And so what? Do you think the scientists involved with the IPCC work for free? Personally I can't see that it matters who funds his work...if you can dispute his analysis, suggest he has cooked the data or something else..fine. He is simply pointing out holes in the arguments made regarding global warming, if he gets paid to do this all the more power to him. Short of being able to point to deficiencies in his analysis resorting to the ole "well they are payed off by industry" which is the general copout that the climate change fanatics resort to, strikes me as being as far from scientific debate as can be. I refer to the JunkScience site simply because he has done a very good job of collecting much of the raw data and showing other ways of looking at it. Lots of other places to go and find similar analysis. A good one I think is

www.frazerinstitute.ca/admin/books/file ... ettled.pdf


And I guess you did not go to the right spot for that graph. Heres another spot:
http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=889

this article actually shows the rapid heating in the early twentieth century. If you dig around you will find this heating replicated in most places other than the examples he shows here.

There is a plethora of research out there that points to past heating periods that were as intense and over shorter durations. A good article is :

Ge et al, 2003; Winter half-year temperature reconstruction for the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow river and Yangtse river China during the past 2000 years, The Holocene, 13, pp933-940

The point they make based on oxygen isotope data is that during the Medival Warm Period (10th - 14th centuries) temperature rose at greater rates than has been recognized anywhere today....and for several 10 and 30 year periods.

Ah and yes I found the reference regarding the graph you pointed to showing suppossed correlation of CO2 and temperature.

Monnin et al, 2001; Atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the last glacial termination, Nature, 291, pp 112-114.

If memory serves the graph you pointed to is based on oxygen isotope work done on Antartic ice cores. The above paper points out (based on Antarctic measurements) that the scale of the graph hides the underlying truth which is that the start of CO2 increase lags the start of the temperature increase by approximately 800 years. This being the case it is pretty hard to argue that a rise in CO2 caused temperature to rise in kind. More likely the rise in temperature affected CO2 sequestration in some manner.

As to your quote regarding correlation how about this?



a classic example of such spurious relation is the correlation of all fires in San Francisco with the number of fire engines at each fire and the damages in dollars of each fire. There is a significant relationship between number of fire engines and the amount of damage.....hence we are forced to conclude that fire engines cause damage!

In short even if we could show a correlation of CO2 and temperature it is impossible to derive causation simply from that relationship. Hence researchers invoke models to augment their arguments, which I have pointed out often ignore significant variables such as water vapor and solar effects. Interestingly enough these models have not been very effective in replicating past climate history. My understanding is that all of the current models indicate the mini-ice age in the UK was an impossibility.

And since you are from France perhaps you would care to read some of the summary work of Pierre Lutgen: this one "Controverses scientifiques sur l'effet de serre" is located at:

http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Lutge ... erses.html

Rocdoc, I think we really appreciate your input here. It has been asked elsewhere in this forum, why is it that you deduce that CO2 is not a direct causal link to global warming while many professional scientists working in the field do. Is it only because of funding as you mention? Is water vapour the primary greenhouse gas? According to Wikipeadia, it is but water vapour is forced to rise with CO2 by "positive feedback".

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

I don't have access to the literature like you do. Can you enlighten us further why you think the world is warming?

I liked Gary Novak's ideas simply because they appear to be original. As a biologist, he would certainly have understanding of the chemistry of oceans and atmosphere, but perhaps not of the geology. I am thinking that he is on the right track but instead of "core heating" it could be instead, what geologists have known for a few decades now as, variations in mid-ocean floor volcanism. Is this a plausible mechanism (apart from CO2 and variations in solar output)?

Here are two studies by the Max Planck Institute. One says that solar radiation has a minor effect on global warming

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14751

the other other suggests that the slow spreading Gakkel ridge in the Arctic does indeed exhibit hydrothermal activity.

link

The question now arises whether this is sufficient to melt Arctic ice.

In terms of the greenhouse gases....water vapor makes up 90% by weight. Water vapour is affected by many things...CO2 relationship with water vapor is not something I have looked at in detail..I'll do a bit of research.

For the same combination of reasons that it has probably warmed and cooled through history....solar intensity, sunspots, tilt of the poles, wobble of earth during rotation....etc. There is a ream of literature on this.


I guess that would be possible. One would have to get ahold of some of the research to that end. Numa and USGS websites might be a good spot to start searching around. Geology magazine has a wealth of papers published over the years on mid ocean rise vulcanism. You could try correlating Ocean temperatures with the location of active spreading centres....subduction zones would as a corrolary be heat sinks I think. Interesting thought...now you have me wondering and I am going to have to run off to the library.

