USA Today: Could we be wrong about global warming?

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Shooter said:
I know that's a rhetorical question, but it's exactly the right one. Where are you, Al Gore???
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"The debate is over". It's too bad, because there are a lot of people being brainwashed. You know a victim of this brainwashing when you see the word "DENIER" used to refute data such as I posted.
 
Have you guys really dug into what that plot means? I don't have tons of time to fuss around with junk assertions, but the MSU and Hadley temp #'s are not mean temperatures -- they show temperature anomalies. Near as I can tell, positive numbers mean things are warming up and negative numbers mean things are cooling down. If I'm right about that (and I won't guarantee that I am), then you're essentially plotting rate of temp increase versus absolute CO2 measurements and that doesn't make much sense. The meaningful approach would be to plot temperature rate increase versus rate of CO2 increase.

Edit: I forgot to add that this plot assumes no other variables impact temperature. The impact of particulates (natural or mandmade - industry, volcano eruptions, sandstorms, etc.), other greenhouse gases (carbon monoxide and others), solar flares etc. would need to be included.
 
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PapaG said:
"The debate is over". It's too bad, because there are a lot of people being brainwashed. You know a victim of this brainwashing when you see the word "DENIER" used to refute data such as I posted.
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So, you are speculating what then? That there is no climate shift? That it's the cause of giant apes living beneath the ground? That a comet perhaps is influencing the sun's affect on our planet? Perhaps that a large mass of algae on the ocean is disrupting current patterns (oh, no, wait, that's the Texas-sized pile of garbage in the Pacific that others deny exist as well).

It's really too bad that some people just absolutely refuse to take any partial personal responsibility when these things happen. I don't think it's too much to ask that you recycle a couple of items rather than dumping them out. I think people get bogged down by these technical nuances of what is and isn't really happening. Suddenly it's changed from "there is no global warming!" to "well, there may be global warming but man is not proven to be the chief cause of global warming". Who the fuck cares? If we're even part of the problem then guess what? WE'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!

No offense, Papa, you were always a great poster on ESPN but come on...
 
yakbladder said:
Who the fuck cares? If we're even part of the problem then guess what? WE'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!
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I'm not so sure that we are. The world's temperatures have fluctuated for hundreds and thousands of years. Way before there were any industrial CO2 emissions, the temperatures were going up and down. It seems to be a natural part of the earth's cycle, and has been going on for a long, long, long time . . .

In the 1970's, Newsweek magazine published a cover story asking if the world was about to enter another ice age? That's how much the so-called "experts" know about global climate. For God's sake, the weathermen can't even predict the weather accurately two days from now. How can anyone tell what is going to happen 5, 10, or 20 years down the road?
 
For what it's worth, the UK's Met Office/Hadley Centre that generated the numbers used in your plot seems to have little doubt about this issue. See: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/

Summary here:

Climate change facts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 1
Climate change is happening and humans are contributing to it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 2
Temperatures are continuing to rise.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 3
The current climate change is not just part of a natural cycle.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 4
Recent warming cannot be explained by the Sun or natural factors alone.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 5
If we continue emitting greenhouse gases this warming will continue and delaying action will make the problem more difficult to fix.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 6
Climate models predict the main features of future climate.
Climate change mythsMyth 1
The intensity of cosmic rays changes climate.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Myth 2
Drop in monthly global temperature means global warming has stopped.
 
Shooter said:
I'm not so sure that we are. The world's temperatures have fluctuated for hundreds and thousands of years. Way before there were any industrial CO2 emissions, the temperatures were going up and down. It seems to be a natural part of the earth's cycle, and has been going on for a long, long, long time . . .
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Temperatures do fluctuate up and down naturally. The problem is that if humans augment a natural rise, there is the possibility that temperatures could rise enough to cause problems. I'm not talking about mankind being wiped out, but things like extinctions of more fragile lifeforms and decreased salination in the oceans (by the injection of fresh water currently held in ice) shutting down thermal currents can make life significantly more uncomfortable and lead to unexpected, longer-term problems...like releasing the frozen methane at the bottom of the oceans, triggering an enormous (and slowly accelerating) atmospheric build-up of methane in the atmosphere. Over hundreds or thousands of years, that can, conceivably, wipe out mankind.

So, I don't think there's a global catastrophe lurking a few decades away, but I don't think man-made global warming is a hoax or completely harmless, either.

For God's sake, the weathermen can't even predict the weather accurately two days from now. How can anyone tell what is going to happen 5, 10, or 20 years down the road?
Click to expand...

