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About LinkBacksThere is not one shred of evidence that I and I'm sure YOU are aware of that positively proves that the phenomena known as "climate change" is occurring. I challenge you to post links to any source you have.Originally Posted by ibis
There is not one shred of evidence that I and I'm sure YOU are aware of that positively proves that the phenomena known as "climate change" is occurring. I challenge you to post links to any source you have.
Apparently the planet has been cooling for the last 10 years which is a bit of an inconvenient truth for the global warming zealots.
Mother Nature herself is denying Global Warming, having the nerve and absolute cheek to freeze our asses off this winter and soak us with rain last summer instead of obeying the religious dogma of 'trendy', 'with-it', 'insider' Eco Fascists and baking us.
It's not mathematics - there's no equation that simply 'proves' climate change.
What we have instead is observed changes in the climate, and a bunch of climate models that show the best fit to those observations as being the greenhouse effects of anthropogenic emissions. That's what we've got - what we don't have is any remaining good explanations for those observations that don't involve our emissions.
Never let the best be the enemy of the good.
The anthropogenic proportion of all the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere is miniscule. Coupled with that, (although admittedly a powerful one), CO2 accounts for about 5% of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. There is scientific evidence found in ice cores which shows that dramatic and rapid climate change, over a period of mere decades, is nothing new.
All of which means exactly nothing, because nobody claimed that any of that was not the case.
Yes, the proportion of our emissions compared to natural emissions is small (not miniscule) - but the difference is that the rest of the natural emissions are balanced out by natural disposal, while ours isn't. So ours accumulates, whereas the rest is disposed of.
Yes, CO2 is less than 5% of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere (it's not a particularly powerful one, though). However, the majority of the greenhouse effect is provided by water vapour, which has an atmospheric residence time of ten days. That means that the water vapour in the atmosphere is a result of the planet being warm. That means that while water vapour contributes to a greenhouse effect, it cannot drive it - fortunately, since if that were possible, water vapour in the atmosphere would have led to a feedback effect that would have boiled off the oceans several billion years ago.
Yes, significant climate change can take place over a couple of decades, and has done so at the start of ice ages. However, we know why those shifts have happened - they're the result of planetary cycles like the Milankovitch cycle. None of those causes are currently operating sufficiently to produce the effects we're seeing.
All of this stuff has been studied. It may be new to you, but it's not new to climate scientists, geologists, palaeoclimatologists, and the others who have studied it over the last 40 years.
The reason you don't see climate skeptic bloggers coming out with detailed models of how the current solar changes produce the observed current changes in climate is because they don't. It's a hand-waving explanation - "look, solar changes - ergo, they must be the cause!". The solar changes have been factored in. The water vapour has been factored in. Volcanic emissions have been factored in. Ozone has been factored in. Sulphates have been factored in. The modelled effects of greenhouse gas forcing is the best explanation for the majority of the effect we observe.
Here's the picture of the attribution of the effects:
You only have two rational choices here - either the consensus of climate scientists is false (they're either lying, or there is some completely mysterious mechanism they've totally failed to spot which exactly mimics the expected effects of greenhouse emissions), or there's a 95%+ (IPCC probability level) that anthropogenic emissions are causing rapid climate changes unprecedented in human history. There is no middle ground of 'insufficient data' left. That's why governments have finally got up off their arses and are actually doing something - if little, and late.
Last edited by ibis; 11th February 2009 at 01:48 AM.
Never let the best be the enemy of the good.
Anthropogenic CO2 is miniscule, I could google it but I won't bother. Also why is CO2 the baddie of all the greenhouse gases, when a cow produces more greenhouse gas in a day than your average car? How is the cow's emmissions balanced out? Why has the planet been cooling for the last decade, contrary to global warming forecasts? There is an industry of globall warming science, driven by a political agenda, doing very nicely out of this. As you mentioned it, solar flares have better predicted climate change than global warming science.
Variously:
1. CO2 isn't the 'baddie' - other greenhouse gases are expressed in CO2 equivalent, so that's the unit used
2. The cow's emissions aren't balanced out - there's just no political will to tackle agricultural emissions.
3. The planet hasn't been cooling for the last decade - where are you getting that claim from? It's expected to plateau for a while, because the current expected natural climate cycle is a decadal cooling one - so, with warming, we plateau for a bit.
4. As I mentioned it, solar activity has no such "better predicted climate change". They have an effect, which has been taken into consideration, and which doesn't explain the observed changes.
5. There is a growing industry taking advantage of the need to shift to greener power, and to reduce emissions - it's a byproduct of the now 10-15 year old policy changes, which are a byproduct of the now 40 year old scientific research.
It's impossible to convince people who want to think it's a scam. I wish they were right, but the chance of that being the case is about 1 in 100 at this stage. The scientific community was aware of what was probably happening long before either policy-makers accepted it, or industry saw value in it - anyone is welcome to order themselves some back-issues of something like New Scientist from 20 years ago - they are full of complaints from the scientific community that their warnings are being ignored, and that they needed proper funding. You want to continue to ignore the warnings until you're "convinced" that we're up the creek, but the argument has moved on to finding paddles.
Never let the best be the enemy of the good.
Where are you getting this statistic from?
It wasn't much longer ago than that we were being treated to global freezing doom mongering by the self-same cohort.
You've grudgingly admitted that all your 'evidence' is based on modelling. It's demonstrable that the planet is not warming currently even as output of anthropogenic greenhouse gases grows.
I echo the sentiments quoted in the first post.
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The IPCC's 95%+ probability, assumed to be conservative. because of the way the IPCC process works.
It was the 1970's - and consisted of one researcher and a whole lot of journos.
I've grudgingly admitted to myself that what people want is an equation or something equally simple that "proves" climate change.
It's demonstrable that it is - that's what all the data shows.
There's a shock. Your "skepticism" is unassailable by mere science.
Never let the best be the enemy of the good.
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