JLF/Reese Institute climate change forum: Part 3 of 8

[dossthane]

Please stop with the insane denialism. (Anonymous915 wants to deny the existence of mathematics in order to avoid the science!) Two hemispheres make up a globe, and whether you divide north/south or east/west, measurements show warming trends in both halves. Ice cores, deep ocean sediments, tree rings, and stalagmites in caves all concur on this point, as well as the temperature records of the last century. Other than a will to disbelieve, what do you base your rejection of warming upon?

[anoniab]

"Two hemispheres make up a globe"

The nice thing about it is the tilt of the planet that makes for our seasons makes "Global" warming a physical impossibility

[dossthane]

I suppose you're just being thick for kicks. Winters are warmer and summers are warmer, too, in both hemispheres. Science appears on a daily basis demonstrating that this is occurring, and it's reported in peer-reviewed journals like _Science_ and _Nature_. Each has a news section to make the info. reader-friendly to people whose math skills aren't very advanced. Time spent in a library reading these journals will do you more good than your current wallowing about inside a paranoid construction.

[anoniab]

"Winters are warmer and summers are warmer, too, in both hemispheres"

Not any more they're not. The last 3 years have been colder. Last winter was 32 of 136 they've been keeping records for. Snow in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Alabama, etc. I need to check again, but I believe they said last summer was the 2nd coolest we've had. What does it take to make a trend?

"whose math skills aren't very advanced"?

[dossthane]

Yes, you need to check again. Let me suggest you check in peer-reviewed journals, as I've suggested many times previously, and suggest that rather than choosing one singular location or region--as the term "summer" indicates you must be doing--and that you consider global averages if you want to discuss a global phenomenon. (Hint: You can find a ton of references to 2009 as the 5th hottest year on record.) Again, let's quit if you're not willing to use scientific journals.

[anoniab]

"Winters are warmer"

I can assure you that a 1 degree increase from what we've been experiencing wouldn't melt ice anywhere on the planet - much less here.

[dossthane]

The California valley vs. mountaintops bit is simply a red herring. In this area, irrigation contributes to global warming, too, so models that don't account for that miss the warming in the valley--Christy's basic argument. Sooo? Models that do account for it have additional warming in the valleys. That we know how to improve a model for a particular spot on the earth (and the improved model shows more warming) is hardly an argument that the science is wrong, bad, or overstated.

[dossthane]

One should also note that "The Basics" are also a pair of red herrings, having no impact on the matter of warming's extent.

[minowekay]

This problem IS going away, as the "globe" is currently cooling. If the Global Warmests want to get credit for the globe's cooling, they have to work fast!

(Much like the way Obama is rushing to spend and legislate to "create or save jobs," hurrying to take advantage of the financial crisis before it cures itself.)

[anoniab]

We produce more CO2 in the winter, but the gwers want cooling. If there's any CO2 relationship, it doesn't make sense.

[dossthane]

Is it winter all over the world at the same time?

[anoniab]

@dossthane If the rest of the globe is like Iowa has been the last 3 years, everyone will be running their furnaces 9 months out of the year rather than 6.

[dossthane]

Ah, but that's a big if, and one that's not proving out. The average ocean temperature was at a high in 2009. And I was in Hokkaido (Japan) from Christmas to New Year's, and it got above freezing nearly every day in Sapporo. It's colder there at the moment, but extended periods so warm aren't that common at this time of year in Sapporo. Global warming is about climate, but your has been drawn to the short-term phenomenon known as weather--a common mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

[anoniab]

@dossthane Averages mean nothing. = You can have a day with the temp hovering in the 70's all day with a higher average than a day that tops at 80 with a low of 60; works the same with water in diff areas. If there's warming, it's local/regional, not global. Only actual temps matter. San Francisco and St Louis have the same average yearly temp, but totally diff climates - I repeat, averages mean nothing.

