Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

[raja]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

Lukester,

Of all the people I've told about this info, you are the first person to respond to Lewis's arguments. That certainly deserves a reply on my part.

However, I'm experience a lot of "turbulence" in my life right now, and will have to Bookmark it for later.

But I will get to it . . . .

[Guest]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

Raja -

You not only have my best wishes, you mostl likely have the best wishes of all those here with whom you've corresponded.

[jimmygu3]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

Lukester,

I admire your tenacity on this issue and your always compelling posts. I have to side with the world's top 2,500 climatologists and 400,000 years of data on this one. Global warming caused by human CO2 emissions is a huge problem that will get much worse. And while we're confessing to belief in formerly radical scientific theories that have gained popular support, count me in for evolution and relativity. ;)

Since this is neither a scientific nor a political site, I think we would be better suited assessing the economic consequences of climate change and the likely actions of governments to combat it. What companies are poised to try to solve this problem once politicians start throwing money at it? What industries would benefit from a US carbon tax? Those are the questions I feel we should be discussing.

Your besieged working boy,

Jimmy

[GRG55]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

...Here is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has said (this is a commissioned panel of climatologists worldwide - NOTE: if we consider them unfit to provide a scientifically objective assessment, then we must fall back on non-climatologists, for an alternate interpretation, as these climatologists represent the most qualified specialists each participant country could contribute). Here is the chronology of their published findings :

>> In 1990, in its first report, the panel found evidence of global warming but said its cause could be natural as easily as human.

>> In a landmark 1995 report, the panel altered its judgment, saying that ‘the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.’

>> In 2001, it placed the probability that human activity caused most of the warming of the previous half century at 66 percent to 90 percent — a ‘likely’ rating.

>> By 2007, the IPCC was saying that “the likelihood was 90 percent to 99 percent that emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, spewed from tailpipes and smokestacks, were the dominant cause of the observed warming of the last 50 years.”

MY COMMENT: Every subsequent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has raised the level of certainty that global warming was primarily a man-made phenomenon. Every report; such that now, we are talking over 90% certainty...

Lukester: You are quite clearly very passionate about this topic, and I have great respect for your views.

Unfortunately, I have a persistent predilection to observe such things through the prism of politics. Perhaps it was the way I was raised, perhaps it's a DNA defect, doubtless amplified by living in the Middle East for too long. In any case I have an automatic deep suspicion of anything with a UN stamp on it. The IPCC was estabilished under two UN organisations.




This would be the same UN that in 2001 decided to put Syria on the Security Council:

September 8, 2001: "Since even the foundation of the UN Syria has contributed to the basics of international legitimacy in order to enable peoples of the world achieving their legitimate aspirations towards a better world in which generations enjoy peace and security...

...Throughout years, Syria has revealed its complete commitment to the UN charter and honor of the principles of the international law, commitment to decisions released by the international organizations aiming at finding out just solutions to peoples causes away from double standard position."

On further thought, I suppose there is some logic in having one of the world's premier police states serve on the "Security" Council.





This would be the same UN that in its founding charter embraced the following:

“...to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women...”

and regularly reminds us that... "U.N. treaties, such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which the General Assembly passed in 1948, form the core of international standards for human rights."

The same UN that determined (for the first time by secret ballot, instead of the traditional acclamation) in 2003 that, of its then 177 member nations, Libya was the most qualified to serve as Chair of its standing Commission on Human Rights. On further thought, is there any entity more qualified and knowledgable to advise on the concept of human rights than those states that habitually abuse them?





This would be the same UN whose World Food Programme agency has this in its mission statement http://www.wfp.org/aboutwfp/mission/...&sub_section=6

"...WFP works to put hunger at the centre of the international agenda, promoting policies, strategies and operations that directly benefit the poor and hungry..."

The same UN that despite this...

"...ZANU-PF used government food stocks as a political weapon, denying supplies to some MDC [Movement for Democratic Change] supporters and promising it to other citizens in exchange for votes...In December 2005, the government agreed to allow the UN World Food Program to distribute food aid to over three million people through June 2006, and in March 2006, Zimbabwe's Millers Association warned that the country-once one of Africa's major sources of agricultural exports-had only two weeks' worth of wheat remaining. In April, the government banned international agencies from carrying out crop estimates in the country...The government's partisan disbursement of food and other material assistance...perpetuated public dependence on the ruling party...In some areas a ZANU PF card was required to obtain food and agricultural inputs." (Freedom House Country Report on Zimbabwe 2007)

...saw fit in 2006 to elect Zimbabwe to a three year term as one of the 36 members of the World Food Programme Executive Board. On further thought, who could possibly have more knowledge about the ravages of chronic hunger than a government that has become expert at starving its own people?




This may be an unfair condemnation, but in the eye of this observer the IPCC's affiliation with the UN fatally undermines its credibility.

