@"ND
I guess it's hard to understand that the Earth has natural warming and cooling periods and has for the past 4 million years. Some people must have missed 7th grade Earth Science."

The fact that there have been natural warming and cooling provesses doesn't discount the possibility that Humans could he driving this one.

Infact we're pretty sure that plant life spreading across the dry land had an environmental effect (Though i can't recall what it is off the top of my head). So it is not even unprecedented that life forms would cause such a change.

But what is unprecedented is the speed with which it is happening.

We're looking at a spike in CO2 levels (over 400 ppm now - which there is no dispute about) over a scale of human life spans, not thousands of years.

Yes also know, for certain, that (something like) 9 of the hottest years on record have been in rhe last ten years.

We can also look at rates of flooding and drought, extreme storms (like hurricane Kathrina) - what used to be considered a '1 in a hundred year' storm, happening every 5 years (which means the rare 1 in a 100 year event is likely to be much much worse).

All these are effect of there being more energy available to drive weather patterns - ie higher average temperature mean weather has more energy to explore the possible states of the system, so you're more likely to see extremes of weather conditions.

I don't pretend to be a climate expert, but i have published in the area of complex systems. So i have some idea about what i'm talking about.

Too much energy is a very bad thing. I believe we should be considering geo-engineering at this point. Reducing the albedo of the Oceans might be optimal. But ideally we want to do something which is reversible. so if it goes too far we can turn it back off. And at present we have very few technical solutions - and in fact some questions over the legality of intentionally altering the climate (or at least the legal risks - as you're fairly likely to fuck things up for someone , and risk being very sued)

If Soviet Scientists cooked up this scheme, why has no-one published counter info?

Who control the US weather sattelites measuring the data? NASA? Is it NASA?

Have they been compromised by Soviet agents? This is the most ridiculous conspiracy theory i've ever heard.

@lethologica

it's convinced me the most of human's large role in warming*

FFS James, now you're being an idiot. Read the damn AR5. Your characterization of the science is so howlingly inaccurate it boggles the mind

Don't respond though. That computer and the phone and the elctricity and every single bit of technology in your life? ALL of it was developed using peer review as a scientific method. So, obviously it's all fake and none of it works. Too bad. We will miss you James

In fact we should have a "week without science" for these folks. They wouldn't be allowed to use any electricity, no cars, nothing that was shipped in a car no synthetic fabrics, nothing that wasn't hand woven, no commercially produced food, no water pumped using electricity, nothing. After that week, they can come back and tell us how shitty peer review is

So here the simple version:

Fact: CO2 absorbs heat by a very well defined amount
FACT: we have pumped out enough CO2 to increase the concentration by 50%
FACT: the atmosphere has warmed by pretty close to the amount that much CO2 would increase the temperature, once heat absorption by the oceans are accounted for

Still want to argue it was something else? If so present your PROOF that it was whatever alternative you can come up with. So far no one has presented ANY ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION.

I can see it now. "Yes, your honor, I fed him a lethal dose of arsenic, and yes he died with all the symptoms of arsenic poisoning, but I am sure I didn't kill him. He must have spontaneously had an aneurism at that precise moment! I'm innocent!"

Dude, you're gonna die behind bars with that argument

Also, be sure to fully account for the energy differential between the troposphere and stratosphere in your answer

So here the simple version:

Fact: CO2 absorbs heat by a very well defined amount
FACT: we have pumped out enough CO2 to increase the concentration by 50%
FACT: the atmosphere has warmed by pretty close to the amount that much CO2 would increase the temperature, once heat absorption by the oceans are accounted for

Still want to argue it was something else? If so present your PROOF that it was whatever alternative you can come up with. So far no one has presented ANY ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION.

I can see it now. "Yes, your honor, I fed him a lethal dose of arsenic, and yes he died with all the symptoms of arsenic poisoning, but I am sure I didn't kill him. He must have spontaneously had an aneurism at that precise moment! I'm innocent!"

Dude, you're gonna die behind bars with that argument

@Ogion

1. I have read it, and it has been the most convincing evidence for global warming. If you are not going to bother reading what i have already said, then there is nothing more for me here.

2. "Don't respond though. That computer and the phone and the elctricity and every single bit of technology in your life? ALL of it was developed using peer review as a scientific method. So, obviously it's all fake and none of it works. Too bad. We will miss you James"

That's a strawman. I didn't say ALL peer-reviewed science was bad, rather it was possible that bad science could make it past peer review. Your constant mischaracterization of my statements is getting annoying.

