This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
Please read the new articles and consider commenting on them and/or moving some material to either one. Note that climate forcings is not specific to global climate forcings, so if it makes sense to create a separate section please do.
I hope this helps get this part of Wikipedia sorted out.
Posted to all discussion pages listed in the "See Also" section of global climate change. -- Ben 03:48, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
( William M. Connolley 20:51, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)) I've switched Climate model to general circulation model and moved text too. Because... for the GW article, we want to link to an article which talks about the GW aspects of climate models... not one that patiently goes through the different types, most of which are irrelevant. ps: isn't it quiet round here...
I thought some of you might enjoy this article, in the spirit of the season. Doubts about the Advent of Spring — Cortonin | Talk 26:20, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Maybe it is just me, but does the notion of scientists making fun of their opposition bother anyone else? I know it was April Fools, and it is funny, but I would sort of prefer it if the scientific side of this debate stay somewhat more composed than publicly making fun of the other side. Dragons flight 20:52, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
( William M. Connolley 09:33, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)) I removed solar from the commitment section. Solar is only one influence after GHGs, and probably not the largest: sulphate aerosols are larger. So there is no reason to single out solar. The std commitment stuff is purely in terms of CO2, anyway.
As for vert profiles: well yes, the models have flaws. That one isn't usually pulled out as one of the largest and I'm not sure why its supposed to be there.
( William M. Connolley 12:00, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)) This is getting weird: Sb now reverts with I didn't state that it was a "key" problem, but it is interesting that you think the clouds and aerosols are more serious, I'd like to see a good cite, not just the IPCC on this when his previous revert said adding aerosols, no reason to shift key problem to lesser page, it is not just a technical detail. Come on, try for some consistency please!
As for the text: just about everyone agrees that clouds are a key problem. I see no evidence at all for similar agreement on the tropical stuff.
Among other things, solar activity DOES need to remain fairly constant for the temperature predictions of commitment studies to be accurate. Solar activity does naturally vary, so we should make note when the assumption of constancy is assumed. And the altitude problems are well documented. — Cortonin | Talk 16:58, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I just found an article on a NASA site ( [2]) that says satellite measurements show no global warming in the two decades ending with 1997 and questions the accuracy of computer models. The article cites a paper in Nature, a respected peer review journal, that verifies the accuracy of these measurements. I don't have time to incorporate this into the GW article so I'm leaving it to someone else.
Global warming is the central underpinning of Environmentalism which is Communism repackaged for consumption by Westerners who are used to abundance (this unsigned comment by User:JohnSmith777).
You damned fool: Communist governments had far less concern for the environment than modern Western governments. As well, the tenents of environmentalism far predate global warming concers, though currently, GW is a central issue. -- D. Franklin 04:23, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
Both of you are wrong. Communism is an ideology socioeconomic model, and whether the policies it decides to do (far-sighted, moderately environmental policies which say, keep the forests for the next millenia, or the short-sighted but highly industrial policies which increase the GDP by 10% every year but run out of forest within the century) depends on the citizens. And stop flaming please. Global warming is a HYPOTHESIS set out by a group of people across the political spectrum who observed a certain phenomena taking place and hypothesised about it, although I think they are wrong. Oh, communist governments are actually more considerate. I do not refer to Cuba, the Soviet Union, North Korea or the like, those are state capitalist governments, not actual communist governments which would actually follow the model of anarchism, which also would be more environmentally friendly. Even within a certain ideology, the industrialist versus environmentalist attitude is a subset and is not specific to the SOCIOECONOMIC ideology such as capitalism/communism. And JohnSmith777 assumes communism is an ideology which advocates centralised collectivist oligarchies. This is not the case. It is actual more like a decentralised collectivist anarchy. Not to be confused with anomie either. Because it is based on a gift economy, rather than a profit driven one, its policies would therefore be more far-sighted. -- Natalinasmpf 05:05, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes JohnSmith777, it is all a big commie plot, now drink this lead based solution, and I'll teach you some more about liberals. Liberals say lead makes you stupid because the commies want to destroy industry. Toxic waste is actually good for you, but they don't let us throw it into the water supply because they want to create welfare jobs. Cancer is a big scam invented by greedy liberal doctors to suck dry corporations.
The bias of certain posters from sci.environment and alt.global-warming is evident in this wikipedia article. A better article that frames the issues in terms of pros and cons instead of 'received wisdom circa 2005' is this site: http://www.answers.com/topic/global-warming-controversy User: raylopez99
I came across the article to discuss add in the content that a rise in carbon dioxide levels is more crucial than what the article said before (due to carbon dioxide starvation and all), but then I realised "positive effects" meant the positive effects of global warming...now, global warming doesn't cause CO2 increases, no? Also, the argument also runs not the either way round for a certain extent (the heat trapping effects plotted on a graph, for example, levels off)...I added in my content, but I was kind of too bedazzled to fix it (yet). Does someone with free time have time to fix this? -- Natalinasmpf 01:26, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
( William M. Connolley 22:05, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)) I'm fairly happy with the DF version (thanks). I would like the intro para to be stronger now: the sci op para says "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities" so the intro is now rather over-vague.
( William M. Connolley 21:16, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)) Well, here we go again, a re-run of the exactly-which-graphs shall we use question. TJH's original idea that replacing the last 100 years with the past 400kyr is obviously absurd; sadly Cortonin has now jumped onto this bandwagon. All we ned now is for Dnorris to return. The article (as it should be) is about the most recent climate change; the intro doesn't mention the long term at all. So including the long term graph there is not at all sensible. Note that further down DragonFlights nice last 2000y graph *is* included for long-term perspective.