What the Meteorological Service of Canada has to say:
http://www.msc.ec.gc.ca/education/scien ... s/3_e.html

What Enviroment Canada has to say:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/science/sandefeb03/a1_e.html

I can't let go of this subject at the moment. I want to add a couple of more pieces to this "1000" piece puzzle by jumping to a different part of it now. I hope that rocdoc123 (or anyone else for that matter) can fill in the gaps from my last posting (I will continue to look too). Anyway, I agree with rocdoc and others about the discontent following the presentation of the IPCC reports:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergover ... ate_Change

My impression is that there needs to be a more integrated model (not only computer) involving scientists from several disciplines including earth scientists, biologists, oceanographers and climatologists. I found a couple of interesting sites, which make some steps in that direction. One figure that struck me is the one page 11 of this site. It shows that we are still coming out of an interglacial period that started about 20,000 years ago. There is a steep rise in CO2 at the beginning of each major period (lasting 100,000 years) followed by a gradual decline. We are near the peak of that initial steep rise.

http://www.weizmann.ac.il/ESER/People/Y ... istry1.pdf

On pages 17, 18 and 19, we see the description of 3 pumps for CO2 in the ocean. A (1) solubility, (2) organic and (3) carbonate pump. I don't know which of these is dominant but 3 appears to be (see figures 4 and 5 below).

http://www.weizmann.ac.il/ESER/People/Y ... istry1.pdf

My point here is that there are also (apart from anthropogenic CO2) long-term (geological) and short-term (biological, Coccolitho
phorids) natural explanations for the variations of CO2 in the atmosphere. To me, the long-term one appears to be the dominant one. The human contribution just adds to it, while the biological one tries to compensate for the others. I will add more later when my understanding increases. Does anyone have a different view or agree?

It seems that Gary Novak is only partly right. There is a correlation between mid-ocean floor spreading rates and CO2 but on a scale of millions of years.

http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2004AM/finalp ... _73650.htm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

http://www.salemstate.edu/~lhanson/gls2 ... causes.htm


Carbon dioxide is now the important contributor to global warming. Even during the Ordovician ice age, CO2 affected climate.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 223438.htm


We are particularly interested in what happened to CO2 during the last several hundreds of thousands of years because history is likely to repeat itself. We are facing another ice age in about 3 thousand years but in the meantime, we are at a peak in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This is likely to fall soon due to biological activity in Antarctic ocean waters.

Sigman, D. M. and Boyle, E. A. (2000).Glacial/interglacial variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Nature 407: 859-869.

There has been criticism that temperature does not correlate with CO2 but, at least for the Vostok cores, this is not the case. There is a Nature article about this where corrections have been made to the deuterium/hydrogen isotope ratios used to calculate temperature. Also see comment 2 below:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13

and this

http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/Resources/gcc/5-3-1-2.html

This last reference has other links to climate change throughout geologic time.

Does anyone have any idea what triggers an interglacial?

Grame interesting posts. The article that puports to debunk the Ordovician glaciation tie with CO2 as well as the climateorg argument on the delay of CO2 versus temperature from the Vostok cores are a bit of special pleading I think. In both cases they say well yes the high CO2 didn't correspond with high temperature..but indeed as time went on CO2 did contribute to warming! The point of argument that paleoclimatologists have been making is that it is entirely possible that high CO2 is caused by higher temperatures and not the other way round. Noone argues that CO2 is not part of the greenhouse affect but lets get the causation argument correct.

I agree with your view that what is required are better models. What is very important is that water vapor and solar effects are included in the models in a proper manner. As well climate modelers need to look at both positive and negative feedback scenarios.

Rockdoc, I am pleased with your comments because I think they are valid. I’m trying to find the real situation like I think you are. I want to answer my question at the end of my last post because it also supports the comment you made in the first paragraph.

Interglacials start with the re-occurrence of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (ATH).

e.g. Knorr, G. and Lohmann, G. (2003). Southern Ocean origin for the resumption of Atlantic thermohaline circulation during deglaciation. Nature 424, 532-536.

So it appears that warm ocean temperatures come first in Antarctica followed by rise in CO2 presumably because sequestration by plankton there ceases. This change is perhaps partly triggered by the Milankovitch cycle. Whether the ATH will shut down as alluded to by the Royal Society (see post by EnergySpin on page 2), is still open to question. I really don’t have much confidence in their computer models partly because they are likely to be too simplistic and leave out important interactions involving the biosphere, atmosphere and oceans. I’m beginning to think that they are making these predictions in order to secure future funding for research. They even suggest that the most drastic outcome has a low probability but others have taken this to be the most likely outcome! This is a bit like peak oil. Both have become politicized as you say.

I’ve outlined the most important factors in the global warming debate in this thread. I think that the details should be left to the professional scientists working in this field. Hopefully, the politicians will listen to their varied views when they speak and quickly make sound judgments and promise immediate action.

rockdoc has a post graduate degree and extensive experience in the field, I would take his posts very very seriously. Attack his posts with science and information, not personal insults

Possibly useful resource links:

Devil @ http://cypenv.org/Files/climate_change.htm

and

http://www.gci.org.uk/

and

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/landing.asp?id=1278

Ok. Let us use this this data that you claim as an authority against you. In this article they post world climate temperatures for the last 1 million years.



If the climate change models PROVE TO BE AS PREDICTABLE AS THEY HAVE BEEN SO FAR, then we are looking at a 3 to 4 degree C rise in global temperature over the next 100 years. This would make this the WARMEST period in the last MILLION YEARS. Everything on earth has adapted itself to this lower 4 degree C band. This and this alone makes it an ECOLOGICAL CATASTROPHY. Does that make sense? Even adding the -1 degree C downcycle that you could predict from this chart over this time period and you still have a record 2 degree temperature above evolutionarily historic levels. Newer models, proving accurate but still requiring more sound science, have predicted up to 6 degree C.

