The “man-on-the-street� is probably not ever going to be in a good position to cope with this level of debate, and never has been. It is important though, that the “man-on-the-street� understand the scientific method itself, and that is well within his/her grasp

what a cop-out! so there’s nothing sensible a man-on-the-street can say in a debate like this other than to cheer-lead for mainstream science, & education should go as far as to teach everyone to automatically respect the mainstream science view!

if the man on the street has a query which can’t be answered other than by saying “the big experts think you’re wrong, & they’ve been saying it for quite a while now” we’re in trouble. if the experts in the field are so far ahead of the man in the street, they should have no trouble in dealing with such queries.

the “pot shots” in peer review typically consist of finding problems with the experimental method, or of simply reporting that the results have not been replicated. it is not “normal practice” to confine criticism to offering alternative theory.

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http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/paleoclimate.htm

Pretty much the same data, better presentation.

respectfully
BJ

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Gerrit

I realized as I was reading that the issue you raise is actually something missed in the reading of the historical record. For the most part, the “handle” of the “hockey stick” is so fuzzy (the reliability and variability of the data is so low, as to be quite impossible to say of a certainty whether the Medieval Warm Period was “warmer” than today or not. We don’t think it was but it isn’t like we have a “way-back machine” to go back and measure it.

That variability decreases enormously as of the invention of the thermometer, but the global temperature is still hard to be certain of, what we have are proxies and fuzzy data sets and stories about wine being made in Britain… and the French had nothing to worry about on that score… but we don’t have hard numbers.

Using the proxies we have and checking them for agreement with the direct measures we have, we see a number of things that are pretty striking.

First is that Mann et.al. still defend their version of the hockey stick with some success and the various considerations of this make interesting reading… but no, I don’t have access to these papers either.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/h483676101066104/
http://www.springerlink.com/content/c668835m747q4823/

I am assuming you are familiar with the “Hockey Stick” itself. I reckon the handle to be too fuzzy to be of much use but… the fact that IT is fuzzy doesn’t give any comfort to the last 150 years… for the “fuzziness” does not shift forward into them. You cannot say that the variability and reliability of data now is as bad as it was then, and so you cannot judge the current trends we measure based on the problems with earlier data.

Hmmm… I probably need to figure out a better way to explain what I mean.

Suppose you are trying to predict the growth of a tree.

You have data for how much the tree grew each year for the past 35 years… but for the first 25 it is an indirect measurement of the amount of leaves collected in the compost bin. For the past 10 years however, you know about the rainfall, the temperature every day, the solar insolation, the nutrient levels in the soil and all the rest. You still don’t KNOW what will happen, but when you examine this you discover that the soil chemistry is deteriorating gradually and you can tease that effect out from the statistics… a weak signal… and you can do something with it and calibrate somewhat… the compost bin data.

That doesn’t give you the ability to say that because the compost bin data is highly variable and iffy, the recent data is. Which is what I think you imply (albeit without meaning to) when you say

“When I look at the Vostok Ice Core graph I see that in the last 1000 years the temperature on earth has remained reasonable constant (+-1)”

The interpretation of those two sets of data is basically what the “hockey stick” controversy is about. The vostok core is good data, but it isn’t nearly as fine grained and accurate as what we have today. Now we have much less variability and a greater requirement to identify component causes.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/clisci100k.html

Going back 100k years looks more like this. The site is pretty good but not specific. There is more recent data available for the past million years.

The spikes and dips, and the abrupt changes are all very interesting… but all are measured by proxies, not by direct measures.

I’m not done but I have to go now.

respectfully
BJ

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http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf

Gerrit

That’s not an answer to your questions, but it is an answer to a lot of questions about what we knew about and when.

Andrew

The people who take pot-shots at a theory can do much to tear it down or cause it to be re-thought. That is particularly true if they are backed by actual science.

You are correct. They do not need to have a competing theory in order to participate in the debate. They can offer evidence that the theory in question is wrong and offer no replacement. That’s not normal practice in science… if you have evidence of some process you do generally want to explain it, but it is not necessary to the method.

However, the “pot-shots” DO have to be scientifically valid… and the longer a theory survives the clearer it is that there isn’t that much wrong with it.

