proof of this fact?

It has been "proven" with a 90 per cent probability of being "fact."

You need to go to the IPCC's website and download its 2007 4th Assessment Report, in which all of this is set forth. You claimed in a later post that you found "no facts" in this report, and yet, it's easy to see that it's chok-a-block with facts, and if you are a scientist as you claim, I'd not think you'd have any difficulty in ascertaining this yourself. Maybe you looked at the wrong volume or something, although I think every volume of AR4 reeks with facts.

Here's an article that may help you:

Global Warming: What Happens When You Factor Out the Other Factors

By Bill Chameides, Dean, Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment
Posted: 12/14/11 05:13 PM ET
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-cham ... ate-change

Has the warming trend slowed in the 2000s? Yes and no.

The rate of global warming has been the subject of much skepticism among the refudiater set. A good deal of that skepticism has been directed at the claim that there's been little to no warming since the end of the last millennium, with the main argument being that the warming trends found in countless studies were artifacts of siting, measurement and/or analytical errors.

A red herring? Almost certainly, given the abundance of independent evidence of a globally warming world -- the melting of glaciers and permafrost, the shrinking of Arctic sea ice in extent and volume, earlier bud breaks in spring, to name a few.

Nevertheless, the objections kept coming until a study by none other than a climate skeptic -- the temperature trend analysis by the Richard Muller-led Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project put the kibosh on them. The BEST team found a 1.8-degree Fahrenheit (1-degree Celsius) rise in land temps since 1950, pretty much in line with previous investigators.

OK, some skeptics say, the latter half of the 20th century saw warming, but so far the 21st century has not. Indeed, a cursory look at the global temperature record does not show any evidence of an increase. So what gives? Has the age of global warming come to a screeching halt? Are we even headed for global cooling? When one's talking about the future, it is a shaky business to say "never" or "no way." So I'll just say, "Not likely." Here's why.

Continues ...

OnCue wrote:
Shouldn't we spend time increasing production to cope with rising tides? (Sorry Venice and Netherlands) .

We can mitigate rising sea levels without necessarilly "increasing production," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.

So the answer here is a quite resounding "No!"

Given the exceedingly underdeveloped and underinformed nature of your commentary in this post, my reckoning would be that if you focused on learning about climate change and its causes and spent at least a year doing that, you might then come up to speed on these questions. Short of that, you're walking around in the fog.

Please see responses below...

[truncated for brevity]

Note that the IPCC has been around 20+ years and its name has always included the term "Climate Change," the "CC" part of "IPCC."
In the 90's the media began using the term "global warming" because they figured it would be more understandable to the public. In the early 2000's The George Bush administration in the US was advised to use the term "climate change" rather than "global warming" because it "sounded less scary."

But both terms have been used almost interchangeably, with a noticeable increase of the term "climate change" over "global warming" in the past few years.

The scientific hypothesis that describes how Greenhouse gasses (GHGs) cause the earth to become warmer is called "Anthropogenic Global Warming," and it too has been with us for many years. Use of the term "global warming" in this name is specific because the hypothesis directly addresses warming as caused by GHGs.

I would like to insist that the aforementioned terms cannot be used interchangeably. Global warming and climate change are indisputable Geological processes which (imo.) started long before industrial processes. At least in my elementary education, I have noted that the great lakes were supposedly caused by receding glaciers. This indicates that the earth has been thawing for some time.

The term "Anthropogenic Global Warming" is the term which allows lawyers to make carbon credit systems, set up international accords, and the like. It is the term which intimates that the human industrial effort is the primary if not sole causative factor for global warming, and this is the one point I cannot find the evidence of. Essentially, what is the difference in the rate of change of the climate cause by human existence. Subsequently, to what degree does an industrialized human existence have a greater or smaller impact upon this rate of change as compared to an indigenous populous.

There is no real confusion on these terms in the scientific community; there may be confusion about them in media and in the minds of the public, people such as yourself.

Yes, I am a confused simpleton.

[truncated for brevity]

We do know how the sun has behaved historically, through analyzing certain isotopes that were left behind in sedimentary rocks and in evidence recovered from ice cores. The sun's radiance does NOT change "significantly" over time; it is variable but the variations are exceedingly minor.

