- “The Climate has always been changing. What is happening now is just part of the natural cycle”
Of course, it is true that there have always been changes to the climate. No one denies it. It is also true that the reasons for those changes are not completely understood. Sometimes it is suggested that the world was warmer during the medieval period than it is now, though there is not much evidence to support the claim. What the records show is that from about a thousand years ago until 1900, the world cooled very slightly. Since then, a sharp rise in global temperatures have been observed.
- “They can’t even predict what the weather will do next week. They can’t possibly know what will happen in 10 or a hundred years’ time”
This is a failure to understand the difference between climate and weather. Let me put it this way. If you toss a coin, you cannot predict the outcome. It’ll be heads, tails or neither (in the extremely unlikely, but entirely possible event that the coin comes to rest on its edge or gets plucked away by a passing jackdaw
). However, if you toss a coin 1000 times the outcome will be more or less 500 heads and 500 tails. You can predict that with a reasonable degree of certainty. That’s the difference between climate and weather. - “Climate scientists are basing all their predictions on unreliable computer models”
It is not true that the computer models are unreliable. They’re not perfect — how could they be? — but the models being used for prediction have successfully “predicted” many features of the present climate from the data of the past.
- “Back in the 70’s they said there was an Ice Age coming”
Almost every ’sceptic’ trots this one out. At every available opportunity. The reality is that in the 70s there was a very tentative suggestion made by a small group of scientists that we might be on the brink of an ice age. It caused a considerable furore in the media, but there never was general agreement in the scientific community. That situation is in stark contrast to the where we are now.
- “There are loads of scientists who don’t believe global warming is real”
The joint statement by the world’s science academies should be sufficient to nail this one.
- “Human emissions of CO2 are too small to make an difference to the world”
I wish this were true, but unfortunately we know from bitter experience that humankind’s activities can have a profound impact on the atmosphere. I remember reading an article by Isaac Asimov in the 1970’s about the probable effects of the widespread use of CFC’s (freons, they were called then). He predicted that the release of these chemicals into the atmosphere could have a deleterious effect on the ozone layer. These predictions were rubbished - until Australians started getting skin cancer every time they went out of doors.
In the case of greenhouse gases, the effects of human activity are clear. Since the industrial revolution, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have increased sharply. There is now more CO2 in the atmosphere than there has been for a million years, possibly even longer. Other greenhouse gases have also increased as a direct result of industrialisation. By analysing the various isotopes of carbon present in atmospheric CO2, (this is not, you understand, something that I’m claiming to be able to do myself) it is possible to demonstrate that the excess carbon in the air has come from the burning of fossil fuels.
Simply put, we know that human activity can (and has) affected the composition of the atmosphere.
- “They’ve found global warming on Mars”
The short answer would be: “No, they haven’t.” The longer answer is here.
In any case, this is an argument that hasn’t been thought through. Mars is a lot further out from the sun than the earth is. If there had been sufficient change in the sun’s activity to produce a degree or two of warming on Mars, we’d have certainly been experiencing much bigger temperature rises on Earth.
- “CO2 isn’t a pollutant, it’s plant food”
It’s true that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is necessary for life. Plants breath it in and breath out oxygen, keeping us mammals happy. So there’s a bit of truth here. But so what? Nobody is suggesting that all CO2 should be scrubbed from the atmosphere. God forbid! The point is that we have changed the balance of the atmosphere, increasing its ability to trap heat. Since the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen from 280 parts per million to over 380 ppm — the highest levels for 15 million years according to recent studies — and still rising. It may not be pollution in the conventional sense that it will make us choke. If you’d rather not call CO2 pollution, fine. I don’t care what you call it.
Just so long as we can agree to stop chucking the stuff out without thinking of the consequences.
- “Global warming scaremongering is just a tactic to get more funding”
Anyone who believes this is unlikely to be convinced by any argument I can put. This is an argument about trust. But the truth is that it has taken a long time for the scientific consensus to get where it is, a century or so of gathering and weighing the evidence. In science, as in any profession, there will be some rogues and charlatans, but the the aim of the profession as a whole is the pursuit of truth. The idea that climatologists are doctoring their results just milk a cash cow is faintly risible, especially since under the Bush administration many scientists said they were pressured to ‘tone down’ their findings about the threat of global warming.
- “Even if global warming is real, there’s nothing I can do”
The hardest of all to deal with because, again, it’s a matter of trust not hard facts. But if you came home to find your house on fire, you wouldn’t say, “It’s gone too far, I’m going to throw petrol on it.” At least, I wouldn’t. You tke what steps you can to put the fire out, to rescue what you can from the damage.
