Are there any skeptics who can answer this question?

Question

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100124135253AA8clDM&r=w

I've had some good answers from proponents but only a few comments from skeptics. None have really tried to answer the question. The best, so far, is "God sometimes alters the thermostat." I was hoping for a little more, me being an atheist and all ...

So, if you accept that temperatures have risen but do not believe it's down to us, please have a go at the question.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Darwinist -



Possibly a combination of the Arctic Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and ENSO combined with a long period of reduced cloud cover. Although these are no longer all combined so as to suggest continued heating, there could be a considerable time lag between the cause and the effects. Time will tell.



I did provide an answer to your question in as much as i pointed out that we don't know enough about historical climate to have an adequate understanding of present day climate. Of course, those who are more eager to make their point then debate the fact lost no time in excoriating me. But even the latest issue of Nature points out the "large range of uncertainties for temperatures from before about 1500" (p. 287). Which reinforces the point i politely pointed out there: we do not have adequate understanding of past climate to say that the current rise is anomalous. You can cut that any way you like, but it's the truth.



As i'm sure you were taught in science classes at school, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And Occam's razor (of which i'm sure you're fond of as a Darwinist) tells us not to seek a more complex explanation then is needed to adequately explain the facts. I don't argue that mankind's Co2 emissions have zero effect on the climate, but i DO argue that they have no really significant long term effect. But i guess the next ten to twenty years will settle that one for us - what do you think?



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EDIT - @ Dana.



I guess the next ten years or so will tell us, won't they? I'll offer you a deal. If temperatures are more than 0.4 degrees higher in 2020 i will change my YA name to "I was wrong". But, if they're not then you have to change yours to "Unicorn's Fart".



Deal?

.

Answer 2

If the earth can't throw off X amount of heat everyday it stands to reason that the heat will build up. We know that greenhouse gases interfere with this heat exchange. CO2, water vapor and methane tend to bend outgoing infrared energy back to the earth's surface. That's physics from the 19th century. Skeptics blame the sun, and that may be true. But that doesn't trump the argument that even this extra heat has to be radiated away. If it's not, heat has to build up...if not out into space, where will it go? All of the arguments against global warming that hinge on 'politics', or Al Gore, or some funny business with some data simply can't trump the physic of this situation. If a thick layer of clouds covered the earth's surface it would get cold because not enough heat energy could reach the surface...does anyone argue with that? I don't think so. Why is so difficult to admit that the reverse is also true? Maybe it's because CO2 can't be seen with the naked eye. If there was a green smog above our heads I doubt if there would be any deniers. Heat physics tells us that when CO2 reaches 400ppm we'll reach a tipping point and heat buildup will be beyond any easy fix. CO2 stands at 386 right now and advances at 12 to 15ppm per decade. I just can't image how so many people simply 'don't believe' in established physical laws. It's like believing storks bring babies, not sex. If someone can explain away why it gets hot inside a car parked in the sun with the windows rolled up that doesn't have anything to do with the fact that the windows ARE rolled up there would be a case that greenhouse gases don't matter. I'm waiting for that one!

Answer 3

That question is extremely important. If a single person finds a genuinely "provable" answer and gets it into the scientific community, they'll eventually get a lot of cash prizes and go down in history.



Something else I find important, is the answer to the question "How sensitive is the Earth to an increase in GHGs?" which is related to positive and negative feedback.

Answer 4

Maybe the core of the determination is because there are two clear and concise statements on whether co2 can truthfully be called a greenhouse gas. One by the followers of Svante Arrhenius who derived their co2 sample using water and acid from limestone and then used water to test for the presence of co2 say yes. Those who follow Knut Angstrom that used dehumidified co2 for his experiments say co2 is such a minor green house gas that it should not be considered to have an atmospheric warming effect. So Arrhenius says co2 is the major driving force and his followers believe this. Angstrom documented that water vapor is 99.99% of the green house effect and his work verified through the scientific method for 100 years is why most skeptics take the stand that the minor warming we have had over the last 150 years is natural with minimal contribution from industry if any.



So either you believe the peer reviewed opinion of Arrhenius that says humans did it or you have seen the experiments validating the laboratory work of Angstrom and realize co2 does not have the capability of contributing to warming unless local humidity is abnormally high.