Hmm... does seem rather absurd to insert a 420kyr. graph in an article focussing on the las150yr or so. I moved the image in question to climate change where it seems more relevant to me. But, I dunno - maybe out of place there also. Vsmith 21:32, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thejackhmr is correct that graphing a trend is irrelevant without putting it in a larger context to show how it fits. It's 10 degrees hotter today than it was yesterday, and if I plot that on a graph you'd think I would die of heat stroke next week unless you also include a larger context for comparison. Selecting subsets of data allows you to present virtually any trend, but showing larger quantities of data allows you to show significance of a trend. — Cortonin | Talk 21:51, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It also isolates the variable. You may claim that global warming is due to the emission of greenhouse gasses in the last 150 years, but you have to isolate the variable to see its not part of a bigger pattern. I suggest keeping the graph. -- Natalinasmpf 21:53, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've deleted the 2kyr graph, why is the year 2004 plotted even though it should be off the graph. Is the instrumental data decadally smoothed? How are the boundaries handled, especially the hockey stick end where only the black instrumental line appears.-- Silverback 04:15, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
( William M. Connolley 20:05, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)) And lets not forget that 2004 isn't the maximum value, just the most recent year.
I disagree with the edit done by 4.249.186.129. I think the phrase "The current scientific consensus on global warming" is closer to the true condition versus "The majority view on global warming".
Would it be sensible to cite Michael Crichton's book State of Fear as a reference for reading? I recently read the book, and although its sci-fi attributes lean more to the fictional genre more than the scientific, Crichton did some pretty extensive research, as displayed in the book's bibliography. OK, so I'm adding it. If anyone cares, you can sue me or just remove the edition. =) Regards, Salva 20:28, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Quote: "The current scientific consensus on global warming might be summarized by the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In their Third Assessment Report, they concluded that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities".
I did not know there is a concensus now.
http://www.envirotruth.org/news-cosmic.cfm
Dr. Tim Patterson, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University, who specializes in Paleoclimatology wrote this artical. If you review Tim's course then you will find that he also talks about orogenic processes, ocean current processes and so forth.
What I might suggest is that this artical be spilt in two. Rather than having revert wars - write an intro an in there talk about the controversy then let each faction post their views with the understanding that faction "CO2" cannot edit the other faction's page and visa versa.
There is also a page on Paleoclimatology and I for one do not want any climate change people mucking with it. The basic reason is the climate change people are looking at say the last 2,000 years and certainly not much past 2 million years. Paleoclimatoloy is focused on a time scale of 4.5 billion years with particular interest in the last 570 million years because we have more data.
This is like having the enclopeadia Britannica which has 19 books. If each book represents 30 million years years then each page is about 30,000 years. On this scale each line represents about 190 years. This means our climate change folks are looking at the last 5-10 lines of the last page of the last book.
As a paleoclimatologist, Patterson says the geological record does not support CO2 as a climate driver. This does not mean CO2 has no effect... it clearly will have an effect. However the effect can be minor. Defining Global Warming as that portion of change attributed to humans does not change the fact that the effect of CO2 can be lost several digits behind other factors such as changes in water vapour (caused by massive irrigation).
Connelly has incorrectly argued that since water vapour comes out of the atmosphere quickly it cannot be responsible for climate change. Yet - we have entire rivers forced itno the atmosphere and this constantly renews water which falls out - that mechanism is via plant transporation and evaporation and this occures in arid areas.
If we contrast the climate at the top of Mount Everest to that of Brisbane Queensland for instance, then we can see that it is warm and muggy in Brissy and cold and dry at the top of Everest. N2, O2, and CO2 are in the same relative porportions and indeed they collectively account for only about 25% of the absorbtion at sea level of incident solar energy because the solar constant measured in space is 1300 watts per M^2 and at sea level it is about 1000.
What is hugely different is the atmospheric pressure and even more important is the fact that in Brisbane at above 35C we can expect to have about 40,000 PPM of Water Vapour while at the top of Everest we have less than 1000. Check the [dew point] curves for this.
If the data collected by Dr. Jan Veizer and Dr. Nir J. Shaviv ( see the artical http://www.envirotruth.org/news-cosmic.cfm ) is correct then the earth might be coming out of the ice age we are in.
OTOH we might still just be in an interglacial. In all likihood these processes are geological in nature and there is nothing we can do about them - other than start rebuilding some mountians (Orogenic processes correlate well with ice ages). If we are in fact in an interglacial then any warming will just push off the cooling for a few 100 years and in this case maybe it will give us time to put mirrors in space - without which we might find NYC under a mile thick glacier.
I see no problem with the global warming folks spouting. However this artical is a bad one because it is biased and it has not been getting better. So I suggest - agree to disagree and write two articals. To avoid the revert wars the admins can freeze approriate pages for appropriate folks.
Terrell Larson
Cortonin recently added reference to the Shaviv and Veizer work suggesting upper bounds on the impact of CO2 doubling. I agree that this is interesting work, but it is not appropriate to this page because it is not relevant to the time scales of present global warming.
From the cited paper, page 6: "As a final qualification, we emphasize that our conclusion about the dominance of the CRF over climate variability is valid only on multimillion year time scales."
And the same authors in Eos (Vol. 85, No. 48, 30 November 2004) make the stronger statement that without long-term ice sheet feedbacks, a response of 1.5-4 °C was a plausible result of CO2 doubling.
Many environmental groups latched onto to Shaviv and Veizer numbers as a reason to doubt the IPCC, but even Shaviv and Veizer don't believe that is the case because their work only applies to very long-term changes occurring in equilibrium with changes in continental ice sheets and geologic processes. The 2003 work does not constrain the temperature changes that CO2 may cause over the next few centuries.