Meteorology and climatology are two different sciences. They study different things and use different techniques to make predictions and models. The accuracy of weatherpeople isn't relevant to the accuracy of climate scientists.
 
mobes23 said:
For what it's worth, the UK's Met Office/Hadley Centre that generated the numbers used in your plot seems to have little doubt about this issue. See: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/

Summary here:

Climate change facts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 1
Climate change is happening and humans are contributing to it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 2
Temperatures are continuing to rise.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 3
The current climate change is not just part of a natural cycle.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 4
Recent warming cannot be explained by the Sun or natural factors alone.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 5
If we continue emitting greenhouse gases this warming will continue and delaying action will make the problem more difficult to fix.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 6
Climate models predict the main features of future climate.
Climate change mythsMyth 1
The intensity of cosmic rays changes climate.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Myth 2
Drop in monthly global temperature means global warming has stopped.
Click to expand...


:smack::dammit:
 
Wow. Only HALF of climate change is caused by man? Awesome. I'm going to go light a victory cigar with a tree.

That's so fucking stupid.
 
yakbladder said:
So, you are speculating what then? That there is no climate shift? That it's the cause of giant apes living beneath the ground? That a comet perhaps is influencing the sun's affect on our planet? Perhaps that a large mass of algae on the ocean is disrupting current patterns (oh, no, wait, that's the Texas-sized pile of garbage in the Pacific that others deny exist as well).

It's really too bad that some people just absolutely refuse to take any partial personal responsibility when these things happen. I don't think it's too much to ask that you recycle a couple of items rather than dumping them out. I think people get bogged down by these technical nuances of what is and isn't really happening. Suddenly it's changed from "there is no global warming!" to "well, there may be global warming but man is not proven to be the chief cause of global warming". Who the fuck cares? If we're even part of the problem then guess what? WE'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!

No offense, Papa, you were always a great poster on ESPN but come on...
Click to expand...

That's a strawman and not at all accurate regarding my position. I am saying that there is not even a correlating, let alone a causal, effect from CO2 emissions on temperature from 1998 to today. CO2 keeps increasing; temperatures decrease. Feel free to refute the data I posted. Me saying that CO2 emission are not causing the global warming = me not thinking the climate is changing? Pretty weird interpretation of my position, yak.
 
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mobes23 said:
For what it's worth, the UK's Met Office/Hadley Centre that generated the numbers used in your plot seems to have little doubt about this issue. See: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/

Summary here:

Climate change facts

Fact 1
Climate change is happening and humans are contributing to it.
Click to expand...

Yes, perhaps. How much though? The primary measure used, CO2 emissions, suggests an inverse relationship regarding temperature over the last ten years.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 2
Temperatures are continuing to rise.
Click to expand...

That's a blatant falsehood. 1998 is the warmest on record. The 1930s saw multiple years that were warmer than today.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 3
The current climate change is not just part of a natural cycle.
Click to expand...

Easy to say, impossible to prove. Which is why they didn't prove it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 4
Recent warming cannot be explained by the Sun or natural factors alone.
Click to expand...

I give them some respect for actually mentioning the Sun. Again though, no supporting evidence other than to say FACT.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 5
If we continue emitting greenhouse gases this warming will continue and delaying action will make the problem more difficult to fix.
Click to expand...

The past 11 years of data suggests otherwise. Whoops.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fact 6
Climate models predict the main features of future climate.
Click to expand...

Models are fun. No way to prove their accuracy, but hell, we have grants to gain, so let's run with it.

Climate change mythsMyth 1
The intensity of cosmic rays changes climate.
Click to expand...

Hadn't heard that one. Guess I'll go along with Hadley.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Myth 2
Drop in monthly global temperature means global warming has stopped.
Click to expand...

11 years from the most recent peak with only 100 years of data, some of which is suspect, means that the planet is not warming in correlation with CO2 emissions.
 
mobes23 said:
Not true. The temperatures have generally continued to increase over the past 10 years. Some years they've dipped slightly, but in the strong majority of years the temp increase has continued.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/fact2.html
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Actually, your graph suggests another downslope toward the mean temperature. 199 spikes, and now it's heading toward zero.

That said, the earth is certainly not warming at the same rate that we are emitting CO2 into the atmoshere. We've emitted more each year since they started tracking, yet temperatures have not continued to rise. Much more CO2 emitted in 2008 than 1998, yet there was a much lower global temperature. Why is that?
 