So it is with AGW and Evolution. Both contentious but neither yet shown false. The “man-on-the-street” is probably not ever going to be in a good position to cope with this level of debate, and never has been. It is important though, that the “man-on-the-street” understand the scientific method itself, and that is well within his/her grasp. If the schools teach it, it makes much of the world far easier.

Samiam – January is about la nina…. as was December and February of this year. It isn’t any mystery.

respectfully
BJ

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Toad
I’m with the anthropogenic camp on the last 150 years worth of rise, I was just curious on the short term. La Nina/El Nino surely won’t effect the global mean, only local, as heat gets moved around the planet in different pathways. Sunspots is a different matter as it changes the amount of energy arriving, Co2, water vapor etc effects the amount leaving. But sunspots should be a more gradual cycle not resulting in a sudden drop. Interesting.

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when beliefs become entrenched that’s precisely when they need to be questioned. that’s why the athenians put socrates to death – because he kept annoying the hell out of them by asking them to justify universally held beliefs.
burden of proof (if it is even a helpful concept at all in science debates) is on those proposing action (“we want to put this person in jail for burglary”..), in this case regulation of energy practices, although i accept that given the consequences, merely showing a high enough possibility is enough to warrant action.
when a theory is published, the burden is upon those putting forward the theory – the peer review process does NOT require that those taking pot shots at the theory should have a fully formed alternative theory of their own – only that they be able to find flaws in the theory they are reviewing.
in fact places an almost insurmountable barrier to the man on the street to participate in a debate of this nature if they must have a rigorous theory of their own before they may query the mainstream theory.

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Ari said,

“Gerrit- You are the skeptic. It is your responsibility to present a viable and rigorous alternative to the accepted model.”

You are wrong in that toad almost pious (bordering on the religious cult status) believe is the correct and accepted model. Who made you guys the font of all knowledge?

And the arbitrator of what is the “acceptable” model?

You and toad will not, in fact cannot allow any alternative than the “accepted” model.

Well sorry, but I dont buy into your dogma.

What I find obnoxious is toads pompous, arrogant, high and mighty, shoot the messenger sermon.

Sounds like a politician (labour type attacking the person not the argument). Sanctimonious babble. This is what his pontification was.

BJ,

Looking forward to reading your thoughts. Something intellegent to discuss and be persuaded by, as always.

Wont be able to reply till Monday as competing in a regatta all weekend.

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Gerrit, BP

I’ll be back in the weekend to take this up again. Your argument of “cyclical” change is true…. the planet cycles between Ice Ages and Interglacials and the planet does go up and down over time. The Cores tell us much of that history but there are other measures as well, and those all show us that something unusual is going on now, with consequences.. That’s all I can give now. You have help by researching answers to your questions too and there are plenty of links on our main page. Each question you ask has two sides. Present both, Consider it a homework assignment.

This can’t be taught to anyone, yet it has to be learned.

CO2 both forces and is forced. The transitions between Ice Age and Interglacial has always been solar forcing and nobody in the science community doubts that. CO2 however, amplifies the forcing that ends the Ice-Age. The stability WITHIN an interglacial however, is the stability you have to be wary of Gerrit. That’s your comp. Not the whole record. The record of times when the Solar forcing is not changing… because it is NOT changing in any inexplicable or unconsidered way now (it could of course be undetectable Q rays from the invisible planet Necron but THAT, like God’s will, is not about science). The science doesn’t show increasing amounts of solar insolation, or changes to cosmic rays, that explain what we see. The CO2 uptake of the ocean is slowing… the buffer is full… overflowing.

Got to go. There is too much in this that has to be understood thoroughly, but I think better of you for asking questions.

respectfully
BJ

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Gerrit- You are the skeptic. It is your responsibility to present a viable and rigorous alternative to the accepted model. This is how reasonable debate works when you challenge an entrenched position. I’m open to considering your points so long as you labour under the correct burden of proof- otherwise it’s not worth the time reading your comments.

On the ice core temperatures- explaining our current predicament away on a periodic cycle would be great, if axis wobbles or solar forcings were the only issues that face us today, just like back then. However we pump out several gigatonnes of carbon (that’s not counting the oxygen attached to it, either) every year, most of which has been buried underground and completely absent from the atmosphere for some time.