Dragons flight 14:35, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
Cortonin, I don't object to the material you are trying to include but I think I am going to try to refactor it and try to convey it more accurately and in context. For one thing, this isn't the best topic to be the focus of the "solar variation" section, since the comparison they are making is between temperature and cosmic ray flux as controlled by the passage of the solar system through the galactic spiral arms. Obviously cosmic rays are influenced by solar variation as well, but that is seperate from most of what Shaviv and Veizer (2003) are discussing. Also, the current text makes it sound like it is their model for interaction between cosmic rays and clouds, when they are in fact building on the work of others. You probably also need to note that their long-term temperature records are only sensitive to low-latitude temperatures and they say in the paper that figures probably need to be increased by a factor of 1.5 when comparing to global averages. Lastly, I do think the context of hundreds of millions of years matters. It is what all the numbers are based on, and even the authors say (i.e. the above cited Eos) that short-term variations in response to CO2 could be considerable larger. (Oh, and I wouldn't need to publish that dispute myself since in addition to the authors own statements, Rahmstorf et al. and Royer et al. have already argued the point that the short term response to CO2 increase may be significantly larger than the long-term glaciological / geological equilibrium responses Shaviv & Veizer may be measuring.)
Okay, that is a lot of caveats, which is part of why I am writing it here before making changes to your text, so that the reasoning is clear. However, I am also thinking about significantly rearranging this. I think I would like to move much of the detail to solar variation or solar variation theory, but leave a short reference to it and probably add some other solar variation work (Svensmark maybe) in the "Solar Variation" section of global warming. At the same time, I am thinking of trying to figure out a way to more directly seperate out the IPCC view of climate sensitivity and contrast it with minority scientific opinions, of which this could be an example (with a million years caveat). Anyway, I've not quite decided what I want to do, or how I want to go about it. I probably won't be doing anything elaborate before this weekend, so if you or others want to comment or make changes in the mean time, go ahead. Dragons flight 21:53, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
I have removed the reference to the clouds, cosmic rays, climate mechanism primarily because you are misappropriating it to Shaviv and Vezier. They did not propose this idea. Their work was motivated by the work of Svensmark, Marsh and others (e.g. [5] [6] [7] [8]). Shaviv and Vezier are relatively late comers to this debate. Their work supports this connection, but there is nothing about the short-term connection that is new to them. If there is a discussion of this particular mechanism it seems to me that it should probably appear in the solar variation section and be attributed to one (or more) of the original proposers and not to Shaviv & Vezier, who in this respect are primarily quoting other people's work to motivate the context of their own work. Dragons flight 05:31, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
Shouldn't there be a WikiProject Climate Change to help coordinate the various articles around the topic? Also, I suggest that it would be worth trying to create a simple entry page aimed at laymen with no knowledge of the subject, sans confusing detail and too many references. Maybe Global warming and Global warming (advanced) - that kind of concept anyway. It would really be useful to have a more stable, easier overview, and keep the discussion of the developing scientific details a little bit tucked away. Take a minute to think about the average reader, people. Rd232 09:04, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
( William M. Connolley 19:57, 5 May 2005 (UTC)) A wikiproject on this might well be a good idea, the articles are probably a maze for the newcomer. I have been advocating shortening the GW article for some time now: in my view it is prone to "stuffing" by the skeptics (see the recent S+V stuff). But, this will be hard to accomplish in the current state, and I think we're all waiting for the arbcomm to see if they provide anything useful to help resolve the dispute(s). OTOH I would argue that much of the current article is quite good, and at least up to A new reconstruction by Moberg... not too detailed.
Copied here from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/William M. Connolley and Cortonin#Temporary injunction:
Since revert wars between the Cortonin and William M. Connolley have continued through this arbitration, both users are hereby barred from reverting any article related to climate change more than once per 24 hour period. Each and every revert (partial or full) needs to be backed up on the relevant talk page with reliable sources (such as peer reviewed journals/works, where appropriate). Administrators can regard failure to abide by this ruling as a violation of the WP:3RR and act accordingly. Recent reverts by Cortonin [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] by William M. Connolley [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] Additional reverts by others involved in these revert wars may result in them joining this case.
-- mav 22:44, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm re-inserting the realclimate.org reference as a discussion and critique of the paper at Envirotruth.org [22] as well as the published Nature article. Seems appropriate to me. Vsmith 16:24, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
2005 is on track to be colder than 2004. All the graphs will then have a spike at 03/04 and drop down again, this will also bring the 5 year moving average down. Will this year be dismissed at an outlier? If so, what happens if 06 is more on par with 05 than 03/04. Still an outlier? Everyone gets really upset when talking about the statistics involved and what points are considered valid data, I'd rather those people not comment, I'm more interested in what actually happens. Will several years of cold weather sink GW theory? I'm familiar with the graphs which are visually convincing, but clearly the El Nino spike is responsible for some of the observed variance. As this influence subsides the graph will drop back down, and although may still be rising at a smaller rate, I wonder where this discussion will be in 5 years. Facts have the unfortunate tendency of dictating what theories do and do not survive. Personally I'm nihlistic about GW as I live somewhere where the Avg Temp is 90-105 in the summer yet somehow the ecosystem is vibrant. I do however find the GW discussion (argument/flamewar?) interesting. It has become an object of faith on the left and scorn from the right. I'd appreciate hearing what the GW proponents think will happen if 05-06 is cold relative to the last 5 years.
Also I read the article on climate and laughed. It's defined on a time scale ranging from (no joke) months, years, thousands of years, millions of years. There are several powers of ten differences there. How can climate change be defined when the big proponent of it can hardly nail down the definition of climate. Anyways I look forward to hearing what you guys think about the 05 cold.