From my perspective climate change is now well on its way to becoming the next in a long line of secular global religions, complete with all the usual trappings. In addition to the Gospel according to Gore, we have the Synod of Bishops in the form of the IPCC, with the Nobel committee substituting for Papal ratification (exactly how does a committee of eminent climatologists bring about "World Peace" anyway?). And let us faithful vassals not fail to pay due homage to the annual gathering of the College of Cardinals, at the diocese of Davos, ably led by Camerlengo Soros. (By the way, whatever happened to Bono and the African poverty problem they were going to solve?).

iTulip is not intended to be a political forum, so I will close this rant with this observation. Although there appears more and more observable evidence that something is changing with respect to our climate, it is still not clear to me to what degree this is the result of man or, more importantly, to what degree even severe and immediate responsive action by man can truly alter the entire atmosphere (Only a UN agency could possibly imagine that we can control the weather). Is this indeed a secular change in the climate, or another in a long series of cyclical temperature gradient alterations? To be frank, I just don't know. And that puts me a long ways from those, such as the IPCC, that are "over 90% certain" about a subject that appears incomprehensibly complex to me.

Respectfully,
GRG55

[Guest]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

Jimmygu3 -

Thanks for your feedback. It's at the end of the day a "gut-check" call. I see at the end of the day you are making the same "gut-check" call that I do. Those who surmise we may be getting bamboozled may want to pause and consider other questions we've discussed in which we don't get bamboozled, and then wonder why our critical faculties should be failing us so singularly on this one question alone.

You also wrote: << Since this is neither a scientific nor a political site, I think we would be better suited assessing the economic consequences of climate change and the likely actions of governments to combat it. >>

All I can observe is that first you have to establish in the group of people you are speaking to, even a modest consensus that global warming even exists. If one's response to all this is apathy, otherwise known as "disinterest in that global warming thingy everyone blathers about" it is still simply apathy. No need to dress it up with the name "skepticism" if it's merely apathy.

______________


GRG55 -

I would be interested in your take on the implications of the very long data-sets specifically about warming, and the rather dramatic on-the-ground reports I posted, without the interference of the political or UN sponsor reputation considerations.

Your remarks about the unbelievably shoddy history of the UN on all of it's myriad "position papers", not to speak of it's laughable nominations of Libya and Syria to chair capacities rendered outright comical by their explicit track records, prompt me to assure you I happen to feel every bit as strongly as you that these reveal the UN to be a farce.

Whether this can serve as a robust dismissal of the work of 2,500 climate scientists far removed from the UN's bureaucratic fudge and blather is however something different, and the linkage you assign frankly leaves me quite skeptical you have sufficient grounds to dismiss further examination of their findings.

Clearly the issue of greatest substance is not the august weight of the UN seal on this commissioned report - or even necessarily these scientists unanimity. What jumps out at me from all the above posts rather, is the 100% move beyond the range of standard deviation in a half million years, which is readily observable from multiple different charted findings (the charts assembled from all scientific sources don't vary much on this at all!), in present day CO2 readings.

You don't mention it or assess it as worth comment, which as a petroleum geologist is notable. Why do your comments focus only on the poor credentials of the UN, while as an earth and resource engineer you might be expected instead to be more genuinely intrigued by this very large anomaly drawn from a massive set of geological (climate) data-points?

Replying to that issue specifically however and bringing some clarity to focus upon it, requires putting all the political baggage aside entirely. Note that I did mention the liability of political baggage in the very first post on this thread? It's absolutely true what you say about the UN. When scrutinizing the pedigree of the UN, I happen to be 100% on the same page as you, it's entirely clear that their track record is cynical flim flam garbage of the worst sort regardless, so their commissioned "definitive studies" truly are a lousy endorsement.

As I reply to Jimmygu3, with whom I agree in broad principle here, at a certain point you make a "gut-check" call, based perhaps on some single, even very simple piece of evidence you may stumble across. To me, seeing the CO2 level in almost complete correlation to temperature, with a tight correlation spanning four full ice ages and four full interglacial ages, and then to see CO2 readings for the first tme in that entire progression at 370 parts per million and rising, soaring right off the 400,000 year chart with temperature severely lagging their move - well, this would be the real data to grapple with. I look somewhat curiously at anyone with a science background that does not sit upright and pay sharp notice of the implications of that simple chart.

As far as I'm concerned, that's where the real discussion lies.

And I don't need to sign off "respectfully" because I've already told you straight up I have great appreciation for all your posts. (As Metalman might put it "blah blah blah". )

[Starving Steve]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

GRG55 -

"St. Gore" may indeed be a bore, but when you start reading a bit of the "chapter and verse" in that gospel, what strikes you is the speed at which it is already occurring.