In previous warming cycles, this CO2 buildup has followed the warming cycle slightly as a result of the feedback loops that are caused by climate warming. If you look at the current data, CO2 is roaring ahead of temperature development. That’s not a good thing- it means that we are stressing all of the planet’s temporary coping mechanisms to absorb excess carbon, even though you are probably correct that we’re currently compensating for a cold trend. That means we are using up the planet’s ability to cope with a potential upcoming warm period by soaking up the extra CO2.

That we are seeing warming regardless of all these favourable conditions is not a good sign, Gerrit. If we exceed the capacity of any of our current carbon sinks, or if we simply emit for too long, the warming has the potential to trigger all sorts of feedback effects (shutdown of ocean currents, melting ice caps, aso… you’ve heard it all I bet) that will cause us to dramatically overshoot a desirable stable climate state. If we do prepare for global warming, all we will have done is invested some carbon-credit aid in developing countries, and held off on burning carbon. We can always burn that carbon later if we are wrong or we are right but we prevent disaster in time. Hardly a dire cost, and I’m sure our neighbours will appreciate the help from carbon credits either way.

Our case of warming is very atypical even judging from the record of previous similar events, and that is what should disturb you. “Maybe it’s just a natural cycle” doesn’t cut it when neither our forcings nor our trends are matching up with historical data. You need to explain those away rather than just insisting that the temperature is currently within error limits of the long-term trend- especially seeing we have no idea how close the limits of the trend come to our planet’s ability to cope with excess CO2.

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No use arguing science with believers, Gerrit

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toad,

a 0.5 degree increase over 150 years is proof of what?

It is nothing when temperature variation have occured from -8 to +2.

You are sounding more like a “silly christian”.

But we are deniers now are we.

Your scientifiic theory is no more robust then mine.

What a pompous statement you make.

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la nina

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No, samiam, no major eruptions.

But we’re at a long-time low in sunspot activity, which is likely to have a cooling effect. And we alos have a La Nina weather pattern in the sub-arctics, temprorate, and subtropical zones.

The combination of the two is bound to result in temperatures lower than normal short-term.

Let’s forget one month, or one year, or even 10 years if there is a major volcanic eruption. It is the long-term movement in temperature that counts. And that is increasing, just as quantum theory re the response of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases says it should.

I’m happy to believe the scientific theory as long as it is robust. It says that long-term temporature increases will occur. The empirical evidence over 150 years supports this. Changes over one month, or one year, are irrelevant in this timeframe.

Some of you are starting to sound like those silly Christians who insisted the Earth was flat, despite the scientific evidence to the contrary, in the middle of the last millennium. Predicting the future is to some extent about probability theory, based on the empirical evidence of what has happened in the past. Probability theory can never assure certainty, even when the odds are certain, as with cards or dice.

But it does make the arguments of the anthropogenic climate change deniers highly unlikely, given the evidence of climate change over 150 years and its corelation to increased greenhouse gas emissions. Cosmic rays, sunspots, volcanic eruptions etc come and go from year to year.

What explains the long-term trend? Mouldy? Samiam?

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Any theories as to why jan 08 was down so much? I didn’t notice any major eruptions…

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BJ,

I have no problems at all with controlling our CO2 emmisions and are with the Greens on that issue.

Just want to point out that we cannot “control” the earths temperature to a consistant +-1 for ever.

Soomer or later it will go beyond those boundaries either up or down. I have no view on which way.

The data is just not there to make a guess.

samiuela,

It is a problem with the hypothesis and as we just dont know what will happen, we should plan for the future using both scenarios.

If another ice age was to start shortly what should we do?

BJ’s idea of solar reflectors in space would suit both scenario’s.

I’m not all that confident us humans have enough brian power to actually work together for the common good. We have the technology to build these things but you think we can organise ourselves to cooperate and do it?

It will be the failing and deathknell of the human species, this inability to cooperate together.

Long after we are all gone, the earth wil keep rotating and have its -8 to +2 cyclical warming and cooling events to keep ants or humans from over populating the planet.

Have a ponder at this.

Over the last hundred years we have had rubber tires on our vehicles. These wear out. Where does all the rubber dust go.

In theory we should have mountains of the stuff at each storm water outlet flowing into river, lake and ocean. But we dont. Where does the rubber dust go from the millions and millions of tires used over the years?