-- Dsquared 00:45, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Ah, and so I must ask what constitutes a long period of time? Five years, 20 years, why not 100 years or 1000? The earth is 4.6 billion years old, humans have been creating co2 for less than 300. 300 years doesn't sound like a long period of time when speaking in geologic time periods. 100kyrs aren't even very long geologically. The anthropogenic argument relies of defining 'long period of time' at less than 300 years which is really a blip on the lifespan of the earth. Yet the models predict .xx degrees warming by 20xx. I remember when they were saying that by the year 2000 the temperature would rise 1.8 degrees or whatever silly amount it was. That didn't happen but now they are dropping the amount of warming by factors of 10 and raising the rhetoric by a similar amount. You argued that what happens in one year is inconsequential, by that same reasoning you could argue that what happens in one decade or one century is inconsequential. Statistics requires a large sample to return valuable results and only results that predict at what rate a certain outcome would occur over many possible tests. You have to poll nearly 1,000 people to get statistically significant results yet averaging temperature over less than 300 years is claimed to be statistically significant and capable of predicting future outcomes with certainty to within one one-hundreth of a degree. I'm not trying to troll or anything but I believe that I've never gotten a satisfactory answer to these questions even from die-hard GW proponents and I can't understand how a theory can be so widely accepted if noone can answer these fairly simplistic questions.
-- Dsquared 02:36, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
So then you would be surprised by this New York Times article:
Temperature For World Rises Sharply In the 1980's New York Times, Mar 29, 1988
"... Mathematical models project that at the current rate of buildup of the gases thought to cause the greenhouse effect, the average global temperature will rise from the 59-degree base by 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit by about 2030, with increases substantially greater at the higher latitudes but lower increases near the equator. Dr Hansen said the temperature was increasing in this decade even as natural factors were keeping surface temperature lower than they might have been. These factors, he said, are relatively low radiation from the sun and high volcanic activity, which produces particles that tend to filter out some solar radiation. ..."
By my rough calculation that would mean .9 to 2.6 degrees by 2000. Sorry for having antecedent vagaries, but here you go, the NY times quoting Dr James Hansen of NASA on a 3-9 degree rise by 2030, or by right now (2005) a 1.2 to 3.6 degree rise.
I could come up with a lot more fear mongering than this. I picked this article as it is one of the earliest instances of predicting doom via global warming. I appreciate your ardent attack on me but now that I have indeed produced a 'they' and nailed down a prediction (.9-2.6) when I said 1.8, it looks like I picked a number smack in the middle of what was in fact predicted 17 years ago, you could apologize for assuming I was just making all of it up. If you want to see the article you can go to your local library, spend a couple bucks like I did at the nytimes website; it's easy search archives for "global warming" in 1988 and you'll see the headline. I have a PDF copy of it but I'm not sure of the legality of distributing it online but if you really dont believe it exists maybe I'll email you or post it online briefly.
You say that the current prediction "which isn't much changed from past estimates - certainly not by a factor of 10". The prediction I quoted was nearly the same temperature change except in 88 it would happen by 2030, whereas now it won't happen until 2100. You're right it's not a factor of 10 but it is nearly triple (2.67) the original time frame (112 years to achieve said change versus 42 years) If you think that's not a lot of change I'm not sure what is, except maybe in another 17 years the figure will be adjusted upwards to 2150 or 2200, who knows.
And that is exactly my point. We don't know and claiming certainty about the changes and time frames involved is a fool's errand going back at least 17 years. You may absolutely be convinced that it is happening but remember that so was everyone else nearly 20 years ago.
Please refrain from attacking someone because they dare question the vaunted scientific consensus of the day. Remembering is tough stuff and frequently makes a lot of smart people look foolish but the cost of forgetting is a lot more expensive then spending a few bucks to see what the ever elusive "they" were saying in the not so distant past.
-- Dsquared 09:27, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, right as I press the insert Signature Timestamp button some idiot runs into a power line and the computer goes dark. Let's see if I can give you the short version of what I wrote.
You don't have to apologize, but it's intellectually dishonest not to.
I produced a prediction that didn't come true and the number I was remembering, 1.8, was in the middle of the values that were predicted for 2000. You claimed that I wouldn't be able to do this and then attacked me personally and refuse to admit that you were wrong. I don't know who these scientists are and furthermore I don't care. The media has been pushing the dangers of GW for years all the while the scientists predictions of the warming are dropping. I produced facts to back this assertion up and you ignored them, by stating that the very same article mentioned people that didn't agree with the methodology. So now we are hearing about a specific global warming prediction by 2100 instead of 2030, you don't have to be a PhD to understand the predictions have moved back further in time effectively dropping the decade on decade warming rate. This happened, you said it didn't and refuse to apologize for saying I didn't know what I was talking about. I said the scientists were wrong back then and you denied it and then when I produced evidence defended your previous comments by saying the scientists were wrong back then....
I've already repeated myself enough I don't feel like making any snide remarks.
-- Dsquared 22:12, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
What of the theory that global warming will lead to an increase in water vapor which will make the earth's temperature more uniform, i.e. hot places colder, cold places warmer, but generally the earth will be warmer overall? I assume that global temperature figures are adjusted for the lattitude and climate where all the readings are taken? zen master T 22:23, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
No, not Miss Universe.
Sheldon you said something very profound without realizing it. Models don't claim to be able to predict future outcomes. They are merely a tool to study the natural world.
Why then in all seriousness does the Kyoto Protocol exist? We can both argue until we are blue in the face about whether humans are responsible for warming; but why does this huge intergovernmental treaty exist seeking to cap CO2 emissions from first-world countries. Why put this huge economic weight on the world economy when by the IPCC's own admission won't stop the warming and may only slow it down?
And all of these predictions are based on models with major deficiencies....
I for the life of me don't know why everyone got so upset when Bush killed Kyoto in the US.