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

http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/arrhenius.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85ngstr%C3%B6m

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_%C3%85ngstr%C3%B6m

Monthly weather review June 1901

http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/029/mwr-029-06-0268a.pdf

http://reasonmclucus.tripod.com/CO2myth.html

http://uddebatt.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/anthropogenic-global-cooling-this-increase-in-co2-emissions-over-the-past-63-years-has-resulted-in-over-40-years-of-global-cooling/

http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/sunspot.shtml

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

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

Answer 5

Since I doubt you are interested in an explanation, I thought I would at least dispell some of your incorrect assumptions.

If:



(2) there is about 40% more of it in the atmosphere when compared to pre-industrial levels and ...

CO2 is not constant and changes follow changes in temperature. This doesn't mean that humans haven't emitted it, but it does mean that it wasn't the primary driver of temperature change.



(3) temperatures are now rising rapidly (by historical standards) and ...

So you are going back 300 years? They aren't rising particularly fast. There are some that concede recent cooling or leveling off.



(4) the long term trend, governed by Milankovitch Cycles, was (and should still be) a gradual cooling trend ...

It is a gradual cooling trend that is unrelated to the recent ups and downs eperienced in the last millenia. If you look at a trend over 6000 years, you can see the cooling trend. That doesn't mean that there weren't warming trends since then. There were plenty. http://gcrio.org/CONSEQUENCES/winter96/article1-fig2.html



then isn't there an obvious explanation? ... that the increase in CO2 is causing the warming?

SF6 has increased more 50% in the last decade. It is 22,000 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2 yet noone is seriously suggesting it is causing the warming but using your logic, it must be.



You need to go back to the drawing board and revise your assumptions.

Answer 6

Very respectively and with all the information I have seen, I believe that CO2 has very little or no effect. I don't believe that there is enough CO2 in our atmosphere to make a difference as a greenhouse gas. My reasoning is as follows:



CO2 is a trace gas

Current tests put CO2 at about 390 PPM. That is .00039/1 or about 40-hundredths of a percent or less than 1/2 of one percent of the atmosphere. In contrast, oxygen is currently about 21% or 525 times more abundant than CO2 in the atmosphere. So you can see that moving from .035% to .039% of CO2 in the atmosphere, as some have claimed, is very insignificate. In the past history of the earth, CO2 has been as high as 6000 PPM which is about 6% or roughly 15 times more CO2 than there is in the atmosphere today.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091230184221.htm



Studies have also shown that water vapor is about 95% of the greenhouse effect in our atmosphere. All the other gasses combined are completely overshadowed by the powerful greenhouse effects of water vapor.

http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/main/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/849/quot95-water-vapourquot-Global-warming-debunked-by-New-Zealand-Meteorologist.aspx



CO2 is a trace gas

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

Also consider that CO2 is heavier than air, so that very little of it is in the upper atmosphere. Most of it stays close to the ground where the plants can use it for photosynthesis and much of it will be absorbed by the oceans.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/930860/see_how_co2_is_heavier_than_air/



All the charts showing a rise in CO2 throughout the history of the earth, show that CO2 follows global warming and the rise of CO2 lags behind warming by about 800 years. When the earth cools, then CO2 eventually goes down. This proves that the rise in CO2 is caused by warming instead of warming being caused by a rise in CO2.



Consensis is that global warming eventually causes a rise in CO2.

A close look here at the Vostok ice record charts shows that CO2 (the green line) lags behind warming (the blue line).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaNcQ4Wj7bQ&feature=PlayList&p=4874B5A951DA8DA4&index=0&playnext=1



There is also the warming and cooling cycles caused by variation in the output of the sun which is responsible for changes in climate.

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

Answer 7

The SUN contributed to 35% of the warming from 1980 to 2000 and the PDO warm phase can be blamed for the rest.



http://www.spacedaily.com/news/pacific-02n.html

http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/2005GL025539.pdf



EDIT PAULB



Care to explain what this sentence means?



"How much of this variability is attributable to natural variations and how much is due to anthropogenic contributions to atmospheric greenhouse gases has not yet been resolved," Giese said. "Recent studies indicate that it is difficult to separate intrinsic natural variance from anthropogenic forcing in the climate system."



As of yet it is still unresolved I say AGW accounts for about .05% of the warming.

.

This is one plausible theory with data that can account for the warming over the last thirty years, the lack of a hot spot in the mid tropical troposphere is a clear indication that the warming is not caused by an enhanced greenhouse process. In any other field of science this would cause most researchers to abandon the theory and move to another explanation that has data to support it. Its baffling why researchers choose to stick with the AGW theory, it has failed the basic test set by its own criteria.



