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The Great Global Warming Swindle


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On 10/24/2018 at 9:28 PM, Toepoke said:

Interesting response cheers. There's no doubt the industrial age has bumped up levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, but mention that and you get hit with "there was 10 times more CO2 in the atmosphere in prehistoric times" (I'm guessing it was a slightly less hospitable place back then)...

 

Sea levels were 100 metres higher than today and there were crocodiles in the Arctic :wacko:

The Sun was less bright then too which cancelled out some of the greenhouse effect

Think of all that jobby produced by the big dinosaurs too - that's a lot of jobby and methane

There was more oxygen too in the atmosphere

(Google is magic - i improvised with the jobbies)

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15 hours ago, thplinth said:

How many folk on this thread have actually watched this I wonder. I would agree it is well worth watching.

I knew they were taking the piss manipulating data (and that was much more recently) but I had no idea how bad this was/is. 11 years ago this was shown...wow. Look at what has happened since. It did not even make a dent. As PIAK says you'd never get this aired now.

If it is true that the temperature change leads the CO2 level change by 800 years then how could you possibly say CO2 levels are driving temperature levels. If anything it is the opposite. This is total bullshit if that is true and they are very clear that this has been proven in the ice core data over and over (this was 2007 remember!).

It is apparently solar activity that really drives temperature change not CO2 (never mind man made CO2). The guy Piers Corbyn I think (sp?) is pretty blunt about it at one point. "Solar activity drives temperature change and CO2 has nothing to do with it" or words like that.

edit: Plus it has got some really illuminating history as to how this all came about and how the IPCC started out and why and how it snowballed out of control. Never seen any of it before. Very interesting. (Believe it or not Thatcher is partly responsible.)

 

In the past CO2 changes have trailed temperature changes - but that's what's different this time.

In the past there's been a perturbation to the system which has changed the equilibrium, i.e. a change in energy into the system (solar change or Milankovitch cycles etc), a change to the biological inputs and outputs of the system (different life types dominating e.g. aerobic vs anaerobic life), a geological change (e.g. the Deccan flats eruptions or a caldera like Yellowstone) or an external event (e.g. an asteroid impact). That change to the system results in feedback effects, for example melting permafrost release CO2 frozen in the ground into the air, or changes to the dominant life types which result in different amounts of respiration or photosynthesis and hence CO2 trails the the initial effect but can emphasise or negate the original perturbation. 

In the current instance of warming, the initial perturbation is the input of CO2 from man's activities. CO2 levels aren't changing 800 years after the temperaturs strated changing, they're running alongside it. There's no other causal effect to change the temperature this time. There's no change in solar activity over the last few hundred years that accounts for it.

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Watch it from 28 mins through to 34 mins at least - this is where is goes into some detail on the Solar activity / temperature / CO2 correlations.

It is not a lock step relationship (with Solar Activity) but it is the primary driver I suspect. They looked at over the 20th Century, over 400 years and over 500m years plus using sea temps over the last 120 years.  It is pretty convincing. 

"In the past CO2 changes have trailed temperature changes - but that's what's different this time." Well if for hundreds of millions of years CO2 had trailed Temperature by 800 years it surely becomes hard to argue that CO2 is causing temperatures to change. And that would be true now as well.

It is also hard to believe the impact of human CO2 is doing much of anything due to its relative insignificance compared to the natural sources. 6.5 giga tonnes a year in 2007'ish versus 150  gigatonnes just from animals and bacteria and that is only the third biggest source... I would imagine the annual variation in the natural sources would be orders of magnitude higher than the entire human CO2 output.

I am keeping an open mind but I think this film does describe some big problems in the man made CO2 is driving global warming theory.

 

 

 

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Never much in the way of solutions either, recycling, plastic straws, plastic bags? If things were that bad, as the IPCC / media predict then you’d think there would be more in the way of serious solutions. Folk like Al Gore using enough energy to power entire suburbs, the argument loses a lot of credibility 

Not the most accessible of videos, 2 hours long but links climate change to eugenics, population control and the owners of Oil. Interesting none the less. 