-- Dsquared 06:13, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
Please read the new articles and consider commenting on them and/or moving some material to either one. Note that climate forcings is not specific to global climate forcings, so if it makes sense to create a separate section please do.
I hope this helps get this part of Wikipedia sorted out.
Posted to all discussion pages listed in the "See Also" section of global climate change. -- Ben 03:48, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
( William M. Connolley 20:51, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)) I've switched Climate model to general circulation model and moved text too. Because... for the GW article, we want to link to an article which talks about the GW aspects of climate models... not one that patiently goes through the different types, most of which are irrelevant. ps: isn't it quiet round here...
I thought some of you might enjoy this article, in the spirit of the season. Doubts about the Advent of Spring — Cortonin | Talk 26:20, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Maybe it is just me, but does the notion of scientists making fun of their opposition bother anyone else? I know it was April Fools, and it is funny, but I would sort of prefer it if the scientific side of this debate stay somewhat more composed than publicly making fun of the other side. Dragons flight 20:52, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
( William M. Connolley 09:33, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)) I removed solar from the commitment section. Solar is only one influence after GHGs, and probably not the largest: sulphate aerosols are larger. So there is no reason to single out solar. The std commitment stuff is purely in terms of CO2, anyway.
As for vert profiles: well yes, the models have flaws. That one isn't usually pulled out as one of the largest and I'm not sure why its supposed to be there.
( William M. Connolley 12:00, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)) This is getting weird: Sb now reverts with I didn't state that it was a "key" problem, but it is interesting that you think the clouds and aerosols are more serious, I'd like to see a good cite, not just the IPCC on this when his previous revert said adding aerosols, no reason to shift key problem to lesser page, it is not just a technical detail. Come on, try for some consistency please!
As for the text: just about everyone agrees that clouds are a key problem. I see no evidence at all for similar agreement on the tropical stuff.
Among other things, solar activity DOES need to remain fairly constant for the temperature predictions of commitment studies to be accurate. Solar activity does naturally vary, so we should make note when the assumption of constancy is assumed. And the altitude problems are well documented. — Cortonin | Talk 16:58, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I just found an article on a NASA site ( [2]) that says satellite measurements show no global warming in the two decades ending with 1997 and questions the accuracy of computer models. The article cites a paper in Nature, a respected peer review journal, that verifies the accuracy of these measurements. I don't have time to incorporate this into the GW article so I'm leaving it to someone else.
Global warming is the central underpinning of Environmentalism which is Communism repackaged for consumption by Westerners who are used to abundance (this unsigned comment by User:JohnSmith777).
You damned fool: Communist governments had far less concern for the environment than modern Western governments. As well, the tenents of environmentalism far predate global warming concers, though currently, GW is a central issue. -- D. Franklin 04:23, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
Both of you are wrong. Communism is an ideology socioeconomic model, and whether the policies it decides to do (far-sighted, moderately environmental policies which say, keep the forests for the next millenia, or the short-sighted but highly industrial policies which increase the GDP by 10% every year but run out of forest within the century) depends on the citizens. And stop flaming please. Global warming is a HYPOTHESIS set out by a group of people across the political spectrum who observed a certain phenomena taking place and hypothesised about it, although I think they are wrong. Oh, communist governments are actually more considerate. I do not refer to Cuba, the Soviet Union, North Korea or the like, those are state capitalist governments, not actual communist governments which would actually follow the model of anarchism, which also would be more environmentally friendly. Even within a certain ideology, the industrialist versus environmentalist attitude is a subset and is not specific to the SOCIOECONOMIC ideology such as capitalism/communism. And JohnSmith777 assumes communism is an ideology which advocates centralised collectivist oligarchies. This is not the case. It is actual more like a decentralised collectivist anarchy. Not to be confused with anomie either. Because it is based on a gift economy, rather than a profit driven one, its policies would therefore be more far-sighted. -- Natalinasmpf 05:05, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes JohnSmith777, it is all a big commie plot, now drink this lead based solution, and I'll teach you some more about liberals. Liberals say lead makes you stupid because the commies want to destroy industry. Toxic waste is actually good for you, but they don't let us throw it into the water supply because they want to create welfare jobs. Cancer is a big scam invented by greedy liberal doctors to suck dry corporations.
The bias of certain posters from sci.environment and alt.global-warming is evident in this wikipedia article. A better article that frames the issues in terms of pros and cons instead of 'received wisdom circa 2005' is this site: http://www.answers.com/topic/global-warming-controversy User: raylopez99
I came across the article to discuss add in the content that a rise in carbon dioxide levels is more crucial than what the article said before (due to carbon dioxide starvation and all), but then I realised "positive effects" meant the positive effects of global warming...now, global warming doesn't cause CO2 increases, no? Also, the argument also runs not the either way round for a certain extent (the heat trapping effects plotted on a graph, for example, levels off)...I added in my content, but I was kind of too bedazzled to fix it (yet). Does someone with free time have time to fix this? -- Natalinasmpf 01:26, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
( William M. Connolley 22:05, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)) I'm fairly happy with the DF version (thanks). I would like the intro para to be stronger now: the sci op para says "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities" so the intro is now rather over-vague.
( William M. Connolley 21:16, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)) Well, here we go again, a re-run of the exactly-which-graphs shall we use question. TJH's original idea that replacing the last 100 years with the past 400kyr is obviously absurd; sadly Cortonin has now jumped onto this bandwagon. All we ned now is for Dnorris to return. The article (as it should be) is about the most recent climate change; the intro doesn't mention the long term at all. So including the long term graph there is not at all sensible. Note that further down DragonFlights nice last 2000y graph *is* included for long-term perspective.