For those who are even just a shade concerned about not being vilified by our great grandchildren for having left them a thoroughly trashed world where half the species are extinct, some concern about our current stewardship of the planet would certainly appear warranted by the harsh news listed below - breaking news - in 2007.


[ATTACH]115[/ATTACH]

__________

BBC — Friday, 21 September 2007

Ice withdrawal 'shatters record'

Arctic sea ice shrank to the smallest area on record this year, US scientists have confirmed. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) was reached on 16 September.

The figure shatters all previous satellite surveys, including the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km measured in 2005.
Earlier this month, it was reported that the Northwest Passage was open.

The fabled Arctic shipping route from the Atlantic to the Pacific is normally ice-bound at some location throughout the year; but this year, ships have been able to complete an unimpeded navigation.

The researchers at NSIDC judge the ice extent on a five-day mean. The minimum for 2007 falls below the minimum set on 20-21 September 2005 by an area roughly the size of Texas and California combined, or nearly five UKs.

Speaking to BBC News on Monday this week, Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the NSIDC, said: "2005 was the previous record and what happened then had really astounded us; we had never seen anything like that, having so little sea ice at the end of summer.

Then along comes 2007 and it has completely shattered that old record."

He added: "We're on strong spiral of decline; some would say a death spiral.

I wouldn't go that far but we're certainly on a fast track.

We know there is natural variability but the magnitude of change is too great to be caused by natural variability alone."
The team will now follow the progress of recovery over the winter months.

In December 2006, a study by US researchers forecast that the Arctic could be ice-free in summers by 2040. A team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the University of Washington, and McGill University, found that "positive feedbacks" were likely to accelerate the decline of the region's ice system.

Sea ice has a bright surface which reflects 80% of the sunlight that strikes it back into space. However, as the ice melts during the summer, more of the dark ocean surface becomes exposed. Rather than reflecting sunlight, the ocean absorbs 90% of it, causing the waters to warm and increase the rate of melting. Scientists fear that this feedback mechanism will have major consequences for wildlife in the region, not least polar bears, which traverse ice floes in search of food.

On a global scale, the Earth would lose a major reflective surface and so absorb more solar energy, potentially accelerating climatic change across the world.

________________


Published on Friday, October 5, 2007 by Inter Press Service
Climate Change and Entire Landscapes on the Move

The hot breath of global warming has now touched some of the coldest northern regions of world, turning the frozen landscape into mush as temperatures soar 15 degrees C. above normal.

by Stephen Leahy

Entire hillsides, sometimes more than a kilometre long, simply let go and slid like a vast green carpet into valleys and rivers on Melville Island in Canada’s northwest Arctic region of Nunavut this summer, says Scott Lamoureux of Queens University in Canada and leader of one the of International Polar Year projects.

“The entire landscape is on the move, it was very difficult to find any slopes that were unaltered,” said Lamoureux, who led a scientific expedition to the remote and uninhabited island.

The topography and ecology of Melville Island is rapidly being rearranged by climate change. “Every day it looked different,” he told IPS. “This is a permanent change.”

Normally Melville Island’s 42,500 sq kms are locked in sea ice all year round, as it is part of the high region that has been relatively unaffected by the dramatic declines in Arctic sea ice over the past decade. Until this year, that is.

This summer, southern parts of the island were free of sea ice, Lamoureux told IPS. He has led expeditions to the island every year since 2003. On land at Mould Bay on the island’s northwest side, his research team measured record-shattering temperatures of between 15 to 22 degrees C in July. Until then, the normal July average temperature had been between 4 and 5 degrees C.

The extraordinary heat thawed the tundra permafrost — permanently frozen ground — to depths of more than a metre, he said. At that depth, there is mostly ice and when it melts, it destabilises the thin, top layer of plants and soil that has patiently built up over thousands of years. Enormous amounts of water and sediments are being discharged into rivers, lakes and oceans.

Studies are underway to determine the impact on birds, fish, musk oxen and other creatures that live there in the summer.
Given the extent of the changes, there is little doubt there will be significant ecological impacts, he said.

The record low level of sea ice in the entire Arctic Ocean will also change regional and even global weather patterns.

Much more snow will fall in the Arctic due to the increased moisture from the increased amounts of open water. All that water is also dark and heat-absorbing instead of sunlight-reflecting ice, so the region gets warmer, melting more ice in what is a strong positive feedback loop.

Other parts of the Arctic region have already changed dramatically in the past 50 years. “There are trees and lawns in Nome (Alaska) now,” said Patricia Cochran, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council. “I never thought I’d see trees growing on the tundra,” Cochran said about her hometown, which lies on the Bering Sea and was once too cold for trees to grow.

“Beavers are overrunning the area now that there is food for them. They are even in Barrow, north of the Arctic Circle,” she told IPS from her office in Anchorage.