PapaG said:
Actually, your graph suggests another downslope toward the mean temperature. 199 spikes, and now it's heading toward zero.
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You're confusing increase with rate of increase. The graph you've posted also has that problem. The temperatures are trending upward. The rate that they're going up is variable.

A car that speeds up by 10 MPH and then by -3 MPH and then by 20 MPH and then by 1 MPH is going faster and faster. The rates that it speeds up keep changing (and sometimes it even slows down a little), but the overall trend is up.
 
Lol. PapaG, in the post where you responded to facts and myths, you might want to go back and click the link I provided. It's gives facts for each of them. Even including the "blatant falsehoods". Lol.

BS with a major in what?
 
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Does anybody have a graph that plots actual temps by either F or C, and not in relation to an uncertain mean that is static, making it even more unreliable?
 
mobes23 said:
Lol. PapaG, in the post where your responsed to facts and myths, you might want to go back and click the link I provided. It's gives facts for each of them. Even including the "blatant falsehoods". Lol.

BS with a major in what?
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I read them. There is no scientific evidence to explain why CO2 is rising while temps are either falling or leveling out depending on the year. They didn't even try to address this point, and they use a lot of weird "facts". Precipitation models used as validation for temperature models? That seemed especially ridiculous to me.

Explain the CO2 increase versue temperature decrease compared to the year 1998. Or don't.
 
Honestly, what is the point of this thread? The title is about global warming, but the argument seems to have narrowed solely to the impact of manmade CO2 emissions on global warming.
 
PapaG said:
I read them. There is no scientific evidence to explain why CO2 is rising while temps are either falling or leveling out depending on the year. They didn't even try to address this point, and they use a lot of weird "facts". Precipitation models used as validation for temperature models? That seemed especially ridiculous to me.

Explain the CO2 increase versue temperature decrease compared to the year 1998. Or don't.
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THE TEMPERATURE IS NOT DECREASING. IT'S NOT. YOUR HALF-ASSED PLOT IS MISLEADING.

Sorry for yelling, but I (and others) have said it multiple times. Those positive temp numbers? They mean the temp IS HIGHER. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
 
mobes23 said:
THE TEMPERATURE IS NOT DECREASING. IT'S NOT. YOUR HALF-ASSED PLOT IS MISLEADING.

Sorry for yelling, but I (and others) have said it multiple times. Those positive temp numbers? They mean the temp IS HIGHER. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Click to expand...

YES IT IS, AT LEAST IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE INCREASE IN CO2. The graph I posted is not misleading. Tell you what. Start at 1998, grab the global average temp per year, and make the same temperature graph I posted.

Then plot CO2 emissions. Tell me what you see. Oh wait, I already posted it, and the graph doesn't show a causal effect, by CO2 emission, on warming global temperatures. You can't debate the point, so you continue to deflect.
 
mobes23 said:
Honestly, what is the point of this thread? The title is about global warming, but the argument seems to have narrowed solely to the impact of manmade CO2 emissions on global warming.
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The entire reason for cap and trade legislation is to curb our CO2 emissions, supposedly to stop the rampant global warming. The data doesn't fit the legislation.

I won't argue that the climate changes. That's obvious. Montana was once a jungle, for Christ sake.

I just think the anthropogenic global warming "theory" presented by the reknowned scientist Albert Gore is full of scientific holes, and that legislating ourselves into higher prices across the board is one of the dumbest things I've seen in my lifetime.
 
PapaG said:
Does anybody have a graph that plots actual temps by either F or C, and not in relation to an uncertain mean that is static, making it even more unreliable?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure you are grasping the significance of using the mean temperature in the graph. Because there isn't any significance to it.

A graph that plotted the actual temperatures instead of the variance from the mean would look... exactly the same, except that the numbers on the y-axis would be different.

barfo
 
PapaG said:
The entire reason for cap and trade legislation is to curb our CO2 emissions, supposedly to stop the rampant global warming. The data doesn't fit the legislation.

I won't argue that the climate changes. That's obvious. Montana was once a jungle, for Christ sake.

I just think the anthropogenic global warming "theory" presented by the reknowned scientist Albert Gore is full of scientific holes, and that legislating ourselves into higher prices across the board is one of the dumbest things I've seen in my lifetime.
Click to expand...

Truth be told, I AM somewhat with you on the preoccupation pretty much solely on CO2. I disagree with you that CO2 has no impact, but I think other sources a human activity also impact global warming. I hope D.C. is keeping an eye on the big picture.