3. "In fact we should have a "week without science" for these folks. They wouldn't be allowed to use any electricity, no cars, nothing that was shipped in a car no synthetic fabrics, nothing that wasn't hand woven, no commercially produced food, no water pumped using electricity, nothing. After that week, they can come back and tell us how shitty peer review is"

I've actually done stuff like this before and for longer than a single week... and i still think Peer-review is a flawed process. GASP... he doesn't believe in science??? No. I believe in inefficiency and corruption. For someone who makes his entire forum presence calling people naive - you're pretty naive.

Also, it's a pretty vapid argument to ONLY take the successes of peer review, and then try to justify that peer review is some great method. Bo is right when he says it's the best we have: I'm saying that's not good enough.

Furthermore, I'm not even denying the science behind peer review: rather i'm mentioning that publications aren't the ONLY definition of what makes a scientist: as you have previously claimed. There are many scientists at CERN and with phds and who study nearby fields, astrophysics/geology who have a developed understanding of climate science: without ever having published in the field (a process which by itself, does not validate one's credentials)

4.
"Fact: CO2 absorbs heat by a very well defined amount"
yes

"FACT: we have pumped out enough CO2 to increase the concentration by 50%"

can i have a source for this? most of the sources i've found have said that about 50% of our CO2 is absorbed into the atmosphere, not that we've created a 50% increase in atmosphere's CO2

"FACT: the atmosphere has warmed by pretty close to the amount that much CO2 would increase the temperature, once heat absorption by the oceans are accounted for"

you see you say "pretty close" but that's based off models that estimate climate changes: and over the last few decades many of these models have overestimated temperature increases. Also, there's a LOT more than just heat absorption from the oceans to take into account. SO much more, that even the IPCC stated

"In some aspects of the climate system, confidence in attribution to human influence remains low due to modeling uncertainties and low agreement between scientific studies."

5. "Still want to argue it was something else?"
Um... no? Yes I know that carbon dioxide causes warming, but to pretend like there are only a few other, easily controlled for, factors is disingenuous.

"If so present your PROOF that it was whatever alternative you can come up with. So far no one has presented ANY ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION."

It's abundantly clear you are not reading what i have been saying. I'm not trying to dismiss anthropogenic warming, and i'm not saying it's bad to think it's the primary cause of the warming we're seeing. I'm just trying to look at every other factor that contributes to global warming.

"Also, be sure to fully account for the energy differential between the troposphere and stratosphere in your answer"

IPCC"
"There is only medium to low confidence in the rate of change of tropospheric warming and its vertical structure. Estimates of tropospheric warming rates encompass surface temperature warming rate estimates. There is low confidence in the rate and vertical structure of the stratospheric cooling."

how about you account for the fact that scientists are even entirely sure of their estimates?

Well, take a look at the keeling data for starters and yes the AR5 has that data also. Preindustrial CO2 levels were around 270 ppm. Today the sit at a shade over 400 ppm. That's a 50% increase.

Peer review isn't perfect, but it is vastly better than non peer reviewed stuff. Also, work produced by professional climate scientists is much better than writings by non climate scientists as a rule.

And what you quoted doesn't entirely get at the question, since we might not know the rate and structure of cooling, but we know with great confidence that a) the troposphere is warming sharply (faster than models predicted, in fact, not less) and b) that the stratosphere is not and appear to be cooling ( and lain don't confuse precision in the rate for certainty about directionality of the trend. Also, structure and trend are two different things as well). That's the same with the notion that not everything we burn stays and the atmosphere vs the fact that's he concentration is increasing. Yes, there are carbon sinks in the world. This isn't news and hasn't been for fifty years.)

Still, we are still in the same boat that we have a simple well understood process that causes warming, very fast warming and no other plausible explanation for it. Maybe if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, just maybe it's a duck!

And I account for the undertakings that tropospheric measurements are a lot harder to get and the stratosphere is also fairly unstable. It takes data to generate precision and confidence

Here is a paper (including Ralph Keeling as an author) that compares what the IPCC models predicted in 1990 and what we have actually seen since 1990

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1009.2545&rep=rep1&type=pdf

"The global mean surface temperature in- crease (land and ocean combined) in both the NASA GISS data set and the Hadley Centre/ Climatic Research Unit data set is 0.33°C for the 16 years since 1990, which is in the UPPER PART OF THE RANGE projected by the IPCC. "


IN OTher words, the IPCC models predicted a range of temperature increases, but generally underestimated the actual temperature increase.

