Where can one find hard data supporting human-caused climate change?

Question

Where can one find hard data supporting human-caused climate change?

Answer 1

It is a scientific fact that Algore invented global warming and that John Tyndall, Svante Arrhenius, the 1978 Jason report, and the hundreds of papers written about climate before we even heard of Algore in this or any other context are, like the fossil record, forgeries by the Devil to confuse you.

Answer 2

If you really want to know who is right, follow the money. It is really all you have to do. What I mean is, who benefits from the argument that global warming is natural and man made. What giant companies are paying politicians to say that we are causing global warming? Who is paying to say that is is natural? You see the biggest most richest companies on earth are paying unbelievable amounts of money to politician to say it is natural. What companies are paying billions to say it is man made? Nobody! You see it is that simple. Follow the money. No company benefits from the side that is man made. That is your proof, plain and simple. Always look at the side that doesn't stand to make money off the idea and they are correct, it's called integrity.

Answer 3

Climate scientists like Phil Jones acknowledge that the only real evidence they have for man made climate change is that they constructed a model using only natural factors and it predicted less warming that actually occured during the second half of the twentieth century.



There's lots of junk science out there (science trying to support a particular political agenda), but there's nothing conclusive. Researchers who aren't specifically looking for significant human made global warming don't find it.

Answer 4

There is no hard data. It all exist in computer models. Like the ones that forecast the weather and we all know how accurate those are and the weather is much simpler that the global climate.

Answer 5

'Hard Data'?



That is the problem. There is currently no credible, honest, unmanipulated scientific evidence that supports the notion of man-caused catastrophic global warming/climate change.

Answer 6

Atmospheric CO2 comes in many different isotopes. 2 of them are stable. That being carbon-12 and carbon-13. Plants have a 2% greater ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 than that of the atmosphere. Fossil fuels are made of ancient plants. If the CO2 levels are increasing, from 280ppm to 390ppm in the last 2 centuries, due to fossil fuel use then we would expect to see a change in the isotopic composition of the atmosphere. That is exactly what is happening (Link 1)..



Differences between measurements of the IRIS and IMG satellites show that more radiation is being trapped at greenhouse gas absorption wavelengths. (Link 2)



Downward radiation is increasing at those same wavelengths (link 3)



The stratosphere is cooling while the troposphere is warming indicating that more infrared radiation is being trapped nearer the surface. (link 4) As well, the tropsphere is rising. (Link 5)



If you know the math I'm sure you could figure out how much can be attributable to humans by taking the percentage warming that occurs due to the greenhouse, the percentage of that greenhouse attributable to human emissions and figuring out how much warming can be attributable to humans.

Answer 7

The fact that humans are causing global warming is based on physics. Climate scientists evaluate 'radiative forcings', which are what cause planetary energy imbalances, which are what cause the planet's temperature to change. The largest radiative forcing over the past century by far has been from greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, due to their increased concentration in the atmosphere from humans burning fossil fuels. I summed up the scientific evidence here:

http://www.greenoptions.com/wiki/global-warming-and-climate-change-causes



So far this has nothing to do with climate models. But in order to evaluate more precisely how much of the warming each radiative forcing has caused, that's where climate models come in (the models of course being based on the physics described above). Models agree that human greenhouse gas emissions have caused about 80% of the global warming over the past century, and about 100% over the past 30 years. Most of the rest is solar. Solar activity increased in the early 20th century, but has not increased in over 50 years.



There was one very good study by Meehl et al. on the subject which you can read here:

http://cawcr.gov.au/bmrc/clfor/cfstaff/jma/meehl_additivity.pdf



Here's a nice compilation of papers putting the solar contribution at generally less than 20% over the past century and under 10% the last 30 years.

http://skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm



I also summarized a number of fingerprints of man-made climate change here, which included Meehl's study:

http://www.greenoptions.com/wiki/fingerprints-of-human-caused-climate-change

Answer 8

I gather from Jeff M's answer, that more human caused CO2 is in the atmosphere, because it has not yet been absorbed by the ocean. http://www2.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=433b593b-6637-4a42-970b-bdef8947fa4e

Thus, the CO2 is catching, not more of the 12 - 18 um infrared radiation, but converting it to some escapable wavelength lower in the atmosphere where the temperature is higher. The energy released is proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan-Boltzmann_law