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56 minutes ago, thplinth said:

Watch it from 28 mins through to 34 mins at least - this is where is goes into some detail on the Solar activity / temperature / CO2 correlations.

It is not a lock step relationship (with Solar Activity) but it is the primary driver I suspect. They looked at over the 20th Century, over 400 years and over 500m years plus using sea temps over the last 120 years.  It is pretty convincing. 

"In the past CO2 changes have trailed temperature changes - but that's what's different this time." Well if for hundreds of millions of years CO2 had trailed Temperature by 800 years it surely becomes hard to argue that CO2 is causing temperatures to change. And that would be true now as well.

It is also hard to believe the impact of human CO2 is doing much of anything due to its relative insignificance compared to the natural sources. 6.5 giga tonnes a year in 2007'ish versus 150  gigatonnes just from animals and bacteria and that is only the third biggest source... I would imagine the annual variation in the natural sources would be orders of magnitude higher than the entire human CO2 output.

I am keeping an open mind but I think this film does describe some big problems in the man made CO2 is driving global warming theory.

 

 

 

So some observations on that particular section. 

 

Eigil Friis Christensen's results about correlation between solar activity via sunspot measures vs temperature have been proved wrong, and his techniques have been proven to introduce calculation errors which produce at least part of the correlation. Christensen himself said before his death that the correlation no longer is present.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2004EO390005

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/sun-sets-on-sceptics-case-against-climate-change-1839875.html

Ian Clark makes a very, very specific claim about arctic temperature and sea ice correlating with solar activity. There's a very specific correlation between solar activity and colder winters in Northern Europe, which is causing a great deal of excitement around Solar Physics and weather circles, and some interesting work being done which hypothesises changes in weather patterns, where the expansion of earth's magnetic field during solar minima results in a weakening of the polar vortex, which weakens the jet stream and means European weather is dominated from the east instead of the west, hence colder winters (and warmer summers although the correlation isn't as strong). That weaker jet stream also affects North america, with deep delves of polar weather across the continent as happened a few years ago in North America. But this is a weather effect rather than a climate effect, and the total incident warming radiation from the sun isn't really affected). Not a lot of point in linking to papers about this as they're complex and there's a genuine disagreement in science circles about the extent of the effects, with fully worked alternative hypotheses. The next few years could prove very, very interesting in this regard as there's some debate about whether or not the Sun is about to enter into an extended minimum as it has done several times in the historical record. 

Finally, Nigel Calder's assertion about the magnetic field having doubled during the 20th century is flat wrong. it's based on a starting point of 1964 for direct measurement a that's when the first satellite measurements were taken. But that was at the low point of a particularly low activity minimum of the solar cycle, and if you choose another starting point a decade or so after that, solar magnetic fields have decreased over the last 40 years. Once again the dangers of picking only one starting point for your statistical analysis. proxy measures over longer terms don't suggest anything like that level of variance. 

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2001JA000507

I try to keep an open mind on these things, but to be honest you only need to google the names above to find well evidenced disagreements with their particular statements, including Christensen's statement that his correlation no longer applies. You might want to check some of your sources against other evidence as well, in order to keep your mind open.

On the CO2 bit you've gone back to just talking about annual output, without considering annual absorption and the long term effect of minor changes accumulating. We're not talking about one year's emissions having an effect. We're talking about a minor change affecting the balance over a long term. You can imagine all you like, but unfortunately your imagination isn't right. 

 

Also, here's the letter written by Nathan Rive and Eigil Friis Christensen after the documentary was made, criticising the way their data was used and the way "it incorrectly rules out a contribution by anthropogenic greenhouse gases to 20th century global warming". Christensen seems to have always been arguing about the extent to which climate change is man made, not about whether or not man made climate change existed.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080620094936/http://folk.uio.no/nathan/web/statement.html

Edited by biffer
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Oh, and finally, wrt CO2 trailing temperature, did you only read the first line of the post? Past events have followed a cycle of

initial event causes warming -> increased CO2 in atmosphere as a result of warming -> feedback gives further warming caused by CO2 in atmosphere

So fundamentally, CO2 does warm the planet, but it needs something to kick it off. Sometimes what has kicked it off has been a massive release of CO2 from exceptionally high volcanism. This time it's a massive release of CO2 from burning cola, oil and gas.