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Gerrit,

Your hypothesis that CO2 emissions are preventing an ice-age may well be true, We currently live in a warm inter-glacial period, and should (normally) expect a cooler climate to return sometime in the next few thousands of years.

I went to a seminar which someone presented some work suggesting that North America would already have been returning to ice-age conditions were it not for human influences on the climate. The work seemed quite speculative to me, but was interesting.

The problem with your hypothesis is that the anthropogenic changes to the climate may not only prevent an ice age, but have “overshot” the mark and result in a substantially warmer climate.

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Gerrit

That’s actually one of the theories about the “result” of the Greenhouse effect.

The problem here is that we are conducting an experiment with the only planet we can live on. There’s no control ( planet on which we are not conducting the experiment ) and there is no control over whether we emit the CO2 or not.

In other words,.. we are like incontinent babies peeing and pooing where we happen to live. Greens and Scientists are saying it is time to “grow up” and control our “emissions” and folks like Lomborg and Limbaugh are wailing that they don’t want to.

Your hypothesis is valid so far as we know. A competing hypothesis and one suggested several times. The tests done in support of it are not conclusive or complete. Trevor29 suggests a test that would work eventually, but the bulk of the warming from the CO2 already in the air is still ahead of us. There’s a lag on that effect and the CO2 stays in the air a long time.

The problem with the Kyoto agreement is that when signed we were in a very GOOD position for not having to pay, and indeed being paid. We would have needed to do very damned little THEN… but even “very damned little” is too much for the people who don’t want to grow up.

=========
There are some folks who disbelieve both AGW and Peak-Oil. Usually on misstatements of what Peak-Oil means though. The commonality of the two views exists, but I think it is one-way. All the “no peak-oil” folks are “no agw” believers, but the “no agw” folks are much more diverse in their view of peak oil.

Gerrit – the difficulty with all this is that we aren’t in control and never have been and we can’t even get off the planet. This includes the peak-oil/peak-energy issue as Chefurka explains it (I’ll post the link again if someone asks), Controlling the climate would be better done with mirrors in space than by burning the hydrocarbons sequestered in the planet’s depths for 40 million years. Solar power satellites and solar power on the ground would be smarter.

We aren’t doing anything that intelligent. I will believe in Homo Sapiens when I see evidence that such a species is emerging.

respectfully
BJ

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Andrew,

“you’ll find that those who don’t believe in agw are also those who don’t believe in the oil peak”

pretty immature statement.

On what do you base that hypothesis?

Global warming AND global cooling are facts. Historical data shows that it can range from -8 to +2 in variation.

Curently we have a +0.5 variation so yes we have global warming.

The debate is not whether there is global warming but the cause.

I’m suggesting it is a natural cycle where we should be heading to a global cooling period but because humans have been introducing CO2 into the atmosphere we have prevented the expected cooling period for now some 1000 years.

However we have finite coal, oil and gas reserves (but not timber) so being able to maintain CO2 levels at a point where the earths temperatures can be artificially maintained at the present levels is not possible.

So long term we will be heading for a global cooling period where we should drop down to somewhere to -8 over the next few thousand years.

trevor29,

Yep, you are right, it is the only sane course of action. My problem is the schemes in place to try and achieve this (such as carbon trading) that will make that goal impossible.

As BJ says it will become a political football, when New Zealand has to purchase $3 billion of carbon credits (every year) to function as a society as we know it. (do we have enough tax payers in New Zealand to fund this?)

Would that $3 billion annually be better spent in New Zealand on sustainable carbon reducing alternatives or best sent to the Russians as a carbon offset payment?

That is were the politics will enter into it.

I respectfully suggest that any government that will retain that money in New Zealand for carbon reduction and alternative energy development will win the votes to govern.

Hence Kyoto is a dead duck and should be removed as an albatross around our collective necks.

A positive for global warming is that plant life will flourish with the incresed CO2 levels together with the increased rainfall caused by warmer oceans increasing the evaporation rate of water.

Interesting times ahead.

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“you’ll find that those who don’t believe in agw are also those who don’t believe in the oil peak…”

or peak-gas or peak-coal.

Trevor.

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you’ll find that those who don’t believe in agw are also those who don’t believe in the oil peak

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