I think you underestimate the influence of magnetic shielding. In any case, please review this article and comment. It seems to at least dispute your argument with some empirical basis. http://www.dsri.dk/~hsv/new_sven0606.pdf Maybe you have one that comes to the opposite conclusion?

[...truncated]

The presence of methane clathrates on the ocean floor or in subsurface ocean bottoms has been known for some time and I'm sure it has been accounted for in various databases used by GCMs (climate models). The recent discovery of large-scale leakages comes as no surprise because oceans are warming too and guess what? You got it! Warm(er) water melts ice, hence causing any methane it contains to be released.

The Arctic, where this methane bubbling was discovered, has warmed more than any other region on the earth since the current warming trend got started around 1850, or about 2C degrees.

I think that you may need to check your facts. Geology tells us that the earth has been melting (warming) for a much longer period of time than 1850. I think you reference this in your own arguments below.

[truncated...]

What caused this rapid increase?

Your guess (and that is all it COULD be)...is as good as mine. Although, I have a theory that the slow increase in MAT, and steady melting of ice and glaciers changes the temperature of the oceans which decreases their capacity to retain carbon dioxide...but that is only a theory.

Man dumping tens of thousands of gigatons of GHGs into the atmosphere over the past 160-odd years, which has pushed its concentration in the atmsophere from about 280ppm in 1850 to 390ppm today, and rising.

Thousand of tones more than what?

Hence, efforts to curb our GHG emissions reflects attempts to get earth's MAT back on its normal trajectory and off this literally skyrcketing rate of increase it's exhibiting at the moment ... and will continue to exhibit should we fail in our efforts to reduce GHG emissions. But even if we stopped emitting GHGs entirely tomorrow, earth's MAT would continue to go up for a thousand years or so, owing to the huge load of GHGs that we've dumped into the atmosphere

OK, let me state that the collective dumping of millions of tons is most likely less than if human kind were to revert to a whale/oil and firewood based economy. Unless you plan to genetically change the human to not require heat, not require agriculture, medicine, etc...the modern industrial process may be far more friendly than a horse and buggy economy.

To calibrate a one degree C increase you can compare it to the increase that occurred beginning some 15,000 years ago and proceeding for some 10,000 years thereafter, which was enough to bring the last great Ice Age to and end. That increase was no more than about 7 or 8 degrees C. But it was sufficient to melt ice sheets that has moved as far south as New York City and the State of Illinois in the American Midwest, melt them comletely back to the Arctic.

Also note that this 7 or 8 degree C rise took some 8 or 10 thousand years to occur, as compared to the one degree C rise we've caused in just a little more than 160 years,

Excellent examples, thanks.

You need to go to the IPCC's website and download its 2007 4th Assessment Report, in which all of this is set forth. You claimed in a later post that you found "no facts" in this report, and yet, it's easy to see that it's chok-a-block with facts, and if you are a scientist as you claim, I'd not think you'd have any difficulty in ascertaining this yourself.

Maybe that is my problem. Each 'fact' I saw, gave me more cause for question than answer. I will re-read this.

Maybe you looked at the wrong volume or something, although I think every volume of AR4 reeks with facts.

Here's an article that may help you:

Global Warming: What Happens When You Factor Out the Other Factors

By Bill Chameides, Dean, Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment
Posted: 12/14/11 05:13 PM ET
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-cham ... ate-change

Has the warming trend slowed in the 2000s? Yes and no.

The rate of global warming has been the subject of much skepticism among the refudiater set. A good deal of that skepticism has been directed at the claim that there's been little to no warming since the end of the last millennium, with the main argument being that the warming trends found in countless studies were artifacts of siting, measurement and/or analytical errors.
[/quote]
Thanks! Didn't find much in the article that was...substantive.
[truncated...]

Nevertheless, the objections kept coming until a study by none other than a climate skeptic -- the temperature trend analysis by the Richard Muller-led Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project put the kibosh on them. The BEST team found a 1.8-degree Fahrenheit (1-degree Celsius) rise in land temps since 1950, pretty much in line with previous investigators.

Again, to me this only proves that global warming exists, not that the modern industrial effort enhance it to an extent that is significantly higher than the normal rate.

Shouldn't we spend time increasing production to cope with rising tides? (Sorry Venice and Netherlands) .