I believe that’s where we’re at with climate change. A problem has been identified and it may be too late to do much about some severe consequences.
But there’s no excuse for not trying.
If you’d like to read something that offers bother a scientific and Christian perspective on global warming, you might look at at Christianity, Climate Change and Sustainable Living
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Bishop Alan Wilson 11.12.09 at 8:55 pm
Thanks, Richard. Even if there we could prove human beings had nothing to do with global warming, nobody has yet explained to me why wasting stuff and pumping the world full of rubbish is such fun anyway, let alone a good idea.
Jonathan Katz 11.13.09 at 7:18 pm
“From about a thousand years ago to 1900 the world cooled very slightly” is an oversimplification. The Late Medieval Climatic Maximum (formerly called Optimum) lasted from about 900 to 1300. When Eric the Red was promoting settlement in Greenland, it was green. Then there was a rapid cooling into the Little Ice Age 1300–1700. That was followed by warming. Until about 1900 this must have been natural, since then anthropogenic CO_2 has contributed (but we don’t know how much).
Warming is likely to be good for humanity. Growing seasons get longer and winters milder. For good physics reasons, warming occurs chiefly in cold places and at cold seasons. Records are being set for mild winters, not for hot summers. Vegetables are being grown in Greenland for the first time in 800 years.
Rayat Ngo 11.14.09 at 6:08 am
weather office on Tuesday sounded a cyclone alert for the coastal regions of south Gujarat and north Maharashtra, where it is expected to make a landfall in the early hours of Thursday.
Weather scientists are tracking a deep depression formed in the Southeast and adjoining Central Arabian Sea, which is moving in the northwest direction and to hit south Gujarat.
“The system is likely to intensify further into a cyclonic storm and move in a northerly direction for some more time and then north-northeastwards and cross south Gujarat and north Maharashtra coast between Mahuva and Dahanu by early hours of November 12,” an alert issued by the India Meteorological Department said.
I s this is because of climate change?if not then what?
Rayat Ngo
Tony Buglass 11.14.09 at 9:12 am
Cyclones and depressions are not caused by climate change, but by masses of warmed air rising into the upper atmosphere and leaving areas of low barometric pressure behind. These begin to rotate because of the coriolis effect of the earth’s rotation, causing winds around their edges. The depth of the depression (ie the difference in pressure) is directly affected by the temperature of the sea, which is why hurricanes gain strength as they form over warm water, but lose energy if they move onshore or too far north.
Climate change (whatever the cause - human agency or otherwise) will lead to more violent depressions at all tropical and temperate latitudes. Britain has seen more deep Atlantic depressions bringing gales and torrential rain over the last decade, because of the warming of the North Atlantic.
Tony Buglass 11.14.09 at 9:18 am
“Warming is likely to be good for humanity. Growing seasons get longer and winters milder….Vegetables are being grown in Greenland for the first time in 800 years.”
If climate change continues, agriculture will migrate away from the tropical areas. It may be possible to grow food in areas currently too cold. At the same time, we will lose production from areas which become too warm, too wet or too dry. If deserts or jungles expand, large areas of arable land will disappear. If sea levels rise, many low-lying areas will disappear, and land currently used for farming may need to be used to house the displaced populations from low-lying coastal cities. At the same time, the growth in world population will require an increase in food production.
Climate change will be good for some areas, not good for others. The big question is whether the good will outweigh the bad - but you can only retreat so far before running out of land. There are serious questions about our ability to feed the world in the future.
Richard 11.14.09 at 11:25 am
Quite so, Tony. It amazes me that folk who want to ‘big up’ the uncertainties of climate science can be so ceertain that warming will be a Good Thing.
Dan Pangburn 11.14.09 at 5:05 pm
Climate change will happen. It’s natural. It is a mistake to think that humans can do anything significant to prevent it. What we can do is prepare for the consequences of climate change.
It is a mistake to believe that human activity has any significant influence on climate. All of the average global temperatures for the entire 20th century and on into the 21st century are readily calculated with no consideration whatsoever needed of changes to the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide or any other greenhouse gas.
Data sources, a graph that overlays the measured and calculated temperatures from 1880 to 2008 and a detailed description of the method are in a new paper at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true .
This research shows that there is no significant Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) (and therefore no human caused climate change) from added atmospheric carbon dioxide or any other added greenhouse gas.