Figure 7 compared to Figure 8



http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC-Feb%2020.pdf

.

In closing I will have to see what global temperatures do during this decade, if they start warming again while this solar cycle continues to remain relatively week, would force me to reconsider the AGW theory with more validity. If temperatures decline I would say that all the climate variations observed in the 20th century are attribituted to natural variation. If they remain flat as they did during the last decade I will still remain skeptical, and I will be thankfull that the Earth's climate is not cooling, and my offspring will probably enjoy the warmth that I have during my lifetime on this ball.

Answer 8

First let talk about the temps rapidly rising. I am not sure when .7 degrees in the apst 100 years started to be considered a "rapid" rise, but even of that .7 degree rise, we know that the maximum that man can be held accountable for is .4 degrees. That's maximum.



Second, CO2 is a GHG, but it is also a particularly weak GHG that absorbs wavelengths of energy at the same bands at which H2O absorbs the energy. Given that their is much more H2O in the atmosphere, some of the energy that may be absorbed by CO2, has already been absorded by the H2O in the atmosphere. Some have discounted this because of differences in higher altitudes, but nevertheless, it is known that this will lessen the overall effect of CO2. Even lacking the H2O effect, the additional CO2 acts in a logarithmic manner. In other words, every molecule of CO2 added to the atmosphere has less effect than the one added before. You don't get to runaway global warming in this manner. In order to get there, you have to add positive feedbacks, and nut just a little bit of positive feedbacks, but something that would multiply the effect of CO2 alone by a factor of 6 to 14 times the amount. The best guess of the effect of doubling CO2 by just CO2 alone has been .5 degrees. SInce none of you AGWers are arguing .5 degrees we must go on to point 3.



Third, The positive feedbacks ahve necessarily been overestimated. The stability of a system is determined by the amount of positive feedback compared to the amount of negative feedbacks. One negative feedback that is known is that if the earth heats up, more heat will be lost to space. Such negative feedbacks stop small changes from becoming large changes and stop large changes from becoming massive changes. The models used by the AGWers have consistently favored the positive feedbacks with little to no negative feedbacks. The consequences are that you have a model which is not stable and will always predict exponential cooling or warming. The earth is not unstable, so your models ahev little ability to predict 100 years into the future.



Fourth, Everything the AGWers scientists have done would be laughed at in the statistics community. If I said I was going to predict 100 years out with 100 years worth of data, a statistician would be correct in calling me a fool. If I said I could predict 100 years out without the ability to predict next week, a statistician would be correct in calling me a fool. If I ran a simple linear analysis on what is clearly a time series problem, a statistician would be right in calling me a fool. If I pretended to understand a process that has been around for 4.5 billion years off of 100 years of data, a statistician would be correct in callling me a fool. If I took data from many different sources with little standardization and I modified all of this data in an unblinded manner while still seggesting that there is no way I biased the data, a statistician would be right in calling me a fool. If I claimed to have modeled a known chaotic system that has a high noise to signal ratio and claimed a level of certainty in my conclusions, that is usually reserved for theories that have been around for hundreds of years and could be experimentally tested, a statistician would be right in calling me a fool.



Your science being particularly weak, does not mean we should not move towards reducing CO2 emission, but it does mean that you need to use reason and stop your current scare-mongering tactics, lest you make all of science look bad. Because believe it or not, there are actually scientists who follow the scientific method and would not like to have the name of science sullied by charlatans.





Dana,

Thank you for your inadequate summary, you once again have shown the scientific rigor I expect out of you and other warmers. Good job. So let me summarize what you have said in return:



(I say .8 degrees not .7, even though both can be readily found in the literature, I like to pretend I'm smarter. I'm also going to say .65 degrees caused by man, because while the "consensus" science does not back this figure, I am sure to find some scientist who used this figure, I'm sure that some of the "scientists" I reference will completely forget that almost half of the warming took place prior to 1950.



For the rest of the argument, he is actually right, I have absolutely no comeback, so I must now resort to insults. )



That pretty much summarize it, Dana?

Go scare someone else, your scare-mongering psuedo-science does not work on me.



Oh and Noah's answer of 400 ppm being the tipping point is laughable. Really 400, not 398 or 402. Well thats good to know, my crystal ball said it was 412.3, you sure thats not right?