Obviously, this causes some cooling (due to the higher temperature at release) as well as possibly some warming (due to the effects of the shoulders of the CO2 peak). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Transmission.png

Computer models are great at assigning numbers to how much of that is warming, and how much of the warming is being caused by the CO2, but they do not do so believably. The models are based on unverifiable assumptions, and are themselves unverified. http://www.john-daly.com/fraction/soonfig3.gif



A simplified way of looking at this data is to use Beer's law that states that the blockage of light is proportional to the log of the concentration of the absorbing molecule. However, the models are based on unverified and highly doubtful net positive feedback mechanisms. The Warmist point of view is that the system is well understood, and ALL the variables are accounted for. That part is the most ridiculous. http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf

There is no need for skeptics to come up with a perfect unified theory to replace AGW. The reality is that the climate is NOT well understood, but the computers are not programmed to understand that and more than the Warmists who programmed them are. http://www.dgf.uchile.cl/~ronda/ronandlin10a.pdf



Of course, if the reason that CO2 increases in the atmosphere was due to human activity, and not the changed equilibrium constant in the oceans due to rising temperatures, then the C13 and C14 would not be decreasing as fast in the oceans as it is in the atmosphere. It seems that the oceans are doing a reasonable job of absorbing CO2, but is releasing it also. The increased acidification is a result of the human CO2 being produced being also absorbed in the ocean, AND released. http://www-cger.nies.go.jp/publication/972403/972403-12-3.pdf



Edit @Modest:

The link was about the current 2010 concentrations of CO2 isotopes C13 and C14. The release of ~90 Gtons/yr CO2 from the oceans is higher than the 26 Gtons/yr produced by man. The oceans absorb most of that back and then some. The increase in atmospheric CO2 over the last few decades reflects that the ocean has not absorbed everything it has released plus all of the amount made by man. The bicarbonates go through more reactions and are eventually precipitated out into the lithosphere. The biosphere also factors in there to a minor extent.



Based on your previous answers, I assumed that you were already familiar with this, and thus, I included a recent paper about the current concentrations for you instead of the classic paper.



Edit2 @Modest:

I am not sure what you think the skeptic position on this is. First, forget the 6 Gton figure for current anthropogenic CO2. I do not know where you got that. Second I have never heard of a skeptic who does not believe that humans create CO2, and would not concede that humans produce more than polar bears. We may argue how much atmospheric CO2 has increased since 1870 (Precision measurements back then showed erratic changes.), but there is not much argument about how much it has increased since 1960, thanks to the Keeling Curve.



The notion that anthropogenic CO2 goes to the atmosphere, then to the oceans is not what is in dispute. The issue is the effect that equilibrium with the ocean is having on the atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The skeptic version is that things should taper off around 700 to 1400 ppm. That should not burden the climate in a net negative way. The reason is that as the concentration of atmospheric CO2 goes up, so does the rate of CO2 incorporation into the ocean. Ocean warming alters the equilibrium causing more CO2 to be released. Warmists point to that as positive feedback, but skeptics point to Beer's Law, and say diminishing returns. Equilibrium will be comfortably established.



Both theories support the notion of more depletion of C13 in the atmosphere than the ocean, but the skeptic one supports less of it. The reason is that the ocean quickly takes up the CO2 (~5 years current estimate. ~7 years for the early studies.). Most of these studies were done in the late 1950's.



Edit3 @Modest:

Your 36 Gton figure is a gross figure for CO2. The 1999 figure was a gross figure for C. That works out to be 22 Gtons/yr CO2:



Atmosphere Mass = 5 exp 6 Gtons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth

mole wt atmospheric gas (air) = 29

mole wt CO2 = 44

Gtons air/ppmv = 5

Gtons CO2/ppmv = 5(44/29) = 8

Increase in CO2 = 50 ppmv in 30 years = 1.7 ppmv/year.

That's 13 Gtons/yr CO2 net from 1978 - 2008

It was the same from 1989 - 1999.

For Carbon (mole wt 12) that works out to:

5(12/29) = 2.1 Gtons/ppmv

2.1(1.7 ppm/yr) = 3.4 Gtons/yr Net.