Hmm... does seem rather absurd to insert a 420kyr. graph in an article focussing on the las150yr or so. I moved the image in question to climate change where it seems more relevant to me. But, I dunno - maybe out of place there also. Vsmith 21:32, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thejackhmr is correct that graphing a trend is irrelevant without putting it in a larger context to show how it fits. It's 10 degrees hotter today than it was yesterday, and if I plot that on a graph you'd think I would die of heat stroke next week unless you also include a larger context for comparison. Selecting subsets of data allows you to present virtually any trend, but showing larger quantities of data allows you to show significance of a trend. — Cortonin | Talk 21:51, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It also isolates the variable. You may claim that global warming is due to the emission of greenhouse gasses in the last 150 years, but you have to isolate the variable to see its not part of a bigger pattern. I suggest keeping the graph. -- Natalinasmpf 21:53, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've deleted the 2kyr graph, why is the year 2004 plotted even though it should be off the graph. Is the instrumental data decadally smoothed? How are the boundaries handled, especially the hockey stick end where only the black instrumental line appears.-- Silverback 04:15, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)
( William M. Connolley 20:05, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)) And lets not forget that 2004 isn't the maximum value, just the most recent year.
I disagree with the edit done by 4.249.186.129. I think the phrase "The current scientific consensus on global warming" is closer to the true condition versus "The majority view on global warming".
Would it be sensible to cite Michael Crichton's book State of Fear as a reference for reading? I recently read the book, and although its sci-fi attributes lean more to the fictional genre more than the scientific, Crichton did some pretty extensive research, as displayed in the book's bibliography. OK, so I'm adding it. If anyone cares, you can sue me or just remove the edition. =) Regards, Salva 20:28, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Quote: "The current scientific consensus on global warming might be summarized by the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In their Third Assessment Report, they concluded that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities".
I did not know there is a concensus now.
http://www.envirotruth.org/news-cosmic.cfm
Dr. Tim Patterson, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University, who specializes in Paleoclimatology wrote this artical. If you review Tim's course then you will find that he also talks about orogenic processes, ocean current processes and so forth.
What I might suggest is that this artical be spilt in two. Rather than having revert wars - write an intro an in there talk about the controversy then let each faction post their views with the understanding that faction "CO2" cannot edit the other faction's page and visa versa.
There is also a page on Paleoclimatology and I for one do not want any climate change people mucking with it. The basic reason is the climate change people are looking at say the last 2,000 years and certainly not much past 2 million years. Paleoclimatoloy is focused on a time scale of 4.5 billion years with particular interest in the last 570 million years because we have more data.
This is like having the enclopeadia Britannica which has 19 books. If each book represents 30 million years years then each page is about 30,000 years. On this scale each line represents about 190 years. This means our climate change folks are looking at the last 5-10 lines of the last page of the last book.
As a paleoclimatologist, Patterson says the geological record does not support CO2 as a climate driver. This does not mean CO2 has no effect... it clearly will have an effect. However the effect can be minor. Defining Global Warming as that portion of change attributed to humans does not change the fact that the effect of CO2 can be lost several digits behind other factors such as changes in water vapour (caused by massive irrigation).
Connelly has incorrectly argued that since water vapour comes out of the atmosphere quickly it cannot be responsible for climate change. Yet - we have entire rivers forced itno the atmosphere and this constantly renews water which falls out - that mechanism is via plant transporation and evaporation and this occures in arid areas.
If we contrast the climate at the top of Mount Everest to that of Brisbane Queensland for instance, then we can see that it is warm and muggy in Brissy and cold and dry at the top of Everest. N2, O2, and CO2 are in the same relative porportions and indeed they collectively account for only about 25% of the absorbtion at sea level of incident solar energy because the solar constant measured in space is 1300 watts per M^2 and at sea level it is about 1000.
What is hugely different is the atmospheric pressure and even more important is the fact that in Brisbane at above 35C we can expect to have about 40,000 PPM of Water Vapour while at the top of Everest we have less than 1000. Check the [dew point] curves for this.
If the data collected by Dr. Jan Veizer and Dr. Nir J. Shaviv ( see the artical http://www.envirotruth.org/news-cosmic.cfm ) is correct then the earth might be coming out of the ice age we are in.
OTOH we might still just be in an interglacial. In all likihood these processes are geological in nature and there is nothing we can do about them - other than start rebuilding some mountians (Orogenic processes correlate well with ice ages). If we are in fact in an interglacial then any warming will just push off the cooling for a few 100 years and in this case maybe it will give us time to put mirrors in space - without which we might find NYC under a mile thick glacier.
I see no problem with the global warming folks spouting. However this artical is a bad one because it is biased and it has not been getting better. So I suggest - agree to disagree and write two articals. To avoid the revert wars the admins can freeze approriate pages for appropriate folks.
Terrell Larson
Cortonin recently added reference to the Shaviv and Veizer work suggesting upper bounds on the impact of CO2 doubling. I agree that this is interesting work, but it is not appropriate to this page because it is not relevant to the time scales of present global warming.
From the cited paper, page 6: "As a final qualification, we emphasize that our conclusion about the dominance of the CRF over climate variability is valid only on multimillion year time scales."
And the same authors in Eos (Vol. 85, No. 48, 30 November 2004) make the stronger statement that without long-term ice sheet feedbacks, a response of 1.5-4 °C was a plausible result of CO2 doubling.
Many environmental groups latched onto to Shaviv and Veizer numbers as a reason to doubt the IPCC, but even Shaviv and Veizer don't believe that is the case because their work only applies to very long-term changes occurring in equilibrium with changes in continental ice sheets and geologic processes. The 2003 work does not constrain the temperature changes that CO2 may cause over the next few centuries.