We can mitigate rising sea levels without necessarilly "increasing production," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.

So the answer here is a quite resounding "No!"

If we were to determine that global warming is an indisputable, unpreventable, incontrovertible fact (which I would be inclined to agree with), what coarse of action would you deem appropriate? Perhaps, we shut down all factorys and live like the indigenous peoples to expect an upcoming demise?

"The hell that's supposed to mean", is that maybe we need to begin colonizing the seas, creating new and better technologies which can help us thrive in the future whatever it may be...terrestrial or otherwise.

Given the exceedingly underdeveloped and underinformed nature of your commentary in this post, my reckoning would be that if you focused on learning about climate change and its causes and spent at least a year doing that, you might then come up to speed on these questions. Short of that, you're walking around in the fog.

[/quote]

Again, this is the type of response that I normally receive and expect from religious zealots...not scientists.

If we were to determine that global warming is an indisputable, unpreventable, incontrovertible fact (which I would be inclined to agree with), what coarse of action would you deem appropriate? Perhaps, we shut down all factorys and live like the indigenous peoples to expect an upcoming demise?

Despite a lot of uselessly verbose meandering you do come to the heart of the matter tho not the correct conclusion.

Parsing ( and my sense is that you are actually an AGW denier masquerading as an poorly informed scientist ) - I'm willing to be dissuaded of that

If we were to determine that global warming is an indisputable, unpreventable, incontrovertible fact (which I would be inclined to agree with),?

There is no IF ....It is - get over it - it was even in the 90s when fossil fuel companies own scientists called it 'incontrovertible )"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/scien ... .html?_r=2

What strikes me is you think the contribution of fossil carbon into the atmosphere is unique - it's not.
Basalt intrusion into carboniferous rocks on a massive scale also put massive carbon load into the atmosphere. We are actually increasing atmospheric carbon at a rate slightly higher than that leading up to the Permian extinction....but the latter was over tens of thousands of years = not 300.

and the resulting change in climate was in keeping with the role of carbon in the atmosphere which has been known and established for over a century.
Background/history
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/summary.htm

It magnifies other forcings and under certain circumstances can be a forcing itself ( now and the Deccan traps, the release of methane would also be a primary forcing ).

C02 is the magnifier of other forcings notably orbital. So it has a role in cooling as well. The physics of this is well understood tho there is, as with all science, more to know.

The heart of your questioning resides in the physics of carbon in atmosphere and you might as well try and pull evolution out of modern biology.
So you have to do your homework on how carbon works before you can get anywhere.

Carbon cycle
http://wufs.wustl.edu/pathfinder/pat...s_11_13_07.htm

David Archers paper in nature - Carbon is forever
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812 ... 8.122.html
- illuminates the persistence of fossil carbon in impacting the atmosphere. It does not go away quickly and we have already altered the climate 100k years out.
Even if we stopped cold - the impact would go on.

IF you are arguing that somehow the current carbon increase is not anthro....then you're a hopeless case.

Again, this is the type of response that I normally receive and expect from religious zealots...not scientists.

You ARE woefully ill informed for a purported scientist and this comment more than any labels you a denier - NOT an honest inquirer.
His assessment was bang on based on your own words. Barely literate about your own planet.

Now the second part

what coarse of action would you deem appropriate?

That would be course of action and again could be a typo - smacks more of paucity of intellect. It's not the only glaring spelling error so perhaps paucity is more likely.
It IS however the most cogent of all questions and there is no clear or simple course of action and it is where the debate needed to be centered 2 decades ago.....instead of the fossil funded "noise" the denier industry undertook.

Avoiding the worst consequences is perhaps attainable still but I doubt it will be undertaken.
MIT took a look
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 134843.htm

and this is now dated as C02 continues to rise even faster bringing worst case range closer to reality.

http://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/2011/ ... 011-report

Perhaps, we shut down all factorys and live like the indigenous peoples to expect an upcoming demise?

Coping with the inevitable consequences appears to be the ONLY course of action while moving towards a lower carbon industrial civilization which is also inevitable as eventually we'll use the accessible fossil carbon reserves up.

Human's are not so good at long multi-generational actions. The Montreal Accord was a wonderful exception.