Paul B, Obviously you have difficulty understanding what you have read. While the scientist did not feel the desire to fight with the warmist, so he threw you a bone of AGW being true, his research offers an alternative explanation. By throwing you all a bone, he stayed off the radar of you great scientific minds that like to have editors fired and careers ruin if you dare to disagree, but it is the research that is important.

Answer 9

Perhaps you're unaware how science works: the burden of proof is on the Warmists. They (you) must prove that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive changes in the climate. What you're doing is is exactly what the creationists do: "hey, the theory of evolution (or AGW skeptics) can't yet explain X, therefore I win."



You should be ashamed of yourself.

Answer 10

Really it's an unanswerable question. You may as well ask "is there any combination of walruses and palm trees that can be shown to be a better explanation than the AGW theory?".



As many AGW realist answers have shown, no natural cycles can account for more than a very small fraction of the recent global warming. I understand giving the contrarians an opportunity to present their case - I've tried the same many times in the past. But they can't. That's why they're constantly attacking AGW rather than trying to present a viable alternative - there isn't one. If there were, we would hear about it all the time. As it is we still get the sunspot/volcano/natural oscillations arguments frequently even though they clearly can't explain the recent warming.



*edit* heyyy we finally got a straightforward answer. Tomcat cites Scafetta&West who conclude 25-35% of the recent warming can be attributed to solar effects.



Unfortunately the study is riddled with errors, as discussed here:



"If [Scafetta & West] were my students, I’d have flunked their paper."

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/11/a-phenomenological-sequel/



and here:



"Their higher values are based on unrealistic assumptions. If they would use a more realistic climate transfer sensitivity of 0.11K/Wm-2, or even somewhat higher (0.12 or 0.13) for the long-term, and use trends instead of smooth curve points, they would end up with solar contributions of 10% or less for 1950-2000 and near 0% and about 10% in 1980-2000 using the PMOD and ACRIM data, respectively."

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/solar-variability-statistics-vs-physics-2nd-round/



Many, many other studies have concluded that solar activity cannot account for more than 14% of the warming over the past 30 years, and most put it under 10%. Here's one example:

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/10/3713.full



Scafetta & West are the only ones to put the value above 14% that I'm aware of, which is why Tomcat cites them exclusively despite their unrealistic assumptions.



He then claims "the PDO warm phase can be blamed for the rest" and links an article which does not support that claim. The article is in reference to this paper:

http://soda.tamu.edu/references/Paper_Bratcher_Giese_GRL_2002.pdf



Which concludes "The results presented here do not preclude the possibility that anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases have contributed to global warming. However the results do indicate that the human forced portion of global warming may be less than previously described"



It does not quantify the potential warming caused by the PDO, and certainly doesn't attribute 70% of the warming over the past 30 years to natural oscillations. The article claims "as much as one-half", but that claim is not supported by the research in question. The study is simply not quantitative - it just says 'maybe some of that warming due to PDO - here are some correlations to suggest that.'



Basically it's wishful thinking. Twice.



CO2 expeller (formerly Jayd and .) claims ".7 degree rise, we know that the maximum that man can be held accountable for is .4 degrees."



First of all it's 0.8°C, secondly no that is not the maximum. Most figures I've seen put it at 80% anthropogenic, or about 0.65°C.



"The positive feedbacks ahve [sic] necessarily been overestimated...Everything the AGWers scientists have done would be laughed at in the statistics community."



Zero supporting evidence, ridiculous claims. Didn't even do as well as Tomcat.



Romeo - I'm not even going to bother. A high school student should be able to see the obvious flaws in his argument.



jim says "Since I doubt you are interested in an explanation"



translation - I don't have an explanation



"I thought I would at least dispell some of your incorrect assumptions."



He then proceeds not to "dispell" any of your correct statements. Could that be a worse effort than Romeo's? At least Romeo tried, whereas jim just rambled incoherently.



Meadow - might as well just say "possibly unicorn farts". All supposition, no evidence. Natural oscillations like PDO don't cause long-term warming, and cloudcover if anything has had a cooling effect over the last 50 years.

http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/presentations/Caltechweb.pdf

Answer 11

Tomcat's link



http://www.spacedaily.com/news/pacific-02n.html



even includes a statement that the natural variability may be reducing the greenhouse effect; the very opposite of causing it.



Not the first time that I've found a sceptic's link to support the very opposite of what is claimed for it.