Climate Koch up.

[mistermack]

Mistermack

You have a point, though I have to say it is a different point.

You asked about why CO2 rises in the past have followed temperature rise, and I explained that. What you have now raised is a quite different question, which is why, in the past, temperature rises have not continued.

No, you think you explained it. But what you explained was why there is a discernable trend of CO2 levels rising and falling, roughly 800 years after global temperature rises and falls.

But that does NOTHING to explain why temperatures DON'T closely follow CO2 levels up and down, as they are supposed to if CO2 is such a potent greenhouse gas.
You explained something I already knew, and didn't ask about.

The thing is, if CO2 is so effective, you would see the evidence in the ice cores. You don't.

If CO2 levels rose tomorrow, you should see more heating tomorrow. If CO2 fell tomorrow, heating should fall. Temperature variations recorded in the ice should match the CO2 variations almost exactly, up and down, with CO2 slightly in the lead. They don't.

That correlation should be unmistakeable in the ice cores. Instead, it's not there at all.

[Blind groper]

Mistermack

Simplistically, you are right. However, things are not quite that simple.

In the pre-human past, temperatures were more affected by the Milankovitch cycles, and CO2 would tend to follow, though enhancing the warming. Ice cores do not show CO2 leading the charge, because it didn't.

Today, though, things are different, with a massive increase in greenhouse gases that has nothing to do with those cycles.

[Jason]

Don't let up Mack. You've got him on the ropes now.

[mistermack]

Mistermack

Simplistically, you are right. However, things are not quite that simple.

In the pre-human past, temperatures were more affected by the Milankovitch cycles, and CO2 would tend to follow, though enhancing the warming. Ice cores do not show CO2 leading the charge, because it didn't.

Today, though, things are different, with a massive increase in greenhouse gases that has nothing to do with those cycles.

It didn't, but it should have, if CO2 is such a critical factor. That's the point.

Like I said, imagine the peak of the interglacial cycle. Temperatures at max. CO2 levels at max. ( although they will continue up for about 800 more years ). ALL the models say that with such high levels of CO2, temperatures should continue up and up.
But what happens? They go through the floor, down to conditions of massive glaciation.

Of course today is different, in the levels of CO2. But if CO2 had such little effect in the past, it's likely to do so again.

Actually, we are 800 years on from the medieval warm period at the moment, so part of the CO2 levels is down to natural outgassing of the oceans due to that. That effect is due to begin to diminish about now, so levels might stabilise.

But anyway, the climate just isn't that responsive to CO2.

IF the planet was so responsive to the tiny and gradual change in the strength of sunlight due to the Milankovitch cycles, then sunspots and the solar cycle should play havoc with the climate on a far shorter timescale.
But all the IPCC people rubbish the idea that the sun has anything to do with it.

So the Sun is pivotal to their argument in one place, and rubbished in another.
That's what happens when people build their science around a conclusion, instead of vice-versa.

[Blind groper]

The greenhouse gas changes in the glacial/interglacial periods was quite small. The greenhouse gas changes in the past 150 years has been massive.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_dat ... 4-1-1.html

I quote :

"The average rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 was at least five times larger over the period from 1960 to 1999 than over any other 40-year period during the two millennia before the industrial era. The average rate of increase in atmospheric CH4 was at least six times larger, and that for N2O at least two times larger over the past four decades, than at any time during the two millennia before the industrial era."

The planet may not be greatly responsive to CO2, but when we boost CO2, NH4, and N2O levels to the massive level we have recently, there is a response.

On the sun.
Changes in solar output do, in fact, cause climate variations. This is clearly seen in sunspot cycles, when warming is a result of more solar activity. However, solar activity drops as well as increases. Overall, over the past 150 years, solar activity on average has not increased, and as such has not boosted warmth.

[mistermack]

We'll have to agree to differ.
But I think I can show that CO2 doesn't automatically cause warming, as so many recite, ad nauseam.

I don't personally care, I just don't like the universal overstating of the case, when it's actually so shakey.
Science has never yet correctly forecast climate. Climate science is brand new. I'll believe it's forecastable when I see it.

[Blind groper]

The current climate, including polar ice cap melt, was forecast back in the early 1980's.

CO2 does increase warming, and this has been shown by experimentation, using gas filled tubes and delicate measurements of heat gain and loss. NH4 and N2O, on a mole for mole basis, increase warming even more.

[Jason]

Forecast in the same way Nostrodamus foretold.

I can't believe I agree with Mack on something.

[mistermack]

The current climate, including polar ice cap melt, was forecast back in the early 1980's.

CO2 does increase warming, and this has been shown by experimentation, using gas filled tubes and delicate measurements of heat gain and loss. NH4 and N2O, on a mole for mole basis, increase warming even more.

No official forecast.
You can't just pick one out of the thousands of forecasts that are made by different people. Someone's BOUND to be right.
I don't recall anyone forecasting NO warming for the next 12 years, 12 years ago.

Lets have an official forecast from the IPCC, and we can see how they do.

I remember in the sixties they were forecasting a new ice-age, and offering the greenhouse effect as something that might save us. How things change.

[Blind groper]

Mistermack

We have very good modern confirmation in the Space Age of how CO2 affects the atmosphere. Measurements from space tell us how much infra red is emitted from the moon, and measurements from the ground show a lot less infra red. The difference is fully consistent with the degree of infra red that CO2 and other greenhouse gases absorb. We have direct measures of increases of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and we can calculate how much extra heat is retained from that level. It is all quite consistent with observed global warming.