The tundra is also melting, resulting in coffins disturbingly popping out of the ground in graveyards, roads crumbling and giant sink holes opening up everywhere, including in some towns, she said. Every summer brings plants, animals, birds and insects that no one has seen before. Dragonflies and turtles now roam the lands that had been too icy for tens of thousands of years.

“Everyone living here has seen the changes,” Cochran said. And there are more changes to come even if politicians and corporate CEOs stop pretending to act and actually curb emissions of greenhouse gases. “The Arctic Ocean will be ice free in the summer, it’s just a matter of how soon,” said Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences in the University of Victoria, Canada.

A new study led by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration this week revealed that the Arctic’s thick, year-round sea ice cover declined 2.6 million square kilometres beyond the summer average minimum since satellites started measurements in 1979. That’s about the size of the province of Ontario.

“That decline is nothing short of stunning,” Weaver told IPS. It’s also a permanent decline because while the ice will re-form over the six-month-long winter when there is no sunlight, it will be much thinner and likely to melt quickly next summer, he said. Because Arctic sea ice is floating, the melting will not affect sea levels but it will “wreak absolute havoc on Arctic ecosystems”.

The rapid meltdown is pushing the upper end of the climate experts’ projections, he said, noting that new research shows that change in the Arctic could happen abruptly.

© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Serv

________________

So, if the Arctic Ocean is now melted and Greenland is melting, the ice in Northern Canada is melting, Antarctica is melting away, then WHY ISN'T THE SEA LEVEL RISING AND WHY ISN'T FLORIDA UNDER SOME 60 FEET OF SEA WATER? Why is downtown SF still above sea level because downtown SF was built mostly with bay-fill and was built at sea level 100 years ago? Why are the coral atolls of the South Pacific still above sea level? Why are the Bahama Islands still above sea level? Sorry to rain on your global warming parade, but where has the water from all of this melted ice gone?

When I look at the average monthly temperatures in the weather records compiled by NOAA up and down the West Coast of the US, the temps have been BELOW the 30year normal for most of the last three years. And surface sea temperatures in the Pacific are back to the La Nina chill, all the way from the West Coast to beyond the dateline.

Rainfall has returned to the southern Sahara Desert, but the northern Sahara is back into a cyclical drought again. Southern California now has severe drought, but during the last El Nino event a few years ago, Los Angeles had 38 inches of rainfall in one winter season.

Everything changes on Earth, and change is normal. Change is GOOD.

Global mean sea level is up 7 or 8 inches in 100 years--- hardly a major concern. After all, we are moving out of the Ice Age, so a few inches per century of sea level climb is to be expected.:rolleyes:

[Rajiv]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

The sea level is not up -- because it is the Arctic that is primarily melting -- not the Antarctic or the Greenland icepack yet. The Arctic is primarily nothing but ice floating in sea water!. If you put a ice cube in a glass of water and watch it melt, the water level DOES NOT rise. However, if you add a new icecube into the water, the water level immediately rises. Once the Greenland glaciers, and the Antarctic glaciers start melting, that is when the sea level goes up -- that is still a few years out.

The 6-7 inch rise you talk about is because of some of the Greenland ice and some of the Antarctic ice has melted -- some also from the Himalayan glaciers -- which are at their least extent.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

The sea level is not up -- because it is the Arctic that is primarily melting -- not the Antarctic or the Greenland icepack yet. The Arctic is primarily nothing but ice floating in sea water!. If you put a ice cube in a glass of water and watch it melt, the water level DOES NOT rise. However, if you add a new icecube into the water, the water level immediately rises. Once the Greenland glaciers, and the Antarctic glaciers start melting, that is when the sea level goes up -- that is still a few years out.

The 6-7 inch rise you talk about is because of some of the Greenland ice and some of the Antarctic ice has melted -- some also from the Himalayan glaciers -- which are at their least extent.

Dear Rajiv:

Last winter when BBC and all of the other climate-alarmists were proclaiming alarm that arctic ice sheets were disappearing and the world was rapidly warming up, the Bering Sea had record ice pack. Not only that, there was intense cold in Alaska, BC, and up and down the West Coast of the US. Mexico enjoyed some cool weather, and even Central America had unusually cool temps: for example, the Yucatan had temperatures in the low to mid- 70s, and those were the afternoon highs.

Last winter, snow covered much of the lowland areas of the Pacific NW, and this went on for much of the winter. Los Angeles dropt to 31F at Long Beach. Palmdale, Calif, a suburb of LA, dropt to 9F, and nearby Lancaster, Calif dropt to 7F (-14C ) in January.

In the Southern Hemisphere, Johanusburg, South Africa had snow on the ground this year--- and that was snow on the ground and in the city.

So, I need more convincing that the Earth is warming.