My problem around this issue is with politicos trying to warp science to fit their agendas. Whether you're Bush and henchmen editing scientific papers to lessen/deny global warming or Al Gore inciting fear, it's all a bunch of hooey. Let the climatologists do their thing and LET'S LISTEN TO 'EM.

In 1993, I took a graduate level atmospheric chemistry class taught by two NOAA scientists that was done seminar style (meaning we had 8-10 other experts cycle through during the quarter). I profess to be no expert on this, but I have to say I was strongly convinced that global warming is a real issue. That was 1993. The evidence since then has only increased.

I don't mind opposing viewpoints and, in science, I think it's critical. Opposing views help you to sharpen your own theories/ideas. However, spouting junk science as an effort to direct policy makes me crazy. Bush was king of this and I'm still damned sensitive about it.
 
barfo said:
I'm not sure you are grasping the significance of using the mean temperature in the graph. Because there isn't any significance to it.

A graph that plotted the actual temperatures instead of the variance from the mean would look... exactly the same, except that the numbers on the y-axis would be different.

barfo
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Not true at all. 1934 is the hottest year on record, yet it is shown on that list to be much closer to the mean than much cooler years in the 1970s. 1998, the second hottest year, is shown to be much further above the mean than the "hottest year", which is at about zero.

It is a misleading graph. I want a graph that plots the actual temperature, not one designed to give a misleading reading that isn't based on the actual temperature.

Hottest years on record, then find them on the graph that mobes posted.

Top 10 GISS U.S. Temperature deviation (deg C) in New Order 8/7/2007

Year Old New
1934 1.23 1.25
1998 1.24 1.23
1921 1.12 1.15
2006 1.23 1.13
1931 1.08 1.08
1999 0.94 0.93
1953 0.91 0.90
1990 0.88 0.87
1938 0.85 0.86
1939 0.84 0.85

Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png
 
PapaG said:
YES IT IS, AT LEAST IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE INCREASE IN CO2. The graph I posted is not misleading. Tell you what. Start at 1998, grab the global average temp per year, and make the same temperature graph I posted.

Then plot CO2 emissions. Tell me what you see. Oh wait, I already posted it, and the graph doesn't show a causal effect, by CO2 emission, on warming global temperatures. You can't debate the point, so you continue to deflect.
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Pick one or all:

1. At best, temp is constant while CO2 increases. At best.
2. Climate does not equal 10 year period.
3. The underlying assumption made by you and the plot is that there are no other factors impacting global temp. Does anyone think this is reasonable?
4. The model (while apparently not limited solely to CO2) is pretty impressive: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/fact1.html
 
PapaG said:
Not true at all. 1934 is the hottest year on record, yet it is shown on that list to be much closer to the mean than much cooler years in the 1970s. 1998, the second hottest year, is shown to be much further above the mean than the "hottest year", which is at about zero.

It is a misleading graph. I want a graph that plots the actual temperature, not one designed to give a misleading reading that isn't based on the actual temperature.

Hottest years on record, then find them on the graph that mobes posted.

Top 10 GISS U.S. Temperature deviation (deg C) in New Order 8/7/2007

Year Old New
1934 1.23 1.25
1998 1.24 1.23
1921 1.12 1.15
2006 1.23 1.13
1931 1.08 1.08
1999 0.94 0.93
1953 0.91 0.90
1990 0.88 0.87
1938 0.85 0.86
1939 0.84 0.85

Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png
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What do you suppose "U.S." in "U.S. Temperature deviation" means? Do you think it means the same thing as "Global" in the graph?

barfo
 
PapaG said:
That's a strawman and not at all accurate regarding my position. I am saying that there is not even a correlating, let alone a causal, effect from CO2 emissions on temperature from 1998 to today. CO2 keeps increasing; temperatures decrease. Feel free to refute the data I posted. Me saying that CO2 emission are not causing the global warming = me not thinking the climate is changing? Pretty weird interpretation of my position, yak.
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And you were presuming that I was serious that you thought apes were responsible? That's a pretty odd way of interpreting my post. I'm using hyperbolic examples to elicit a response from you as to what you think is responsible, if there is anything to be responsible for. But I think the rest of the posters have done an admirable job, ad nauseum, of repeating that point.
 
barfo said:
What do you suppose "U.S." in "U.S. Temperature deviation" means? Do you think it means the same thing as "Global" in the graph?

barfo
Click to expand...

How were global temperatures compiled in 1934?
 
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