You seem a too typical case and really should be ashamed of yourself for your woeful lack of understanding of the risk resulting from our use of C02 fuel, if you actually are a scientist.
Even as a literate human....your position is two decades behind the knowledge curve.

Of course you could simply be a willful denier with other agendas.
Likely I'd say.

Macdoc wrote:... my sense is that you are actually an AGW denier masquerading as an poorly informed scientist ...

My spidey sense is tingling on that, also.

Interesting that "matty matt" turns up in a climate denier search and our "scientist" is a an American objectivist.....certainly fertile ground for the denier moniker.

OnCue wrote:I am a scientist, although not a 'climate' scientist.
[...]
I know that the heat transferred is the temperature of the object to the fourth power. Does anyone have a nice equation for modeling the temperature of a ball by the lightbulb?
[...]
Shouldn't we spend time increasing production to cope with rising tides? (Sorry Venice and Netherlands) .

We'll be fine, climate change with rising sealevels are taken seriously here (too great a risk to ignore) and the dikes are constantly upgraded to meet the 1 in 10 000 years chance of breaking (meaning that if you live 100 years you'd have a 1% chance of the dikes breaking in a major way).

What kind of science do you do? You speak about knowing some about thermal radiation, but lack the ability of using their formulas.
This is an important one: (source: wikipedia)

I know that the heat transferred is the temperature of the object to the fourth power. Does anyone have a nice equation for modeling the temperature of a ball by the lightbulb?

earth is not a black body and C02 amongst other gases are the reason it's liveable. Useless bit of nonsense from you which sort of nails the lie about being any sort of a scientist - perhaps you are one of the misguided sods who consider economics a "science"

[...]
Shouldn't we spend time increasing production to cope with rising tides? (Sorry Venice and Netherlands) .

Sea level rise while dire and inevitable at this point is still well out there compared to other nearer term issues.
Deniers like maundering on about sea level while ignoring other nearer term ( this century ) issues....mostly biological in nature and shifts in climate zones ( expansion of the tropical band ) that have severe consequences for food production.
Disease ranges moving and devastation of northern forests by over wintering beetles. to name a couple of examples.

OnCue wrote:I am a scientist, although not a 'climate' scientist.

Global warming and climate change are indisputable Geological processes which (imo.) started long before industrial processes.

I have a theory that the slow increase in MAT, and steady melting of ice and glaciers changes the temperature of the oceans which decreases their capacity to retain carbon dioxide

These statements do not go together.

If you have a theory about climate change, publish it - you are a scientist after all.

I am a real scientist. I wouldn't publish "Hey...here's a theory". I would come onto a web based forum to discuss with objective science types. Apparently, those don't exist in this section of the forum.

Honestly, posting my web searches, calling me a "denier", calling into question my background? Well if this is what Canadians are calling "science"...you guys are too slow to understand the premise of my question because you are reflexively kicking what you have been taught. Let me crystallize my points:
1) Global warming is a fact (on this point we agree)
2) The anthropogenic contribution to this warming trend is what is being fined or penalized...for industrial nations.

Again, my question strikes at the basis for spending trillions in lost productivity to adjust a warming trend by an unknown quantity. What is that adjustment after being normalized against a baseline human culture?

If you are a scientist then what discipline.?...don't be shy
We'd like to know what discipline has adherents so poorly informed of earth science basics.

2) The anthropogenic contribution to this warming trend is what is being fined or penalized...for industrial nations.

Again, my question strikes at the basis for spending trillions in lost productivity to adjust a warming trend by an unknown quantity. What is that adjustment after being normalized against a baseline human culture?

No that was not your question ....that was an after thought predicated on IF.
There is no IF....you got that far yet???