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I think I read somewhere that H2O has 4 times the greenhouse effect that CO2 does. Not sure if that is correct or how it is measured? 

What I find difficult to understand is why all the focus seems to be on CO2. 400 ppm of CO2 is a relatively small amount. It must be harder to measure the amount of water vapour. Over the Atacama it will be pretty close to zero but in the likes of Glasgow it will be close to saturated at least 300 days of the year. But over the entire planet it must vary so much that it will be almost impossible to measure with a decent degree of accuracy. But it must be far higher than 400 ppm. Maybe a hundred or even 1000 times higher. 

Every time we burn a molecule of hydrocarbon we get n molecules of CO2 and (n+1) molecules of H2O. 

Why is it always CO2 that gets the blame when water vapour could be just as bad, if not worse.

Then we need to think about methane. 8 times more potent than CO2, I think?

 

 

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23 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

I think I read somewhere that H2O has 4 times the greenhouse effect that CO2 does. Not sure if that is correct or how it is measured? 

What I find difficult to understand is why all the focus seems to be on CO2. 400 ppm of CO2 is a relatively small amount. It must be harder to measure the amount of water vapour. Over the Atacama it will be pretty close to zero but in the likes of Glasgow it will be close to saturated at least 300 days of the year. But over the entire planet it must vary so much that it will be almost impossible to measure with a decent degree of accuracy. But it must be far higher than 400 ppm. Maybe a hundred or even 1000 times higher. 

Every time we burn a molecule of hydrocarbon we get n molecules of CO2 and (n+1) molecules of H2O. 

Why is it always CO2 that gets the blame when water vapour could be just as bad, if not worse.

Then we need to think about methane. 8 times more potent than CO2, I think?

 

 

Water Vapour is less potent per molecule, but the amount of it in the atmosphere makes it a big contributor to the overall global temperature. However, the amount of it in the atmosphere isn't increasing. When more of it goes into the atmosphere, more of it comes out as rain. The thing about water is there hasn't really been enough of it added to the cycle to have an effect on global climate. It's the duration in the atmosphere that matters and for water that can sometimes be as little as a few hours. 

Methane is more potent, yes, but there's less of it so the overall contribution is less. It's a big worry though, there's a lot of Methane frozen in the permafrost above the Arctic circle. If that gets released you're potentially looking at runaway warming. 

Even worse are things like HCFCs, which I think are up to 1000 times more potent than CO2

However, CO2 gets the most attention because across the piece it's the biggest contributor to warming. Current calculations of the effects of all these different things is

Anthropogenic

CO2 - 1.68C warming

CH4 - 0.97C warming

HCFCs - 0.17 warming

NO2 - 0.16C warming

CO - 0.23C warming

Volatiles - 0.1C warming

NOx - 0.15 C cooling

Mineral dust - 0.27C cooling

Cloud increases from aerosols - 0.55C cooling

albedo change from land use change - 0.15C cooling

 

 

 

Edited by biffer
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You have to take into account the Milankovitch cycle as well, since the earth is moving in 3 different directions all the time, procession , eccentric orbits and the tilt (obliquity).

 

That all alters how much of the sun is hitting the surface of the earth. Then the sun cycles itself producing more or less energy.

 

It's beyond complicated.

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Sorry Biffer I do need to catch up on your replies.

Just keep thinking about that 800 year lag where CO2 change eventually follows temperature change.