AGW is not something that scientists dreamed up. It is the result of vast amounts of research, and is something that all experts in this field agree on. They do sometimes disagree on details, but the overall cause and development of AGW is universally accepted by climate scientists.

[mistermack]

In that case, they can tell us what the climate's going to be like in the next ten years.
Strangely, they don't seem keen to do that.

Going by the last ten years, I won't hold my breath.

[Seth]

A news report (New Zealand Herald 26 January) implicates American brothers Charles and David Koch as billionaire donors to an anonymous donor trust, to feed millions of dollars into a climate change denial program. Is this corruption or what?

That would be "or what."

Those guys have major shares in the fossil fuel industry,

So what? The world runs on fossil fuel and will continue to do so for the next couple of centuries.

and their support of climate change denial can only be seen as a cynical and callous attempt to become traitors to generations to come, in the interests of their own wealth in the here and now.

I think their climate change denial is because they believe that the books on climate change have been cooked by the IPCC in order to take control of the energy industry worldwide at a global level. Happens that the IPCC HAS cooked the books, so I don't blame the Koch brothers for opposing efforts to destroy the fossil fuel industry, particularly since there is no viable substitute anywhere on the distant horizon.

The Koch family pay their money to a trust called the Knowledge and Progress fund, which pays on the money to The Donors Trust, to keep identities secret, and fund the climate denial industry.

When can we expect your detailed analysis of George Soros and the tentacles he has in the "green" industry... and fossil fuels (can you say "Petrobras?")

To make things totally ridiculous, these donations are tax deductible!

So what? Those organizations have a constitutional right to advocate for their political position which denies the political argument that anthropogenic global warming is a threat.

A sociologist, Dr. Robert Bruile, at Drexel University in Philadelphia, has claimed that 500 million dollars has been fed to organisations determined to undermine the science of climate change.

Great! How many billions has George Soros and the AGW zealots fed to organizations determined to pander the lies of AGW?

The Donors Trust is passing money to the American Enterprise Institute, which is currently being sued by Dr. Michael Mann (eminent climate scientist) for claiming that Mann committed scientific fraud.

So what? He did, they reported it. We'll see who wins the case.

[Seth]

The current climate, including polar ice cap melt, was forecast back in the early 1980's.

CO2 does increase warming, and this has been shown by experimentation, using gas filled tubes and delicate measurements of heat gain and loss. NH4 and N2O, on a mole for mole basis, increase warming even more.

No official forecast.
You can't just pick one out of the thousands of forecasts that are made by different people. Someone's BOUND to be right.
I don't recall anyone forecasting NO warming for the next 12 years, 12 years ago.

Lets have an official forecast from the IPCC, and we can see how they do.

I remember in the sixties they were forecasting a new ice-age, and offering the greenhouse effect as something that might save us. How things change.

I agree mistermack, I gave up on being "green" after 20 years of being lied to by the ecozealots when every single prediction of doom and gloom they have ever touted utterly failed to come to pass.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

[Seth]

The greenhouse gas changes in the glacial/interglacial periods was quite small. The greenhouse gas changes in the past 150 years has been massive.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_dat ... 4-1-1.html

I quote :

"The average rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 was at least five times larger over the period from 1960 to 1999 than over any other 40-year period during the two millennia before the industrial era. The average rate of increase in atmospheric CH4 was at least six times larger, and that for N2O at least two times larger over the past four decades, than at any time during the two millennia before the industrial era."

The planet may not be greatly responsive to CO2, but when we boost CO2, NH4, and N2O levels to the massive level we have recently, there is a response.

On the sun.
Changes in solar output do, in fact, cause climate variations. This is clearly seen in sunspot cycles, when warming is a result of more solar activity. However, solar activity drops as well as increases. Overall, over the past 150 years, solar activity on average has not increased, and as such has not boosted warmth.

"Two millennia?" Meh. Get back to me in 200 million years.

Nothing wrong with growing tomatoes in Siberia, nothing at all. The discovery of sub-tropical fossil vegetation in the high arctic demonstrates that it's been much, much warmer and yet life continues and flourishes even in a tropical climate.

[pErvinalia]

A news report (New Zealand Herald 26 January) implicates American brothers Charles and David Koch as billionaire donors to an anonymous donor trust, to feed millions of dollars into a climate change denial program. Is this corruption or what?

Actually, it's capitalism. Welcome to the shit we deserve.

By the way, here's link to this story. http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 66312.html

Actually, it is not.

Of course it is. Everything has a value in capitalism. That includes information and disinformation.

If I recall, communist regimes have been dedicated purveyors of disinformation.

The ones that still exist are also dedicated to it.

Where Labour parties have been in power, disinformation mills have kicked into overdrive.

What does that have to do with the fact that everything in capitalism has a value? This is just the usual conservative tactic of:
"Hey! What's that over there? ------------------------------------>"

Capitalism is simply this:

One person has capital that they wish to protect from the ravages of inflation, in addition to potentially generating additional value.

Another person wishes to do something now, but they don't have the capital.

The first person lends the money to the second for some kind of return.

This is Capitalism. There are more complex variations on this, but the core is always this.

Capitalism isn't just about "lending". It's far more than that. In fact it's not even mostly that. Capitalism ultimately comes down to "voluntary" exchanges in a marketplace and the ownership (and rights) of capital.

What you seem fixated on is more akin to mercantilism. But capitalism in and of itself has very little to say about using disinformation to gain value - except as I pointed out already elsewhere in this thread.

Disinformation IS value. Everything in a capitalist system has a VALUE.