Richard 11.14.09 at 8:52 pm
I looked at your article Dan, but it is very difficult for a non-specialist to assess. Your black line “combining the time-integral of sunspot count with the 32-year trends of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation” looks rather ‘plucked out of thin air’ to me. But I’m not an expert. Has your article appeared in a peer-reviewed journal. You appear to be claiming that the lack of influence of CO2 is perfectly obvious, and that those who say otherwise are simply idiots. Is that what you meant?
Mark Byron 11.15.09 at 4:16 pm
The folks at Climate Realists who Dan sites seem to have a condescending view of global-warming mavens; Dan himself doesn’t seem to make that “idiot” claim here.
His piece doesn’t seem to have any peer-review yet. However, it might take time to get into one of those journals, especially if they tend to be leaning against where he’s going.
In academe, it’s often hard to shoot down conventional wisdom, and global warming is the conventional wisdom in that neck of the woods. It’s hard to buck the system when the gatekeepers are often fans and beneficiaries of the current system; that’s true across the academic spectrum.
Sometimes correlation doesn’t equal causation; it might be that Pangburn’s hypothesis might explain things better than CO2. It predicts the current downturn we’re in better than the CO2 model, but it also gives its fans extra cause to ignore the conventional wisdom.
Richard 11.16.09 at 10:13 am
Hi Mark: Yes, I recognize that there’s always a tendency to go along with the conventional wisdom. But this paper looked like a ‘rabbit out of a hat’ to me. If the whole case against the influence of CO2 could be made adequately on less than 2 sides of A4 paper, I don’t believe there’d be any difficulty in persuading the scientific community of it.
Dan Pangburn 11.19.09 at 8:21 pm
The papers (post #7) report the discoveries that were made during the research. The first discovery is that a graph of the energy equivalent of the time-integral of sunspot count appears roughly similar to the planet temperature run-up in the last half of the 20th century. The second discovery is that of a natural temperature cycle of duration 64 years and amplitude 0.45 C due to ocean turnover. When these two discoveries are converted to the temperature anomalies that they are proportional to and added together (the black line) they, with astounding accuracy, overlay the measured temperature anomalies during the entire 20th and so far in the 21st century.
I really don’t know why apparently no one considered the time-integral of sunspots before. Perhaps the scientists that did that work were not as familiar with the first law of thermodynamics as engineers are. I used the time-integral of sunspots which is proportional to energy and allows the use of the first law of thermodynamics. I have found where either time or amplitude of sunspots had been considered (and found not to correlate very well) but have been unable to find anywhere else that the time-integral of sunspots has been considered.
Richard 11.19.09 at 9:03 pm
Have you discussed this with any working scientists Dan?
Dan Pangburn 11.20.09 at 4:37 pm
I am a licensed engineer (MSc ME 1973) and have been researching GW for thousands of hours over more than 3 years. As such, I understand this stuff. There are several corroborating observations that support the conclusion that added CO2 has no significant influence on climate. During the late Ordovician about 450 million years ago the planet plunged into the Andean/Saharan ice age when the CO2 level was several times the present http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html. The CO2 level lags temperature change by hundreds of years. As discussed in the April pdf at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true and also in a much earlier work at http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/pangburn.html . An understanding of feedback control results in recognizing from paleo temperature data that there is no net positive feedback from average global temperature as also discussed in the April pdf.
There are many scientists that have arrived at the same or similar perception to mine (see e.g. http://climaterealists.com/ ). I have sent my findings to several of them but have received no significant response. Perhaps individual career goals are a factor here. The media has quieted on GW but as cold weather, crop failure and world famine become more widespread we will see more on global cooling.
Richard 11.20.09 at 10:51 pm
I’m not disputing your experience or expertise. But I do find it hard to accept that something you’re presenting as blindingly obvious is quite so simple as it appears. The Ordovician was a very long time ago, and no doubt there are many things that were different then — the distribution of land masses is one that springs immediately to mind. What we can be sure of is that CO2 levels have remained fairly static for the last 20 million years, and have risen sharply since the industrial revolution. Measurements of IR from the Earth have declined as CO2 has risen, and I don’t think the influence of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is seriously disputed. (Ask a Venusian: higher surface temperatures than Mercury, despite being much further from the sun) So it seems to me that you’re being a bit cavalier claiming that CO2 has no significan influence on climate.
Dan Pangburn 11.21.09 at 5:43 pm
It is obvious only to those who have the knowledge, experience and interest to do the relevant research and recognize the discoveries. I gave some of my thoughts on that in my 11/19, 8:21 post. It takes a lot stronger proof to change a perception than to form one but change is occurring and at an accelerating pace. The deceit from Hadley Center that has just been revealed by their having been hacked in to will bring their credibility and agenda into question.