(3.4 reported)

6 gross Gtons C = 6(44/12) = 22 Gtons CO2/yr for 1999

Answer 9

CO2 concentrations over the past several hundreds of thousands of years (currently at all-time high):

http://www.ess.washington.edu/~steig/images/epicagore.gif

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm

http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc%5Ftar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig3-2.htm

Isotopic evidence that recent CO2 levels are due to man-made emissions:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/

http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/environmental/200611CO2globalwarming.html

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radioc.htm

http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/scq.CO2rise.html

Oceanic acidification (thus CO2 cannot come from the oceans):

http://web.archive.org/web/20080625100559/http://www.ipsl.jussieu.fr/~jomce/acidification/paper/Orr_OnlineNature04095.pdf

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2004GB002247.shtml

Human Emissions vs. Volcanic Emissions (humans win by two full orders of magnitude):

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638

http://www.grist.org/article/volcanoes-emit-more-co2-than-humans

Stratospheric cooling and tropospheric warming - this is due to thermal insulation by greenhouse gases. Thermal radiation form the Earth is trapped within the lower atmosphere due to the enhanced greenhouse effect.

http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=25719

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/RSS_troposphere_stratosphere_trend.png

http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20c.html

http://www.greenoptions.com/wiki/fingerprints-of-human-caused-climate-change

Comparison of methane and carbon dioxide (last link is discussion on the subject in a recent question):

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080423_methane.html

http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring04/atmo451b/pdf/RadiationBudget.pdf

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/

https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20100618163343AADf2CA

Solar output, and how it has not risen in the past several decades (and thus cannot be the cause of recent warming):

http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Temp-sunspot-co2.svg





All of these are observations, not models; facts, not predictions. However, you can form models and predictions off of these - global warming is the conclusion I come up with, as do the vast majority of climate scientists. Of course, don't think that I expect that one remark to really convince you; it's not a popularity game. Let the science convince you^^^.



@Reality Has A Conservative Bias:



Thank you for your contribution of an opinion article in a news source, two anti-anthropogenic global warming sites that posit information that is both discredited and non peer-reviewed, one that describes warming on planets that are COMPLETELY different than our own, and of course the ever-so-credible Youtube. Excellent.



Oh, and I see you linked to a story explaining how Phil Jones "concedes" there is no global warming - please see here the actual transcript of the interview I am very sure you are referring to, and see what he has to say about anthropogenic global warming:



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm



And I quote (emphasis added):



"B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming



Yes, BUT ONLY JUST. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend IS QUITE CLOSE TO THE SIGNIFICANCE LEVEL. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."



and:



"E - How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?



I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - THERE'S EVIDENCE THAT MOST OF THE WARMING SINCE THE 1950s IS DUE TO HUMAN ACTIVITY."



Please, for everyone's sake, go back and stay in Politics where you belong.



@Portland-Joe:



I'm not sure if you were expecting people to not bother reading your sources, but from what I can gather from your last link:

http://www-cger.nies.go.jp/publication/972403/972403-12-3.pdf

it does not state anywhere that the oceans are releasing a significant volume of CO2 into the atmosphere. It states that the very high ppm measurements that they came across were due to the monsoon upwelling:



"The highest values (more than 250 ppm higher than atmospheric) were found in the Arabian Sea and were associated with the southwest monsoon upwelling."



It also states that carbon dioxide, when in the oceans, reacts to form carbonic acid and later bicarbonate, etc. (not gaseous CO2). It further states that the oceans act as a repository for atmospheric CO2 and that CO2 readily dissolves in the oceans.



The majority of the publication though discusses the concentrations of CO2 in the Indian Ocean and the variances in concentrations in relation to depth, temperature, and C13 and C14 isotopes. Please point out to us where it supports your claim that the oceans also emit gaseous carbon dioxide to any significant degree.



Unless, of course, you mean to say that the oceans are not releasing gaseous carbon dioxide, just releasing carbon in the form of particulates like bicarbonate. While I see this as unlikely since it's not what you said, let's play for a minute with this notion that that's what you meant: how is this evidence against the theory of anthropogenic global warming? Even you yourself admitted that the oceans are acidifying, which is indicative of a slower rate of particulate-formation than gaseous CO2 absorption. It would also dismiss the oceans as a source for the CO2 in the atmosphere.