So start by clarifying your actual position on the reality of AGW ....and don't fucking get condescending...you are the one in the "being taught mode" as you patently know little or nothing of climate science.....by your own statements.
Others of us have spent decades reading the science and watching AGW unfold from a "somewhere in the distant future" to "my kids are in for it "to....."now!!!"

spending trillions in lost productivity

utter speculation on your part.....provide a notated basis for that claim.
Continues to simply reinforce your AGW denier credentials.

a) Industrial civilizations will have to face lower carbon emissions - either in a controlled transition or it hits a wall...there are finite resources and despite the fracking mess there are still limits - and lets face it natural gas is less damaging than coal on the carbon front.

b) economic activity in search of lower carbon emission methods of energy production will produce a trillion dollar boom making the internet boom look tiny.

and even in tough economic times - green energy is growing. Like any emerging field there are failures and mistakes...how many car companies failed at the beginning of the last century and how many tech companies fail and fold?...... but we move forward.
But you want ancient filthy industrial age dinos like coal companies to get a free ride regardless of the damage they do and have done for fear of being out competed by emerging nations who have little or no responsibility for the increase in carbon in the atmosphere and merely want to develop their economies the way the first nations did.
Despite that...China both from necessity and foresight are developing alternative energy on a massive scale.

I really thought Objectivists lived by the pay for the consequences of your actions view.....apparently you have some odd sect that doesn't. Ayn would surely disapprove.

Global Investments in Green Energy Up Nearly a Third to US$211 billion Thu, Jul 7, 2011
Wind farms in China and small-scale solar panels on rooftops in Europe were largely responsible for last year's 32% rise in green energy investments worldwide according to the latest annual report on renewable energy investment trends issued by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

http://www.unep.org/newscentre/default. ... cleID=8805

you're just pissed off that your energy company's free use of the atmosphere as a sewer is over .....and you have to cough up for the consequences of that mess......
too typical a stance from a Yank.......piss in the drinking water??? no problem

Bill Gross disagrees with you

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/a_high-tec ... olar/2248/

he has cred.....you don't.

OnCue wrote:My biggest challenge with 'ClimateChange' is that at one point it was referred to as the 'Anthropogenic Component of Global Warming', and subsequently 'Global Warming'. As the name changes, each time getting less specific and less measurable, more laws and regulations pass putting more financial burdens on my compatriots. It appears to be almost a 'slight of hand' trick on a geopolitical scale.

As the evidence gets stronger for AGW, I wonder who would want to tone down the label's used in order to make the public less concerned? Oh right, conservative politicians. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqMunulJU7w

All these names "climate change", "global warming", "anthropocentric global warming" have been around for a long time. And it's not scientists selecting which term to use in order to fit the current evidence. This illusion of names "changing" is caused by the media.

The single largest contributor is the temperature of the lightbulb, and as I understand it we don't really know how the Sun has behaved historically, and we know that it does change significantly. Can someone edify this point?

Scientists are almost certain the sun hasn't been causing recent warming, do the research.

Is the sun causing recent warming? http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-a ... arming.htm

I assume that it is because we have proven that the Anthropogenic Component of Global Warming is the prominent contributor to Global Warming...correct? Can someone point me to proof of this fact?

It's fairly straight forward: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Also, leave your political views in the political forum. Whether you think "productivity" will be lost due to government action is a different discussion.

If you think the climate scientists have got it wrong. And the greenhouse effect hasn't been pushing the temperature slightly higher over the last 100 years, shows us why. Don't appeal to the "lost productivity if we are wrong" to get your point across.

OnCue wrote:I am a real scientist. I wouldn't publish "Hey...here's a theory". I would come onto a web based forum to discuss with objective science types. Apparently, those don't exist in this section of the forum.

Honestly, posting my web searches, calling me a "denier", calling into question my background? Well if this is what Canadians are calling "science"...you guys are too slow to understand the premise of my question because you are reflexively kicking what you have been taught. Let me crystallize my points:
1) Global warming is a fact (on this point we agree)
2) The anthropogenic contribution to this warming trend is what is being fined or penalized...for industrial nations.

Again, my question strikes at the basis for spending trillions in lost productivity to adjust a warming trend by an unknown quantity. What is that adjustment after being normalized against a baseline human culture?

If you want to discuss, that's fine. We can discuss.

Firstly, I've posted this before but here goes:

The thing is, that there aren't really two sides to the debate because the major scientific aspects of climate change have already been examined, debated and settled long before the discussion moved into the public sphere.
Consider this: at some point in the past, humans were ignorant of the effects of CO2 on temperature. At that time, no facts were known and there were no 'sides' whatsoever. If anything, the only 'side' was the status quo of increasing CO2 emissions as part of the industrial revolution.