Sure things were different during the Ordovician but were they different enough to cause both beginning AND END to an ice age? And that is only one piece of the puzzle. There is the substantial lag of CO2 rise after temperature rise, and, given an understanding of how feedback control works, the observation of up trends and downtrends in paleo temperature data that would be impossible if there were a net positive feedback to average global temperature, and, now my recent research that accurately calculates average global temperatures for over a century with nothing significant remaining to have been caused by change to the level of CO2 or any other ghg, and, Lindzen’s research.
Sure there is a sharp rise in CO2 now and apparently burning fossil fuels is doing it. However, one of my findings is that the CO2 rise has had no significant influence on average global temperature. Since 2000, the atmospheric CO2 has risen 18.8% of the total rise from 1800 until 2000 while the average global temperature has not increased for years. This separation of increasing CO2 and not-increasing temperature has been growing at an average rate of 2% per year since 2000. If you would like to check the data, a list and the links are given at my July 30, 6:52 PM post at http://www.sindark.com/2009/07/28/hfcs-and-climate-change/#comment-83310 .
Litzen’s research (measured data) has shown the opposite of what you state and the GCMs (calculations) have produced. That is, Lindzen shows that IR radiation from earth has risen as CO2 has risen. His research paper is presented at http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/co2_report_july_09.pdf
Carbon dioxide absorbs (and either re-radiates or thermalizes) radiation at one wavelength of the spectrum of the IR radiation from earth. That makes it a ‘greenhouse gas’ and a significant contributor to average global temperature. But what is not so widely mentioned is the logarithmic decline in its influence with increase in concentration. That is, added increments now have much less effect than the same size increments did when the level was lower. As a result, the influence of CO2 is nearly ‘used up’ so ADDED CO2 has an insignificant effect. The effect has been likened to adding another blanket when you already have many. The references to Venus and Mercury are misleading and actually not relevant.
Richard 11.22.09 at 12:15 am
I’m not sure where we’re going with this. If you’ve got an idea that can challenge the established science, it’s the scientists themselves you should be addressing. But I’m puzzled by your thesis.
There’s no doubt that the world is warming and the correlation between average annual temperature deviation and CO2 concentration is well-established. It isn’t news that the relationship between CO2 and IR is logarithmic, but over the range of pre-industrial revolution CO2 to the present (280 ppm to 380 ppm or thereabouts), a straight line correlation is a very reasonable approximation. No one is denying that there are forcings other than CO2 at work, so the much-vaunted time-lag between CO2 and temperature over the geological period isn’t the issue. If temperature has driven CO2 in the past, it has never driven it above 280ppm, not for 20 million years, at any rate. I know of no evidence that over the last 150 years that temp. has driven CO2. Quite the reverse.
On the question of whether “global warming stopped in 1998″, there’s a good article at RealClimate that I won’t attempt to reproduce.
Dan Pangburn 11.23.09 at 1:29 am
It takes a lot stronger proof to change a perception than to form one . . .
Some things to consider:
“There is no doubt that the world is warming . . .” Well, yes if you start measuring during recovery from the Little Ice Age as most of the popular graphs do. However, if you start measuring during the Medieval Warm Period or in about 2001 (average of all 5 reporting agencies) the world is cooling. My calculations accurately match measured average global temperatures since 1895 with no influence whatsoever from added CO2 or any other ghg. If that continues we are in for a serious cooling trend for about 27 years (short-term ocean turnovers will cause oscillations about the trend). If that projection is wrong there is no loss. If it is ignored there will be unexpected crop failure from shortened growing season and resulting famine.
The correlation between CO2 level and average global temperature is actually quite poor. Look at the data e.g. the links for the first graph at http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/pangburn.html. The CO2 level has been smoothly and progressively rising for the last century while the temperature exhibits 32 year long up trends and down trends. In the last half of the 20th century the down trend was about 57% smaller and the up-trend about 47% larger than they would have been without the increased solar activity (which is indicated by the time-integral of sunspot count). The claim that cooling from about 1944 to 1976 resulted from aerosols does not stand up to consideration of the comparatively small and local areas that aerosols are observed (primarily around industrialized areas). Remember, about 71% of the planet is covered by oceans. The cooling trend from about 1880 to about 1912 remains unexplained by aerosols.