Edit: @Portland-Joe:



I now understand what you are trying to get at, but a few problems I still have with that original link are that:



-- It does not compare human CO2 emissions to oceanic CO2 emissions.

-- I cannot find where it supports the notion that atmospheric C-13 and C-14 ratios are decreasing at a slower rate than oceanic concentrations. Could you point this out to me?

-- The data does not show information on current 2010 levels. The paper you reference was published in 1999, not 2010. Perhaps it was made available online in 2010, but it's 11 years old. This should be obvious by how it quotes numbers from IPCC 1990, such as human emissions. Nowadays the number isn't 6 gigatons, it's more along the lines of 36 gigatons.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php



Edit2 (3?) @Portland-Joe:



First, I apologize for the lapse in my response time...



Second, it seems that I have misread/misinterpreted much of what you have been saying. I apologize again for assuming you were referring to the notion that the oceans have been supplying the majority of the CO2 in the atmosphere, while humans have not. I understand now what you mean to get at (I do this time, actually); your mentioning of the shifting equilibrium did not click with me as your mentioning of the release of CO2 by the oceans - I took this to mean you said that the oceans were responsible for the CO2 increase. Taken together (the equilibrium comment and the release), I can clearly see what you mean now; I should have remembered that CO2 dissolves less in water as the temperature rises. I still stand by my comments on the original source, for I still do not see where it compares atmospheric C13/C14 ratio drop rates and oceanic rates. However, your point is good.



As a side note, I obtained the 6 gigaton figure from your paper; I believe that it mentions it in the first or second paragraph, where it compares human emissions and atmospheric composition. This was probably the figure when the paper was published in 1999.

Answer 10

It does not exist.



“There is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will cause in the future, catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere or disruption of the Earth's climate.”



Oregon Petition, from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, signed by over 17,000 international scientists including more than 2000 of the world's leading climatologists, meteorologists and planetary / atmospheric scientists.





“The attempts of environmentalists to bolster the myth of human-induced 'global warming' by the cynical, nay gleeful, exploitation of non-equilibrium climatic events is downright immoral.”



Philip Stott

Professor of Bi ogeography, University of London,

in a letter to The Times

November 2000



“All this concern with the effects of global warming is another manifestation of being politically correct”



Lord Young of Graffham, in a letter to The Times, 28th Nov 2000.





“Global warmers predict that global warming is coming, and our emissions are to blame. They do that to keep us worried about our role in the whole thing. If we aren't worried and guilty, we might not pay their salaries. It's that simple.”



Kary Mullis

Winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry





“The problem we are faced with is that the meteorological establishment and the global warming lobby research bodies which receive large funding are now apparently so corrupted by the largesse they receive that the scientists in them have sold their integrity. ”



Piers Corbyn

Weather Action bulletin

December 2000.



“ . . . Perhaps of even greater significance is the continuous and profound distrust of science and technology that the environmental movement displays. The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that is safe, or even bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however, it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and technology, an area in which, until recently, no one — even the staunchest supporters of science and technology — had ever thought to assert very much confidence at all. The one thing, the environmental movement holds, that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have unlimited confidence in them, is FORECAST THE WEATHER! — for the next one hundred years...”



George Reisman

The Toxicity of Environmentalism.



“Global warming is indeed a scam, perpetrated by scientists with vested interests, but in need of crash courses in geology, logic and the philosophy of science.”



Dr Martin Keeley

Visiting Professor in Petroleum Geology, University College London

BBC

2004-12-06



“Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that 'liberals' will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly.”



John Ray

Greenie Watch

2005





“The Earth's climate has always shown natural variatio n … There is nothing to suggest that any warming we are seeing now is not part of that natural cycle.”



“Every generation has had an apocalyptic myth.”



“The language of climate change is becoming … religious”



Professor Richard Lindzen

Sunday Times

Answer 11

There is none



http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2702839/no_global_warming_climategate_professor.html?cat=57



http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2010/01/16/opinion/doc4b5136a189044351761993.txt

http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/comment.php?comment.news.123

http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html

http://seoblackhat.com/2007/03/04/global-warming-on-mars-pluto-triton-and-jupiter/





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io-Tb7vTamY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsjRn5iQRZA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvcuylMrkXk

Answer 12

There isn't any.