Then Svante Arrhenius made the discovery that CO2 could trap heat and others throughout the early 20th century expanded upon this idea which culminated in Carl Sagan's hypothesis of runaway greenhouse effect being the cause for Venus' heat (as an interesting aside, James Hansen did not actually agree with this). Experiments were performed and ever more information was discovered about how atmospheric composition affects planetary temperature.

Moving back to Earth, various sensitive temperature recording stations reported some temperature rises and various other monitoring stations began to report the loss of sea ice. Someone plotted the trend and someone else decided to see if the CO2concentration was changing. It was found that they both were increasing. It was at this point that scientists began to get worried and James Hansen delivered his famous 1988 testimony to the US Congress.

The scientists kept on performing experiments and making observations, steadily becoming more and more certain of both the warming trend and the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. These trends, coupled with research over a century old (Arrhenius) and also coupled with historical data from the Eemian interglacial period where sea levels were tens of metres higher, spurred scientists to a call to action.

It is that call to action which is reported as one 'side' in the debate, but is it really a 'side'? If you look at the history of the science, all efforts have been expended to overcome the status quo and the inertia of polluting industry. There actually is no other side - scientists made observations, performed experiements, formulated a hypothesis and refined it into a theory. That is the normal process of producing knowledge from ignorance.

The other side would rather that all of that hard won knowledge had never been discovered.

Secondly, with that in mind, one must take "skeptic" arguments with a grain of salt. Given that we have long moved past the point where direct refutations of anthropogenic climate change are able to pass peer review, have a look at exactly where you read and hear the arguments which claim that humans are not (or have not) causing climate change. You will find that they are overwhelmingly either very old scientific papers, papers published in obscure pay-to-publish journals or are published on personal websites unaffiliated with any scientific institution. So you have to consider that, on one side, there is a consensus body of well-supported, peer-reviewed literature and on the other side there, well, isn't.

Thirdly, as others have said, this planet has finite resources. At some point we must move to a sustainable economy or we must locate and exploit resources beyond this planet. One of those will cost far less than the other and one of them is achievable with current technology. Asteroid mining and other such resource extraction techniques are far, far beyond our current capabilities.

Finally, there is no "baseline human culture" unless you want to consider pre-Industrial Revolution to be baseline. That culture produced 3-10x less food per unit area (depending on crop), supported 6x fewer people on the planet and had extremely high infant mortality and low life expectancy compared with First World countries today. However, it is mostly First World countries which have reaped the benefits of the Industrial Revolution. Other countries still have similarly low productivity per unit area and cannot support their own populations without aid and imports of food and supplies.

The warming trend was overwhelmingly caused by countries moving from pre-Industrial to modern First World. It is those same countries which are best poised to counter the warming trend and move towards a sustainable future.

The whole issue of productivity is a minefield when it is actually a placeholder for the concept of 'growth'. While we maintain this notion that growth is a necessary part of economic well-being, we're setting up the wrong targets. Efficiency and sustainability are more robust goals for planning to live on this finite planet with finite resources and finite atmospheric flexibility over the long term.

OnCue wrote:I am a real scientist. I wouldn't publish "Hey...here's a theory". I would come onto a web based forum to discuss with objective science types. Apparently, those don't exist in this section of the forum.

Honestly, posting my web searches, calling me a "denier", calling into question my background? Well if this is what Canadians are calling "science"...you guys are too slow to understand the premise of my question because you are reflexively kicking what you have been taught. Let me crystallize my points:
1) Global warming is a fact (on this point we agree)
2) The anthropogenic contribution to this warming trend is what is being fined or penalized...for industrial nations.

Again, my question strikes at the basis for spending trillions in lost productivity to adjust a warming trend by an unknown quantity. What is that adjustment after being normalized against a baseline human culture?

Is it your opinion that humans can pump inifinite quantities of gases such as CO2 into the atmosphere without ever having any effect?
If not, then you agree that AGW is a reasonable proposition, without us even having to debate the evidence.
The question then becomes how much do you think we can introduce to the atmosphere before we have an effect, and if you have decided that we are in no danger of reaching this figure, upon what data have you based this decision?

The damage to our economies is a worthless argument, I dare say slave traders complained about the damage banning their trade would have on the economy. Think of all those plantations that needed slave labour. Economy or not, we must follow the science, and the science indicates that we must dramatically reduce our pollution or pay heavily for our arrogance.