I mean imagine... the temperature has flat-lined for say 1000 years and so CO2 has similarly flat lined for the last 200 years... the 800 year lag catch up. Then temperature (inexplicably) went up for 2000 years and eventually CO2 followed but only 800 years later meaning it was 'only' 1200 years of CO2 growth (way beyond industrialization). You'd think then according to 'CO2 creates global warming' things would get hotter and hotter, a run away effect almost.

But what happens is (inexplicably) over and over again is temperature goes down at some point and 800 years later CO2 catches up... In this world it is ridiculous to think CO2 is driving temperature, instead it is highly suggestive it is the opposite way around. 

edit: and if it did not drive it for millions and millions of years I dont think it has started in the last 50.

 

Edited by thplinth
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4 hours ago, phart said:

You have to take into account the Milankovitch cycle as well, since the earth is moving in 3 different directions all the time, procession , eccentric orbits and the tilt (obliquity).

 

That all alters how much of the sun is hitting the surface of the earth. Then the sun cycles itself producing more or less energy.

 

It's beyond complicated.

The Milankovitch cycles are very well understood and don't account for the warming. In no way whatsoever. There isn't a planetary scientist, astronomer or physicist in the world who has any kind of understanding of orbital motion who will say that it does. That's not a matter of scientific debate in any way whatsoever. 

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1 hour ago, thplinth said:

Sorry Biffer I do need to catch up on your replies.

Just keep thinking about that 800 year lag where CO2 change eventually follows temperature change.

I mean imagine... the temperature has flat-lined for say 1000 years and so CO2 has similarly flat lined for the last 200 years... the 800 year lag catch up. Then temperature (inexplicably) went up for 2000 years and eventually CO2 followed but only 800 years later meaning it was 'only' 1200 years of CO2 growth (way beyond industrialization). You'd think then according to 'CO2 creates global warming' things would get hotter and hotter, a run away effect almost.

But what happens is (inexplicably) over and over again is temperature goes down at some point and 800 years later CO2 catches up... In this world it is ridiculous to think CO2 is driving temperature, instead it is highly suggestive it is the opposite way around. 

edit: and if it did not drive it for millions and millions of years I dont think it has started in the last 50.

 

It only drives things to a new equilibrium. There's not an unlimited amount of increase - because there's not an unlimited amount of stored co2 and methane. Similar events have driven global cooling by increasing absorption of CO2, usually via the Milankovitch cycles, where decreased solar irradiance leads to increased ice cover, leading to more reflected solar irradiance leading to more CO2 and CH4 freezing in permafrost so the feedback mechanism is negative in that case. 

 

And temperature hasn't flat lined for just 1000years, it's been millenia. You can imagine it, but there's no evidence to back it up. Thought experiments are great but they mean nothing when the real world is showing you a system where they don't apply. 

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4 hours ago, Orraloon said:

How do we know that?

Has it been measured?

How was it measured?

It's been measured

See above

Hundreds of thousands of weather stations, decades of satellite measurements, a hundred years of balloon experiments, ground air and space based lidar and many other types of measurement. Its not a difficult thing to measure. 

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I wanted to ask about the 'pause'. You refer to global 'warming' a fair bit in posts but are we not in what is called a 'pause'. i.e we are not warming at all. I thought it was going on  about15 years now. If so why do you still use that phrase global warming and not global pause?

edit: off and we did have global cooling so I am copyrighting the pause!

Edited by thplinth
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11 minutes ago, biffer said:

It only drives things to a new equilibrium. There's not an unlimited amount of increase - because there's not an unlimited amount of stored co2 and methane. Similar events have driven global cooling by increasing absorption of CO2, usually via the Milankovitch cycles, where decreased solar irradiance leads to increased ice cover, leading to more reflected solar irradiance leading to more CO2 and CH4 freezing in permafrost so the feedback mechanism is negative in that case. 

 

And temperature hasn't flat lined for just 1000years, it's been millenia. You can imagine it, but there's no evidence to back it up. Thought experiments are great but they mean nothing when the real world is showing you a system where they don't apply. 

Exploring why the CO2 change follows the Temperature change by 800 years is not a thought experiment. It is just some thoughts. Chill out.