No one with any credibility disagrees that the burning of fossil fuel has raised the atmospheric CO2 level. It has raised it from its previously impoverished level of the last several million years. The Global Warming theory is that added CO2 causes a small temperature increase (the IPCC says 1.2 C increase from doubling of CO2). IPCC gets their much higher predictions (projections?) by including an impossibly high feedback from water vapor. The discovery from my research is that the observed increase of the CO2 level or any other ghg has no significant effect on average global temperature so even the IPCC estimate of 1.2 C is too high.
A graphic that shows the effect of logarithmic decline of the effect of added CO2 (as if there were any) is at http://www.climate-skeptic.com/.
Did you notice that one of the graphics at the RealClimate link showed the temperature increase from 1999 to 2008? Why did they choose those years? If they had picked 1998 to 2008 and used the average of all 5 reporting agencies there would be no noticeable change. If they had picked 2001 to 2008 they would have had to show a temperature decrease and that would be contrary to their agenda.
As the atmospheric carbon dioxide level continues to increase and the average global temperature doesn’t it is becoming more and more apparent that the IPCC and many Climate Scientists have made an egregious mistake and a whole lot of people have been misled. Hopefully the mistake will be recognized by enough politicians so that further loss of freedom and prosperity will be avoided.
Richard 11.23.09 at 10:24 am
>> “However, if you start measuring during the Medieval Warm Period or in about 2001 (average of all 5 reporting agencies) the world is cooling”
If you started in 2001, no one would take you seriously since that’s plainly too short a period. The MWP is trickier, I’ll grant you. But are we certain that the MWP was warmer than today, or indeed that it was a global event? There’s some doubt about both. In any case, the case for anthropogenic climate change isn’t based upon present global temperatures being unprecedented in history. It’s about explaining the changes in the climate that are currently being observed. Increased levels of greenhouse gases due to human activities remains the best explanation.
You wouldn’t expect smoothly rising CO2 to result in smoothly rising temperatures. There are all sorts of other factors impacting the climate so that one year to the next can see big changes in the numbers. What’s important is the trend, and that’s still upward.
I think the most accessible article addressing the “global warming stopped in 1998″ issue comes from the magazine New Scientist.
Dan Pangburn 11.23.09 at 6:00 pm
I stated that the temperature has not changed noticeably since 1998 and decreased from 2001 to 2008. You will find out this is true if you look (I told you where to look for the links and the data). I did not say that the warming ended in 1998. In my paper I show that the warming ended in about 2005. The Argo program shows that the planet warming (as indicated by the temperature of the top 700 meters of the oceans) ended abruptly in about 2004 (graph on pp4 of http://www.oceanobs09.net/plenary/files/Wijffels_HeatContentTemperature_2Aa_vfinal.pdf ).
So the link that you offered has a little truth, a little ignorance, a whole lot of spin and can be very misleading. It can be especially misleading to those unfamiliar with the first law of thermodynamics and calculus and that have not examined Lindzen’s paper (post #15). Lindzen’s paper which is based on measurements shows that the article you linked which uses output from faulty computer programs “if you could look at Earth through a thermal imager, it would appear slightly cooler than it did a few decades ago” is wrong.
My work shows an excellent match to measured average global temperatures since 1895. That is much better than the IPCC has done with about 20 ‘heavily trained’ GCMs. The recent measurements of average global temperature fall outside the limits of prediction of all of the IPCC’s GCMs but are in excellent agreement with my work.
Richard 11.24.09 at 7:11 am
I do know a little calculus, Dan, though it is a good while since I used it. And I’m familiar with the first law of thermodynamics. If you have a case — and I remained unconvinced — it is undermined by rash claims such as ‘warming ended in 2005′. There can’t possibly be enough data to justify so bold a claim. I’ve got to admit that I find it hard to take Richard Lindzen and the Science and Public Policy Institute seriously, but time will tell. If you’re right, we’ll know about it in very short order.
I’m glad to have this conversation, and flattered that you think I’m worth convincing.
Dan Pangburn 11.24.09 at 9:35 pm
I sincerely appreciate that you provide this platform and do not censor.
There are many factors that contribute to my claim that warming ended in 2005. The main one is that the research that I did is an excellent match to measured average global temperatures since 1895 and it shows a temperature trend turn-around in about 2005. So the ‘data’ is not just since 2005 but all of that since 1895 with both up-trends and downtrends. Another factor is the Argo Float data (#19) which shows a sudden stop of warming in 2004. A third is a paper by a Russian scientist at http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2009/10/29/russian-research-forecasts-global-cooling/ . There are several other factors, some given previously, that CO2 is not the driver. Additionally there is the observation that the recent measured average global temperatures fall outside the IPCC predictions, the low temperatures in North America lately and the Arctic ice area appears to be growing again http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm .