My belief in Global Warming is getting shaky

[Flying Binghi]

A slight diversion back to my 'left field' question -

Has a consensus been reached re, if the sun was turned 'off' how long would it take the ISA of about 15C to drop to zero C ?

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Spiked Blood

Right now, I am arguing that temperature hasn't stopped rising from 1998, but the increase has slowed down, in part due to La Nina. My opponent(who I'll call nappy from here on, if I get valuable responses from members that want to help me out and further my understanding of this issue) says that it is accepted by "denialists" and "alarmists" alike that the global temperature has stopped increasing after 1998, and we are in a short term cooling trend.

Temperature after 98 is the focal point of the argument(which he's rather annoyingly fixating on), but there are a couple of other tidbits in between.

You should tell "nappy" that no such thing is accepted by "denialists and alarmists alike." It's only accepted by people who are too dumb to read a GD graph properly.

Does this look global average temperatures have stopped increasing after 1998 to you?



http://epa.gov/climatechange/science/recentcc.html

But, you know... he'll likely remind you how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are in on the conspiracy to tax us more.

Originally Posted by Flying Binghi

AHas a consensus been reached re, if the sun was turned 'off' how long would it take the ISA of about 15C to drop to zero C ?

You have not provided enough information to obtain an answer to this question, for example, how much atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane are present (among countless other variables, like the heat capacity of the oceans and the dominance of the albedo effect, etc.)

[Eclipse Now]

Hi Spiked Blood,
Yeah, I can relate to a lot of what you said there mate!

However, there IS a conspiracy around Global Warming — but it’s from the denial camp funded by Exxon, not the hundreds of independently trained, sceptical climate scientists all coming to the same basic conclusions.

I am collecting newspaper summaries and links to online documentaries that document the conspiracy of misinformation being funded by Exxon.
Eclipse Now: GW — Proof of a "Denial Machine"

It really seems 3/4 of the big names in climate scepticism are on the take!

As for Bob Carter, his Wiki says it all.
Robert M. Carter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Carter is a global warming sceptic and has consistently opposed the consensus view on global warming.,[3][4] and was one of the founding members of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. Carter has addressed many academic, professional, and business organisations, some of which are listed on his website. His titles include "Global Warming: Cool Science or Hot Air", and "The Great Barrier Reef is Doing Just Fine, Thank You." While Carter offers a critique of the mainstream view on climate change, he has no published peer reviewed papers providing evidence to discredit the climate change consensus. [1][2] According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald Professor Carter, whose background is in marine geology, appears to have little, if any, standing in the Australian climate science community.[5]

If you look up that organization…
New Zealand Climate Science Coalition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You’ll note my ‘conspiracy theory’ being born out…

The organisation has encountered some criticism, with suggestions that their aim to increase the level of media coverage to allow equal press for climate-change dissent actually creates an illusion of greater dissent than truly exists.[6] They have also been criticised by Greenpeace for accepting funding from ExxonMobil.[7]

[Essay]

SB,
I've seen denialist mention this deal about no warming since '98, but it's always just mentioned as an aside in some other argument about climate change. I've never seen any presentation showing this to be indicated by the data (although there is lots of controversy over the data).

I'd like to see some links to presentations about this "no warming" thing. It'd be nice to know what this "new finding" is all about when it gets brought up in the blogosphere.

It sounds kinda like that CO2/saturation misunderstanding that was going around this past year.
===

Eclipse, I'd been thinking I noticed a large percentage of the denialist on the web seem to be from New Zealand, Australia, and the Indonesia area. Maybe your link explains that, eh?
Any reason Canada also seems to generate a lot of denialists?
===

~

[Eclipse Now]

As always, follow the money! The CBC ran a great documentary called "The Denial Machine" which followed Exxon funding of these guys. Google it, it's well worth watching.

Essay, the argument about temperatures goes something like "1998 was the hottest year and every year since has been cooler". It's data cherrypicking. It ignores other factors. It's 'technically' true, but does NOTHING to debunk the theory of global warming.