More ancedotal evidence of no warming: Lake Superior was completely frozen over at Duluth, and kids played hockey on the lake. And Oman, on the Arabian Penninsula, had floods this summer because of a tropical cyclone coming ashore. Muscat, the capital city of Oman was underwater.

[zoog]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

...snow covered much of the lowland areas of the Pacific NW, and this went on for much of the winter...

Oh really? I don't know how I missed it. Much of the winter, you say? I seem to remember about three days of about three inches of snow. Before and after that, it was 40's and rain, just like always.

By the way, the old timers here tell me we used to get so much snow and ice that the Willamette River would occasionally freeze over. There is a least one report of people driving Model T's across the ice.

[quigleydoor]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

The discussions here on global warming have motivated me to research the IPCC for myself. I haven't done it yet, but I'm motivated. For a class I am taking on science and economic policy, I have gotten approval to study how the IPCC's institutional structure and mandate have influenced the direction of climate science research.

I am agnostic about whether human activity is affecting the climate. My goal is to learn to what degree the IPCC is constructing the belief system it is purporting to verify.

If anybody can recommend scholarly works on this topic, please contact me. There are quite a lot of good pointers in this website to "yes it is" and "no it isn't" assertions about the scientific facts. I am looking for information on how the IPCC works, and the technical challenges of doing climate science.

[Starving Steve]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

Raja -

Here is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has said (this is a commissioned panel of climatologists worldwide - NOTE: if we consider them unfit to provide a scientifically objective assessment, then we must fall back on non-climatologists, for an alternate interpretation, as these climatologists represent the most qualified specialists each participant country could contribute). Here is the chronology of their published findings :

>> In 1990, in its first report, the panel found evidence of global warming but said its cause could be natural as easily as human.

>> In a landmark 1995 report, the panel altered its judgment, saying that ‘the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.’

>> In 2001, it placed the probability that human activity caused most of the warming of the previous half century at 66 percent to 90 percent — a ‘likely’ rating.

>> By 2007, the IPCC was saying that “the likelihood was 90 percent to 99 percent that emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, spewed from tailpipes and smokestacks, were the dominant cause of the observed warming of the last 50 years.”

MY COMMENT: Every subsequent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has raised the level of certainty that global warming was primarily a man-made phenomenon. Every report; such that now, we are talking over 90% certainty.

MY QUESTION, are you examining the immediate hypothesis borne by the data below, or are you searching for secondary hypotheses here? If searching for a secondary hypothesis - do you regard seeking out a secondary hypothesis before disproving the primary hypothesis that jumps out from the data, to be a good methodology?

Here's what I found meantime, in a very cursory search of your reference material: From Marlo Lewis' treatise

Under SUMMARY OF DISTORTIONS on page ONE, he writes -

<< Presents a graph tracking CO2 levels and global temperatures during the past 650,000 years ... global temperatures were warmer than the present during each of the past four interglacial periods, even though CO2 levels were lower. >>

That's apparently his only definitive point on the half million year data.

According to the charts I'm looking at, he's making an observation which contains a glaring error of logical inference relative to it's attempted topic of discovery, as follows:

Yes indeed, the CO2 levels were lower (in fact, a LOT lower) in the previous interglacial periods, and yes indeed the temperatures were (slightly) higher than our present temperature. But he's missing the significant point - the half million year chart shows tight, invariable correlation between CO2 and temperature, and our present CO2 levels are one full standard deviation ABOVE half million year long prior CO2 levels at prior interglacial warm peaks.

If half a million years of data proves incontrovertibly that CO2 levels and temperature are tightly correlated, Mr. Lewis is completely silent on the fact that we have statistically an extremely high probability that temperatures must rise from here to meet and exceed the CO2 peak showing in this chart if they are to obey the strict CO2 / TEMP correlation observed over the previous 400,000 years !

How can he propose a sound critique of global warming, if he does not mention this and evidence where he believes the fallacy must lie, within that chart's implication?

All his other observations in the list on page one, are micro-observations regarding the present, or stretching back one century at most. - London ground level this, Polar fluctuation that, etc. in the present tense. The real story, the incontrovertible data, is in the half-million year charts. That's where the most unequivocal issues are displayed, like exactly what does a "one standard deviation on half a million years chart in present day CO2 readings" really imply for temperature going forward?.

The issue Mr. Lewis glosses, to my mind with considerable disingenuousness, is that there is quite clearly an 'very strong' correlation of CO2 to Temp because it's derived from a truly massive set of data points. With CO2 current level towering over previous interglacials today, his remark suggesting that current temperature is "lower than during previous interglacials" and pulling an inference out of the hat that this must demonstrate the fallacy of current warming, is a specious inference in terms of any logic that I can percieve. The present temperature is close to half million year peaks, and is compelled by the above correlation to catch up to the CO2 reading, which is much higher yet. But Mr. Lewis does not make any slightest mention of that logical probability.

Are you with me on what he's missing here? It's what you might call, the 'entire issue in question'. How does Mr. Lewis propose to hold my critical attention by turning this simple statistical inference upside down right on the first page of his treatise?








These two charts below from an alternate source reiterate the previous 400K years recurring ice ages, but these charts omit the fine data concentrated in the past one or two hundred years which shows the CO2 spike moving well out of the median range. I believe the current CO2 readings are around 370 parts per million? These are not showing in the two charts below. Imagine them penciled in there, and you'll note the very large anomaly going back 400K years. That anomaly is the present!





This chart below focuses in sharply on the TEMPERATURE change occurring in the past 2000 years, so if you will mentally compress this chart's timeline and overlay it for detail onto the very end of the chart immediately above, you'll see verbatim what TEMPERATURE is doing. From the topmost chart, we see CO2 is far out ahead of TEMPERATURE. So overlaying that most recent (100-200 years) data onto this broadened middle chart gives you an idea of how strikingly steep the correction must be on the middle charts, for both CO2 and Temperature to bring them current to the present 100 years.

Why does Mr. Lewis not include such secular charts and make any inferences in his treatise, on the tight 400,000 year correlation between CO2 and temperature, and what these above charts then imply?.




I am positive Raja, that you are every bit, if not more qualified than I to dig up a dozen half million year charts mapping CO2 correlation to temperature, and then mapping how starkly far out ahead of temperature current CO2 levels are.

In my opinion, Mr. Lewis' complex caveats about "London ground level sinking", and "cyclical variations in polar temperature" as being significant factors is just a lot of hot air when juxtaposed to these simple half million year charts. One full standard deviation in CO2 levels across 400 thousand years? That's the only data we need to nail to the floor.

I thought you were supposed to be the "nail it to the floor guy"? What is it in the above data that's not clear to you?


___________________


Raja - I found yet another "glaringly anomaly" in the above referenced treatise by Mr. Lewis.

Mr. Lewis writes:

<< Implies that, throughout the past 650,000 years, changes in CO2 levels preceded and largely caused changes in global temperature, whereas the causality mostly runs the other way, with CO2 changes trailing global temperature changes by hundreds to thousands of years. >>


Visually, there is no consistently significant lag or gap discernible at all between CO2 and Temp across the full duration of this chart - if anything they seem very tightly bound on average. More to the point yet, the chart shows the largest gap in 400,000 years, between CO2, and Temp exists right at the present time, and the CO2 is leading by a massive margin.

This author is claiming that 'causality mostly runs the other way, with CO2 always trailing temperature". Where is this guy coming up with these assertions from?

Hello again:

I hate to be a pest, but looking at this Mann & Jones graph of proxies for temperatures from 200AD to the present, the graph seems to indicate 0.2C, or at most 0.4C, difference in temp below the 1961-1990 mean, from 200AD to the mid-20thC. And that doesn't jive with what I know about climate history.

From what I know, or what I think I know, the Little Ice Age was something like 1C or 2C degrees cooler than the 1961-1990 mean. After all, in the 18th C, ice on the Salinas River in central California in winter was observed to be about a foot thick. And reading trip reports from Sonora, Mexico to southern California, part of the route--- presumably Banning Pass--- was habitually clogged with snow in winter, thus making foot-travel impossible..... Snow here is almost unheard of to-day.

The warm period from 1000AD to 1300AD which allowed Greenland to be settled with farms is also not shown on the graph.

But the warming due to El Nino or due to the sunspot maxiumum from 1998 to 2004 is shown as 0.6C, and this stands-out quite clearly on the graph. This magnifies the importance of the recent warming and minimizes the importance of other more important variations in climate since the Ice Age.

Finally, the recent warming since around 1998 appears to have been reversed with the onset of the La Nina in 2005 or 2006, but this reversal is not shown on the graph because the graph ends at 2004.:rolleyes:

[Guest]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

Quigleydoor -

You wrote:

<< (whether) IPCC is constructing the belief system it is purporting to verify >>

This provides more than a small hint that you are defining the scope of your study of this IPCC report in terms which contain your own inadvertent a-priori belief system. If the scope of your project is to discover the existence of any IPCC questionable assumptions, how is this approach agnostic at it's own outset?

If you set out to investigate whether UN commissioned reports due to that agency's stultifying beaurocratic mindset, contaminate large scale independently sourced teams of researchers scattered from Texas to Nairobi, to Stockholm to Beijing, such a narrowly defined inquiry suggests the following outcomes:

SUCCESSFUL - A demonstration that IPCC is constructing it's own belief system.

UNSUCCESSFUL - Failing to demonstrate that IPCC is constructing it's own belief system.

Remember, the larger the group of scientists, from the most disparate cultural and political / geographic area worldwide, the more tenuous it is to posit (particularly a-priori) they could have been shoehorned into communal "belief systems" at the outset of the decade-long research they've just concluded.

Quite apart from anything else, they are all observing vastly different climates and ecosystems worldwide, with time samples spanning a decade. It seems to me more than a bit labored to start a thesis from the premise they have all fallen, unwittingly and with concerted collective coherence, into groupthink under these circumstances.

How much do scientists in Beijing, Nairobi, and at MIT have in common in terms of socio-political worldview?

Is the probability of "constructed belief systems" really the largest thread of understanding that can be teased out of the sum of their work?

What's your take on the relationship between CO2 and temp in those 400,000 year charts? Most iTulip readers here are already firm believers in "return to the mean" as a powerful axiom in many fields, from finance, to physics, to biology - do you see any significance in the present day sporting the largest gap between CO2 and Temperature by a full extra standard deviation, out of a sampling of 400,000 years?

Global CO2 levels as clearly evident even to a casual layman's inspection, from the long charts posted above, was governed by a "high" and "low" limit-band for the past 400,000 years. The band, or "one standard deviation from glacial to interglacial" is quite clear on those charts.

Do we feel, as laymen, we can derive a glimmer of sense of where our inquiry may be most vitally addressed in the matter, by observing on these charts how present CO2 readings seem to exceed the previous half million year median band by a full 100% behond the entire previous CO2 fluctuation range? This is very simple, hard data we are interpreting as laymen. We are indeed laymen, but entirely capable of interpreting the "strongly unusual" segment in those charts, no?

Forget temperature.

Today, CO2 levels have cruised right on past the upper end of the prior band and practically all scientists are in agreement CO2 levels are still in a rising trend, and accelerating their increase in density in the atmosphere. Oil is getting pricey and globsl spare capacity is thin and getting thinner.

China (and India is also beginning) are churning out coal plants like there was no tomorrow. China is building one new coal burning power plant every couple of weeks. For three or four ice ages prior, upon reaching that upper interglacial period limit line, CO2 levels have promptly obeyed the "return to the median" law, and reversed back down to remain within the half million year channel. These charts indicate in very simple and clear terms, where we reached that point and exceeded it by a very large margin indeed.

Faced with this carefully logged and accepted CO2 data, which of the following two groups can be most readily identified as overlooking a large issue : 1) A UN commissioned panel of 2500 scientists findings about temperature trends, which we feel is sounding "suspiciously" unanimous, or 2) The general public's total disinterest (that public includes us by the way) in a sharply anomalous, soaring CO2 reading, as having any significant correlation to temperature from historic parallels, let alone any significance to what group #1 are talking about?

So perhaps the most fertile line of inquiry is not "is a UN sponsored team of scientists compromised by groupthink", but rather to start from this premise: "as it seems incontrovertible that some quite large event is clearly under way in the half million year log of CO2 data - what does this signify"? It is a piece of hard data, a break of a half million year trend, by a large margin, in the present. Temperature is not really saying anything clear yet, but the CO2 data is sitting there, staring right back at us. What does it mean? Might that inquiry be worthwhile hunting down too?

I submit, in any topic not as fraught with useless socio-political excess baggage as this "hard-headed skeptics vs. mushy headed treehuggers" debate, this simple standard deviation in a half million year chart would get even the most jaded scientist sitting up in his chair, and he'd be doing so (agnostically), merely to observe the existence of a quite glaringly large data anomaly in current CO2 readings. This is DATA, it is not conjecture.

Indeed, it appears increasing numbers of non-UN-affiliated scientists really are sitting up in their chairs, due to the increasing accumulation of anomalous reports from around the world.

It is primarily in lay communities such as this, where interest is piqued just enough to take a gander at the IPCC's report, that people risk getting enamored with subtleties like the search for any possible procedural or conceptual contamination of IPCC methodology. What seems lost in that decision is the option to instead get one's initial bearings on the matter by evaluating what hard, but highly controversial data we already have logged and plainly available, which is, in curious agreement with these tame and presumably compromised UN scientists, a very high and rising level of CO2, which has long since broken clean through half million year boundaries to the upside and is soaring far beyond previous CO2 peaks.

To focus on the possibility of a flawed UN scientist methodology, on the premise they may have succumbed to "groupthink", proceeds at the expense of a much simpler orientation or search for "signposts" first. As chance would have it, there is indeed a highly visible, widely published, and very relevant piece of data out there which greatly affects their report. It is the CO2 data, past and present. The existence of that CO2 data presents a very large obstruction to concluding that these 2,500 "tame scientists" are all barking up the wrong tree. This is because the CO2 data is tied inextricably to temperature across a vast span of time. Temperature and CO2, at least on our world, dance in lockstep or close to it. We may not have a clear idea what's happening with temperature, but we damn well know what's going on with CO2, and that story is a whopper.

Looking around for broad hints in the world, (or as E.J. keeps saying "looking out the window" to pick up observable hard data) means not microanalysing whether winters were colder 100 years ago, whether London is sinking or rising, whether Northern Californians reported snow four years ago in a year that was "supposed to be a scorcher". We can accept that data or ignore it as pleases each of our world views, and it's time scale is way too short anyway. We'll be sitting around all year hashing this out on those time frames. What "looking out the window" for observable data in this case means, is simply picking up the one big fat clue sitting there staring right at us.

It means wondering what all that starkly anomalous, carefully logged CO2 hard data might mean when it's so far out of the mean averages that spanned four freaking ice ages, and also of taking careful note of how curiously that CO2 hard data seems in accordance with what all those tame UN scientists are reporting.

[GRG55]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

Lukester: The short (and serious!) answer to your reply to my posting is that I am quite certain I will learn more from all of you, following the debate here, than I am likely to learn spending hours poring over all the material spit out by the IPCC et al.

The longer answer includes:

Yes, there will be filtering, and biases, some based on opinion, some based on real facts, and some based on alleged facts. That's fine, because I am quite certain that human nature assures the same is going on "out there", including the IPCC. They may be expert climatologists, but they are also human, and therefore not immune to responding in the usual way to the external stimuli, political pressure, public accolades and incentives. One thing is constant, you always get the behaviour you reward. What's the behaviour the UN, and the Davos-elite, want from the IPCC? And what's the behaviour that our governments want from us?

The last great secular global religion was Y2K. As an officer of a US X-listed public company I had a front row seat from which to watch the hysteria in the run-up to the millennial midnight. One of the most memorable incidents was a visit by a lawyer from the NY bank that held our operating credit line. He came to lecture us (intimidate us, actually) about all the dire legal consequences his bank would rain down upon us miserable officers and directors if we didn't demonstrate and document we had done "everything" to keep our business running. THAT'S the very moment when I realised that Y2K was a crock, and that the main objective was to milk companies like mine to fatten an industry of consultants and groupies mascarading as messiahs and the Magi.

To one degree or another we are prisoners of our prior experiences. Climate change isn't Y2K, but the evangelical fervour, some of it bordering on outright bullying, of many of its proponents and converts makes me uncomfortable. Your efforts and knowledge of this subject were the first ingredient and catalyst to creating a considered, thoughtful discussion here, with a broad spectrum of views, and that can only be constructive. By the way, Gore is not a bore; he's well prepared, passionate, and entertaining. But just like Billy Graham, he's trying to "save me".

[GRG55]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

Quigleydoor -

You wrote:

<< (whether) IPCC is constructing the belief system it is purporting to verify >>

This provides more than a small hint that you are defining the scope of your study of this IPCC report in terms which contain your own inadvertent a-priori belief system. If the scope of your project is to discover the existence of any IPCC questionable assumptions, how is this approach agnostic at it's own outset?

Lukester: Serious question.

In the current climate of the international debate (no pun intended), do you think there was ANY chance the IPCC members could have won the Nobel Peace prize if they had come to any other conclusion about global warming?

[quigleydoor]

Re: Follow up (and reality check) on iTulip Global Warming Thread from July

Quigleydoor -

You wrote:

<< (whether) IPCC is constructing the belief system it is purporting to verify >>

If you set out to investigate whether UN commissioned reports due to that agency's stultifying beaurocratic mindset, contaminate large scale independently sourced teams of researchers scattered from Texas to Nairobi, to Stockholm to Beijing, such a narrowly defined inquiry suggests the following outcomes:

SUCCESSFUL - A demonstration that IPCC is constructing it's own belief system.

UNSUCCESSFUL - Failing to demonstrate that IPCC is constructing it's own belief system.

I am with you so far. But blaming bureaucracy is only part of the story. Here are some other factors that interest me:

- Rapid global communications: Does more interaction change how scientists approach their own research projects? Perhaps less common cultural background has an effect?
- Leadership: Grants for research are leading scientists toward the grant writers' interests.
- Modeling science vs. empirical science: I am very skeptical of complex computer models. All inputs and parameters are many sources of bias, beyond the scientists' own creative minds. Sorry I don't have time to be specific about this right now, but it's a fascinating area. The Economist had a piece about this issue a couple of months ago.

What's your take on the relationship between CO2 and temp in those 400,000 year charts? Most iTulip readers here are already firm believers in "return to the mean" as a powerful axiom in many fields, from finance, to physics, to biology - do you see any significance in the present day sporting the largest gap between CO2 and Temperature by a full extra standard deviation, out of a sampling of 400,000 years?

I believe it is significant. My unanswered question is, Is human activity really influencing CO2 concentration that much? What else is influencing it?

Thank you for your feedback, Lukester!