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I remember watching that Channel 4 documentary when it first aired. It underpinned my (perhaps misplaced) skepticism over this whole man-made climate change argument.

@biffer i genuinely value your contributions to this fred. It's an interesting debate.

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10 hours ago, biffer said:

The Milankovitch cycles are very well understood and don't account for the warming. In no way whatsoever. There isn't a planetary scientist, astronomer or physicist in the world who has any kind of understanding of orbital motion who will say that it does. That's not a matter of scientific debate in any way whatsoever. 

What are you withering on about?

Those cycles started the initial warming 19,000 years ago, they are in every model as well. The claims you're writing about only happened inside your head.

I was making a point about the complexity of the system. It's complicated.

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32 minutes ago, phart said:

What are you withering on about?

Those cycles started the initial warming 19,000 years ago, they are in every model as well. The claims you're writing about only happened inside your head.

I was making a point about the complexity of the system. It's complicated.

I was referring to the current warming. Apologies for being unclear. 

It is incredibly complex, but the Milankovitch cycles are well understood. In the context of the thread it looked like you were suggesting the cycles could be responsible for the current warming.

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1 hour ago, biffer said:

I was referring to the current warming. Apologies for being unclear. 

It is incredibly complex, but the Milankovitch cycles are well understood. In the context of the thread it looked like you were suggesting the cycles could be responsible for the current warming.

Ok fair enough, I can now see why you would think that, I was genuinely bemused this morning when i posted.

I was just reading everything and then thinking what else goes into it, and how it was so complex.

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On 10/26/2018 at 10:47 PM, thplinth said:

Exploring why the CO2 change follows the Temperature change by 800 years is not a thought experiment. It is just some thoughts. Chill out.

I'm chill 😊

Point I was trying to make is that in most climate change in the past there's been an initial change and then feed backs caused by the change. The initial change this time is us digging up stored carbon and chucking it into the atmosphere.

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4 hours ago, biffer said:

I'm chill 😊

Point I was trying to make is that in most climate change in the past there's been an initial change and then feed backs caused by the change. The initial change this time is us digging up stored carbon and chucking it into the atmosphere.

But maybe these fossil fuels were just formed by a sequence of freak accidents of nature. Maybe the atmosphere is supposed to have 5 or even 10 times the amount of CO2 that it currently does. Mankind is simply returning the planet back to that state that it should be in? Animals have dominated the planet for a long time now, maybe it's time for the plants to have their turn again?

 

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18 hours ago, Orraloon said:

But maybe these fossil fuels were just formed by a sequence of freak accidents of nature. Maybe the atmosphere is supposed to have 5 or even 10 times the amount of CO2 that it currently does. Mankind is simply returning the planet back to that state that it should be in? Animals have dominated the planet for a long time now, maybe it's time for the plants to have their turn again?

 

‘Should’ and ‘supposed’ are odd terms to use. They suggest there’s some kind of predetermined preferred state for the world. There’s not. There’s only ever been temporary (in geological terms) equilibrium. Those equilibria change when there’s a significant disturbance to the ecosystem. The point is that we are the significant disturbance this time. And the change to a different equilibrium has the potential to massively affect us, to the point of killing millions or even billions. Now, you could take the Malthusian approach and say ‘good, there’s too many of us’. But that’s a pretty heartless way to condemn the mainly black and Asian poor people to death.

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  • 2 weeks later...

These are the true tragedies of human impact on the planet. 

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/A_wilderness_horror_story_999.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07183-6

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/living-plant-wwf-2018-1.4882819

I do not give a fuck about global warming because a) i find the science behind it unconvincing and b) if it were true the only real damage it would do is to slow humanity's asset stripping and rape of the planet.

Global warming if a real existential threat to us would be the best result for the rest of the planet. It seems odd to me that the current wave of environmentalists evidently do not care so much about animals and plants but just that we humans might get flooded one day and fuck up our nice lives.

 

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