1998 was a severe El Nino year. It was a freakishly hot super-spike in an overall trend of increasingly temperatures. 12 of the last 13 years have been the hottest on record, but the denialists grab the 1998 super-spike out of context, and rant about every year since then being cooler!

As it stands I remember a piece on RealClimate explaining that 2005 was about the same temperature as 1998, down to within 1 hundredth of a degree, which also happens to be the variation of instrumentation. In other words, they're not sure if 2005 actually did equal 1998 because they can't quite measure that fine a difference accurately! But so far, in the published peer reviewed science, as long as we ignore overall century long temperature trends, ignore 2005 because it missed out by 1/100th of a degree, and ignore the fact that 1998 was a strong El Nino, then we can turn around and say "It's all bogus because it's been getting cooler for the last decade!"

(Like when I bang my head on the table in frustration at denialists and then move onto the brick wall, and REALLY bang my head, and then move back to the wooden table and exclaim, "Wow, this table's getting softer!" )

[Flying Binghi]

You have not provided enough information to obtain an answer to this question, for example, how much atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane are present (among countless other variables, like the heat capacity of the oceans and the dominance of the albedo effect, etc.)

InfiniteNow, I'm happy if you use today as the base line. I've only gone to zero C as an aid to remove some of those fine measured finnicky variables

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Essay

I've seen denialist mention this deal about no warming since '98, but it's always just mentioned as an aside in some other argument about climate change. I've never seen any presentation showing this to be indicated by the data (although there is lots of controversy over the data).

I'd like to see some links to presentations about this "no warming" thing. It'd be nice to know what this "new finding" is all about when it gets brought up in the blogosphere.

Essay,

The issue here is that they are arbitrarily setting the start point in 1998. When measuring climate, one needs to use at least 30-40 years worth of data in their selection to get a clear picture. One decade is hardly enough to use for accurate study.

But, here's the real issue with 1998.


It was one of the warmest years on record for the entire millenium. Because it was so warm, temperatures in the years which follow seem lower, but only when taken relative to that warmest year. It's a false baseline, and hence any "negative" numbers miss the larger picture.

It's a bit like playing your stereo on full blast in a small apartment and then trying to argue with your neighbor that it's really quiet relative to a Metallica concert.

The denialists are cherry-picking data from only the last 10 years, with the warmest year on record as their starting point so they can claim that things have been "cooling." It's a completely bogus argument, and lacks academic integrity and plausibility. Choosing 1998 as your starting data point skews the analysis because it was a fluctuation, a fluctuation this time that was upward. We are not focussed on fluctuations, but on trends, and it's not been "cooling," it's just "slightly cooler" when one uses the 1998 fluctuation as their start value. The overall climatic trend, though, is still warming, as evidenced in the temperature graph I shared above.

Originally Posted by Flying Binghi

InfiniteNow, I'm happy if you use today as the base line. I've only gone to zero C as an aid to remove some of those fine measured finnicky variables

Do you want me to tie your shoelaces and cut your meat for you, too? Maybe trim the crust away from your toast?

[Flying Binghi]

Do you want me to tie your shoelaces and cut your meat for you, too? Maybe trim the crust away from your toast?

I understood the science was all done... havnt you got todays 'base line' figures?

You have not provided enough information to obtain an answer to this question, for example, how much atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane are present (among countless other variables, like the heat capacity of the oceans and the dominance of the albedo effect, etc.)

[Eclipse Now]

It's a bit like playing your stereo on full blast in a small apartment and then trying to argue with your neighbor that it's really quiet relative to a Metallica concert.

iNow, I wonder why both our analogies involve head-banging?

Oh, that's why.

Don't feed the trolls iNow — they like it and we all get dirty. FB wants to divert this conversation away from the established science of global warming because, well, he couldn't find any peer reviewed critiques and is a bit miffed about it. So he's trying to take it way off topic to obfuscate that fact, and is now getting pedantic even when his off-topic question has been thoroughly answered. Troll through and through.

[Essay]

Originally Posted by Flying Binghi

I understood the science was all done... havnt you got todays 'base line' figures?

I thought this thing about the sun going out was a rhetorical question.

It does make one wonder a little about all the different heat reservoirs that the planet must contain.

...but not right now?

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