Dragons flight 14:35, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
Cortonin, I don't object to the material you are trying to include but I think I am going to try to refactor it and try to convey it more accurately and in context. For one thing, this isn't the best topic to be the focus of the "solar variation" section, since the comparison they are making is between temperature and cosmic ray flux as controlled by the passage of the solar system through the galactic spiral arms. Obviously cosmic rays are influenced by solar variation as well, but that is seperate from most of what Shaviv and Veizer (2003) are discussing. Also, the current text makes it sound like it is their model for interaction between cosmic rays and clouds, when they are in fact building on the work of others. You probably also need to note that their long-term temperature records are only sensitive to low-latitude temperatures and they say in the paper that figures probably need to be increased by a factor of 1.5 when comparing to global averages. Lastly, I do think the context of hundreds of millions of years matters. It is what all the numbers are based on, and even the authors say (i.e. the above cited Eos) that short-term variations in response to CO2 could be considerable larger. (Oh, and I wouldn't need to publish that dispute myself since in addition to the authors own statements, Rahmstorf et al. and Royer et al. have already argued the point that the short term response to CO2 increase may be significantly larger than the long-term glaciological / geological equilibrium responses Shaviv & Veizer may be measuring.)
Okay, that is a lot of caveats, which is part of why I am writing it here before making changes to your text, so that the reasoning is clear. However, I am also thinking about significantly rearranging this. I think I would like to move much of the detail to solar variation or solar variation theory, but leave a short reference to it and probably add some other solar variation work (Svensmark maybe) in the "Solar Variation" section of global warming. At the same time, I am thinking of trying to figure out a way to more directly seperate out the IPCC view of climate sensitivity and contrast it with minority scientific opinions, of which this could be an example (with a million years caveat). Anyway, I've not quite decided what I want to do, or how I want to go about it. I probably won't be doing anything elaborate before this weekend, so if you or others want to comment or make changes in the mean time, go ahead. Dragons flight 21:53, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
I have removed the reference to the clouds, cosmic rays, climate mechanism primarily because you are misappropriating it to Shaviv and Vezier. They did not propose this idea. Their work was motivated by the work of Svensmark, Marsh and others (e.g. [5] [6] [7] [8]). Shaviv and Vezier are relatively late comers to this debate. Their work supports this connection, but there is nothing about the short-term connection that is new to them. If there is a discussion of this particular mechanism it seems to me that it should probably appear in the solar variation section and be attributed to one (or more) of the original proposers and not to Shaviv & Vezier, who in this respect are primarily quoting other people's work to motivate the context of their own work. Dragons flight 05:31, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
Shouldn't there be a WikiProject Climate Change to help coordinate the various articles around the topic? Also, I suggest that it would be worth trying to create a simple entry page aimed at laymen with no knowledge of the subject, sans confusing detail and too many references. Maybe Global warming and Global warming (advanced) - that kind of concept anyway. It would really be useful to have a more stable, easier overview, and keep the discussion of the developing scientific details a little bit tucked away. Take a minute to think about the average reader, people. Rd232 09:04, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
( William M. Connolley 19:57, 5 May 2005 (UTC)) A wikiproject on this might well be a good idea, the articles are probably a maze for the newcomer. I have been advocating shortening the GW article for some time now: in my view it is prone to "stuffing" by the skeptics (see the recent S+V stuff). But, this will be hard to accomplish in the current state, and I think we're all waiting for the arbcomm to see if they provide anything useful to help resolve the dispute(s). OTOH I would argue that much of the current article is quite good, and at least up to A new reconstruction by Moberg... not too detailed.
Copied here from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/William M. Connolley and Cortonin#Temporary injunction:
Since revert wars between the Cortonin and William M. Connolley have continued through this arbitration, both users are hereby barred from reverting any article related to climate change more than once per 24 hour period. Each and every revert (partial or full) needs to be backed up on the relevant talk page with reliable sources (such as peer reviewed journals/works, where appropriate). Administrators can regard failure to abide by this ruling as a violation of the WP:3RR and act accordingly. Recent reverts by Cortonin [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] by William M. Connolley [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] Additional reverts by others involved in these revert wars may result in them joining this case.
-- mav 22:44, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm re-inserting the realclimate.org reference as a discussion and critique of the paper at Envirotruth.org [22] as well as the published Nature article. Seems appropriate to me. Vsmith 16:24, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
2005 is on track to be colder than 2004. All the graphs will then have a spike at 03/04 and drop down again, this will also bring the 5 year moving average down. Will this year be dismissed at an outlier? If so, what happens if 06 is more on par with 05 than 03/04. Still an outlier? Everyone gets really upset when talking about the statistics involved and what points are considered valid data, I'd rather those people not comment, I'm more interested in what actually happens. Will several years of cold weather sink GW theory? I'm familiar with the graphs which are visually convincing, but clearly the El Nino spike is responsible for some of the observed variance. As this influence subsides the graph will drop back down, and although may still be rising at a smaller rate, I wonder where this discussion will be in 5 years. Facts have the unfortunate tendency of dictating what theories do and do not survive. Personally I'm nihlistic about GW as I live somewhere where the Avg Temp is 90-105 in the summer yet somehow the ecosystem is vibrant. I do however find the GW discussion (argument/flamewar?) interesting. It has become an object of faith on the left and scorn from the right. I'd appreciate hearing what the GW proponents think will happen if 05-06 is cold relative to the last 5 years.
Also I read the article on climate and laughed. It's defined on a time scale ranging from (no joke) months, years, thousands of years, millions of years. There are several powers of ten differences there. How can climate change be defined when the big proponent of it can hardly nail down the definition of climate. Anyways I look forward to hearing what you guys think about the 05 cold.