@Ogion
"Well, take a look at the keeling data for starters and yes the AR5 has that data also. Preindustrial CO2 levels were around 270 ppm. Today the sit at a shade over 400 ppm. That's a 50% increase. "

OHHH alright i'm looking at yearly output and you're looking at overall, i see what you said

"Peer review isn't perfect, but it is vastly better than non peer reviewed stuff."

of course

"Also, work produced by professional climate scientists is much better than writings by non climate scientists as a rule. "

ok... but if your only definition of professional climate scientist is by the number of publications they have, now i have a problem. Someone with a few publications with analysis of previous and no actual new data sets, generally are counted in these surveys, but i'd hardly say that makes them climate scientists. furthermore, astrophysicists and geologists can still have profound knowledge of things that affect our climate, without holding the title of a climate scientist.

"And what you quoted doesn't entirely get at the question, since we might not know the rate and structure of cooling, but we know with great confidence that a) the troposphere is warming sharply (faster than models predicted, in fact, not less)"

Maybe the most recent ones have show warming again, bust most models predicted sky high rates after '98 spiked, but that simply didn't occur. Now it's definitely a warming trend, but i don't know who was underestimating back then.

https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/tmlw0602.pdf

"b) that the stratosphere is not and appear to be cooling ( and lain don't confuse precision in the rate for certainty about directionality of the trend. Also, structure and trend are two different things as well)."

yeah the lower stratosphere measurements you'll find weird volcanic explosions affecting them the most.

"Still, we are still in the same boat that we have a simple well understood process that causes warming, very fast warming and no other plausible explanation for it. Maybe if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, just maybe it's a duck!"

yeah, and it's well under way to being solved. some people put it as far out as 30 years, but i think we're going to see mass profitable alternative energy ready and implemented within the decade... unless if Trump does his usual shit

@Ogion

oh i'm not talking about 1990, they DEFINITELY underestimated temperature increase, in part because of 1998's El Nino. I'm talking late 90s early 2000 Gore-era modeling that had overestimates

That paper incorporates those. And El Niño affects the annual deviation but not the overall trend.

And, um yeah, temperatures a spiking sky high over the past decade. No other way to say it

Actually, the summary you cited doesn't really show that. Yes, tropospheric structure is odd in the tropics, but that's a fine level of detail.

If snow in April is proof that global warming doesn't exist, can't I just point to the beautiful 65 and sunny day I just had in the middle of February as proof that it does exist?

No, but he fact that the Arctic is an easy 50 degrees warmer than average might

There we go. Fuck scientists, let's just do our own research.

It is a little bit funny that a lifelong climate denier took over the EPA on a day when it was ridiculously warm, though, and just a few days after it hit 100 in his native Oklahoma *in February*.

I never expected to see Oklahoma used as the gauge for weather.

"Sunny, warm, maybe with a chance of earthquakes."

But those are definitely NOT caused by fracking! Things just change, you know, the Earth does weird stuff, it's just a new phase in its life that earthquakes have increased so dramatically and become more powerful in Oklahoma ever since they started boring out giant chunks of the stuff that you're not supposed to bore giant chunks out of.

JamesYanik and Ogion are playing can you quote this 'tennis'; and Bo is the line judge

Actually, James seems to be learning a few things while I'm trying to point out how things work. You might learn something CB. But probably not.

I started under the premise that it isn't an exact science, but my initial claim was that i believed human warming was somewhere between 25%-65% of the current warming we see, although i could EASILY see it being significantly higher.

Still waiting on seeing why that is a verifiably bad point of view to take

my only problem was i messed up confidence levels of a statement, and confidence levels for scientific studies, which is 100% my fault.

as for my position on warming, as far back on page 4 (i didn't even post on the first few pages)

"once again... not denying the warming. only the causes. In fact i'm probably on the side saying humans are causing somewhere between 25-65% of the warming."

@"bo_sox48
If snow in April is proof that global warming doesn't exist, can't I just point to the beautiful 65 and sunny day I just had in the middle of February as proof that it does exist?"

What i said about preisely this. If you have more energy in the atmosphere, it can explore more extreme conditions. That can explain both warm days in feb, and snow in april. Which in their own don't seem so bad, but ssing a 'hundred year storm' every 5 years is pretty fucking damaging, and snow in april may kill off crops (or other plant life) which continues to hit biodiversity in a massive way.

(And yes, biodiversity is important for human health... There are many other ways we're harming it, but climate change which is too fast for plants or animals to adapt to may be the biggest contributor to a mass extinction - the 6th the planet has seen, and first ine caused by humans)

Well James, if you cherry pick dat from an outlier study that has a crappy study and then justify your choice because of vague criticisms that peer reviews isn't perfect (while confront its better than industry purchased non peer reviewed propaganda), then you're credibility is going to take a hit.