Being living organisms with a genetic predisposition to a certain range of temperatures in ourselves and our supporting environments, this should concern us. We have already stressed our ecosystems and further stress could cause them to collapse.



Ok... but look at your data... You presented this

as proof? And we HAVE causation that more CO2 in an atmosphere means it retains more heat. If you have a box filled with CO2, it retains more heat than one with less. No one said that it serves as the ONLY factor. But taking huge sequestered carbon deposits and burning them does cause a change in the climate.

What about that doesn't make any sense?

well as I said before the climate change models that forward predict cannot be proven...until we get to that time. The only time the models have been able to "predict" past temperatures is when modelers throw in feedback mechanisms until such time as they get a match...not surprisingly, but somewhat invalid. There is no sound proof any of the models will work, they do not incorporate all the variables...how could they be reasonably expected to?

.

I'm not really sure what your point is...the argument here is the earth warms and cools...it has in the past and it will in the future...temperatures have been higher and have been much lower. .....there is no evidence we have anything to do with it.

As to my proof....you miss entirely the point the global warming argument says CO2 is linked directly to increased temperatures...this is their theory. It is not my job to prove without a shadow of a doubt this is incorrect but rather to point out that the arguments are inconsistent with earths history as shown in the paper you stole the graph from (you should always credit the source) where it is quite clear the link between CO2 and temperature is pretty poor over long periods of earth history. As well CO2 was much higher (order of magnitude) when the earth was covered by ice...it didn't dissapear so what happened to the CO2 greenhouse affect? The other argument of course is that based on studies of the Antarctic Vostak ice cores high temperatures preceeded elevated CO2, not the other way around. Faced with these inconsistencies it is pretty hard to still stick to a theory that can't explain them. CO2 is a greenhouse gas...noone has argued it isn't....theoretically increased greenhouse gases can cause heating. But CO2 is not the major greenhouse gase and anthropogenic CO2 makes up less than 3% of all CO2 so even using the most agressive forcing calculations anthropogenic CO2 would make up 10% of the overall greenhouse gas forcing. Everything else including the most important greenhouse gas from a forcing perspective ...water vapor we as humans have zero impact on. Then if you assume that greenhouse gases are only part of the complicated equation which includes solar radiation, sunspot activity, precedence, polar shift, etc. it is pretty hard to argue that humans control climate...in fact it is pure nonsense.

If the model does a good job of predicting future weather patterns and it incorporates as many of the largest variables, we can have a certain confidence in the data. What variables do you suggest climatologists have left out? You paint a broad blanket over a variety of models. If in the coming years these models do not properly predict results, we will abandon them. But for not, the mainstream seems on board with them.



Do you feel that global warming will cause no stress on living beings? Do you seriously argue that? EVEN IF global warming came from extra solar inputs, we still should figure out something to do. Do you argue with that position? Or do you feel that global warming will have no consequences?



One, On the internet, everything has a source. Right click it.
Two, I clearly stated "In your link", hence the source does exist in this thread in a overt manner as well, presented by you. Or do you repeat the full source in each instance they appear in your own papers.... Thought not.

Don't attempt to chastise me and covertly disparage my character by accusing me of theft where none exists. Hopefully others will also see through these sorts of tactics.



Great. But the data shows that in TODAY'S climate, CO2 has a large effect that we KNOW TO BE CAUSAL. What mitigating factors exist can be an area of debate. But YOU claim that extra CO2 doesn't make an atmosphere warmer. Get 2 bottles, fill one with CO2, test for heat retention.

But you ALREADY know what you will find.



The climate system has an amazing complexity with many different factors causing a wide variety of results.

You cannot simply jump up and down about one variable held across all time without any reference to the other variables and pretend that you have proven anything. THINK! The graph has been hand drawn for christ sake. You have stuck your head in the sand.





So CO2 does cause a heat up in the atmosphere. And yet CO2 doesn't cause global warming because OTHER things also cause global warming. Wow.

Come on, can you not see how that presents a Straw Man? Oh man, you did great. You just shot down the hotly debated idea that humans CONTROL THE ENTIRE CLIMATE SINGLEHANDEDLY!!! I think a few conspiracy sites want more input on that topic. *grin*

Human Carbon Output has upset the balance of life. Your attempts to distract because you wish to believe that humans can screw the world as hard as they want CAUSES DEATH. But you have no science to stand on. You cannot even make a logical argument without resorting to fallacy.

Climate change does happen. Who knows, it may have even slipped back to an ice age if we hadn't dumped all this carbon out. But we get more and more science each day saying that we seem to have started a run away process that we have no idea of what it will do to our environment.

Maybe other factors have a larger effect. Which ones do you feel outstrip CO2, what data do you have to prove that? Why does that make reducing our CO2 source of the instability a bad idea?

http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?na ... e&sid=1423