-- Dsquared 00:45, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Ah, and so I must ask what constitutes a long period of time? Five years, 20 years, why not 100 years or 1000? The earth is 4.6 billion years old, humans have been creating co2 for less than 300. 300 years doesn't sound like a long period of time when speaking in geologic time periods. 100kyrs aren't even very long geologically. The anthropogenic argument relies of defining 'long period of time' at less than 300 years which is really a blip on the lifespan of the earth. Yet the models predict .xx degrees warming by 20xx. I remember when they were saying that by the year 2000 the temperature would rise 1.8 degrees or whatever silly amount it was. That didn't happen but now they are dropping the amount of warming by factors of 10 and raising the rhetoric by a similar amount. You argued that what happens in one year is inconsequential, by that same reasoning you could argue that what happens in one decade or one century is inconsequential. Statistics requires a large sample to return valuable results and only results that predict at what rate a certain outcome would occur over many possible tests. You have to poll nearly 1,000 people to get statistically significant results yet averaging temperature over less than 300 years is claimed to be statistically significant and capable of predicting future outcomes with certainty to within one one-hundreth of a degree. I'm not trying to troll or anything but I believe that I've never gotten a satisfactory answer to these questions even from die-hard GW proponents and I can't understand how a theory can be so widely accepted if noone can answer these fairly simplistic questions.
-- Dsquared 02:36, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
So then you would be surprised by this New York Times article:
Temperature For World Rises Sharply In the 1980's New York Times, Mar 29, 1988
"... Mathematical models project that at the current rate of buildup of the gases thought to cause the greenhouse effect, the average global temperature will rise from the 59-degree base by 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit by about 2030, with increases substantially greater at the higher latitudes but lower increases near the equator. Dr Hansen said the temperature was increasing in this decade even as natural factors were keeping surface temperature lower than they might have been. These factors, he said, are relatively low radiation from the sun and high volcanic activity, which produces particles that tend to filter out some solar radiation. ..."
By my rough calculation that would mean .9 to 2.6 degrees by 2000. Sorry for having antecedent vagaries, but here you go, the NY times quoting Dr James Hansen of NASA on a 3-9 degree rise by 2030, or by right now (2005) a 1.2 to 3.6 degree rise.
I could come up with a lot more fear mongering than this. I picked this article as it is one of the earliest instances of predicting doom via global warming. I appreciate your ardent attack on me but now that I have indeed produced a 'they' and nailed down a prediction (.9-2.6) when I said 1.8, it looks like I picked a number smack in the middle of what was in fact predicted 17 years ago, you could apologize for assuming I was just making all of it up. If you want to see the article you can go to your local library, spend a couple bucks like I did at the nytimes website; it's easy search archives for "global warming" in 1988 and you'll see the headline. I have a PDF copy of it but I'm not sure of the legality of distributing it online but if you really dont believe it exists maybe I'll email you or post it online briefly.
You say that the current prediction "which isn't much changed from past estimates - certainly not by a factor of 10". The prediction I quoted was nearly the same temperature change except in 88 it would happen by 2030, whereas now it won't happen until 2100. You're right it's not a factor of 10 but it is nearly triple (2.67) the original time frame (112 years to achieve said change versus 42 years) If you think that's not a lot of change I'm not sure what is, except maybe in another 17 years the figure will be adjusted upwards to 2150 or 2200, who knows.
And that is exactly my point. We don't know and claiming certainty about the changes and time frames involved is a fool's errand going back at least 17 years. You may absolutely be convinced that it is happening but remember that so was everyone else nearly 20 years ago.
Please refrain from attacking someone because they dare question the vaunted scientific consensus of the day. Remembering is tough stuff and frequently makes a lot of smart people look foolish but the cost of forgetting is a lot more expensive then spending a few bucks to see what the ever elusive "they" were saying in the not so distant past.
-- Dsquared 09:27, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, right as I press the insert Signature Timestamp button some idiot runs into a power line and the computer goes dark. Let's see if I can give you the short version of what I wrote.
You don't have to apologize, but it's intellectually dishonest not to.
I produced a prediction that didn't come true and the number I was remembering, 1.8, was in the middle of the values that were predicted for 2000. You claimed that I wouldn't be able to do this and then attacked me personally and refuse to admit that you were wrong. I don't know who these scientists are and furthermore I don't care. The media has been pushing the dangers of GW for years all the while the scientists predictions of the warming are dropping. I produced facts to back this assertion up and you ignored them, by stating that the very same article mentioned people that didn't agree with the methodology. So now we are hearing about a specific global warming prediction by 2100 instead of 2030, you don't have to be a PhD to understand the predictions have moved back further in time effectively dropping the decade on decade warming rate. This happened, you said it didn't and refuse to apologize for saying I didn't know what I was talking about. I said the scientists were wrong back then and you denied it and then when I produced evidence defended your previous comments by saying the scientists were wrong back then....
I've already repeated myself enough I don't feel like making any snide remarks.
-- Dsquared 22:12, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
What of the theory that global warming will lead to an increase in water vapor which will make the earth's temperature more uniform, i.e. hot places colder, cold places warmer, but generally the earth will be warmer overall? I assume that global temperature figures are adjusted for the lattitude and climate where all the readings are taken? zen master T 22:23, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
No, not Miss Universe.
Sheldon you said something very profound without realizing it. Models don't claim to be able to predict future outcomes. They are merely a tool to study the natural world.
Why then in all seriousness does the Kyoto Protocol exist? We can both argue until we are blue in the face about whether humans are responsible for warming; but why does this huge intergovernmental treaty exist seeking to cap CO2 emissions from first-world countries. Why put this huge economic weight on the world economy when by the IPCC's own admission won't stop the warming and may only slow it down?
And all of these predictions are based on models with major deficiencies....
I for the life of me don't know why everyone got so upset when Bush killed Kyoto in the US.
-- Dsquared 06:13, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)