[dossthane]

I was offering counter-examples to your "If the rest of the globe" statement. Global warming, though, ultimately is about an average all over the globe, so average overall ocean temperature for a year, while still a matter of weather, rather than climate, is a better measure than a temporary change in any specific place. The last decade was the hottest decade on record (though each year wasn't hotter than every year before it). Though relatively short-term, that suggests global warming, too.

[anoniab]

@dossthane "The last decade was the hottest decade on record"

No, it wasn't - and gwing is in question due to the way they take the surface temps. They switched from whitewash to latex paint which raised the temps in the stations by (if memory serves correctly) a whole degree. Surface stations have been placed next to heat sources - in parking lots, next to brick bldgs, air conditioning and cell phone tower exhausts, etc. Data doesn't get filled in for 1/2 month (Marysville CA), etc.

[dossthane]

UN World Meteorological Association says it was, and you know, thy do know about error bars and such things. I don't really know where you get your "in question" info., because you don't provide references. Christy, for example, has had the presumption that Earth gets colder when light shines on it and warmer when it's dark pointed out in his models twice now, with years between his attempts to slip that by. Whom are you citing?

[dossthane]

NOAA also says the last decade was hottest on record.

[anoniab]

@dossthane "average overall ocean temperature for a year, while still a matter of weather, rather than climate, is a better measure than a temporary change in any specific place"

Nope - because the averages, again, are misleading. If I tell you the "average" temp was 40 somewhere, what can you tell me about the actual high and the low?

[dossthane]

If the overall average increases, though, as it's been doing, much of the world experiences climate change. Western Alaska's 5 degree rise in recent years may be partly offset by the cold in Iowa, but change happens in lots of places, and that's disruptive. You're getting hung up on highs and lows when you know they're red herrings as far as the relationship between large-scale climate change and rising average temperatures goes. You can't accommodate the rise without climate change.

[dossthane]

Let's take this apart a little more: if the average rises, then high temps rose; low temps rose; or more time was at warmer temps in the middle of the range. If high temps rise, the climate becomes unfit for some of the flora and fauna (coral and polar bears, say). Low temps rise, things like mosquitoes & kudzu stop dying in winter. Warmer in the middle, a different growing season leads to different flora and fauna. CO2 gas is always opaque to IR. More CO2 --> more heat --> global warming.

[anonymous915]

It's the averages that are the red herrings because there's no such thing as an average temp - an average temp is only an average - it's not a temp.

[dossthane]

???? And this circular semantic argument of yours relates to global warming and climate change in what way?

[anoniab]

@dossthane Oh please, stop with the "global warming". We have hemispheric warming and nothing else.

[dossthane]

Note that even Christy, the "against" side in these videos, acknowledges global warming--he just argues that it's smaller than advertised. But he did sign off on the IPCC's 2007 report, too, along with hundreds of other scientists

[anoniab]

@dossthane Then you should also know that many of those who worked on those papers that were used for the IPCC didn't know that they were going to be used for the purpose of supporting the AGW issue and asked that their names be removed.

[dossthane]

What is "many"? Why should the minority always be more influential than the majority, as your arguments require? Of James Inhofe's list goes, John Christy is the only person on it who was also on the IPCC and who has actually criticized the report--but he hasn't asked his name be removed. The Heartland Institute's list appears to've been created from thin air, as well--angry letters from persons included on their list who wholly disagree with the positions HI assigns them keep rolling in.

[anoniab]

@dossthane The majority once thought the world was flat. What was created from thin air is the idea that man influences the climate when CO2 levels were higher in the past (when humans presumably weren't around) and it's been warmer before. We don't control the climate: it controls us.

[dossthane]

It's been a long time since the majority thought the world was flat--ancient Greeks solved that. There is a persistent myth, which you seem to be prone to, that many people believed this into the Renaissance (still pre-scientific method). The earth indeed was once unable to support human life, with an atmosphere much like Venus's. As one who'd like humans to continue existing, I don't find that comforting. Again, get your science from scientific journals. Your last sentence--false dichotomy.

[dossthane]

Let's just quit. If the oceans boiled away and took the atmosphere with them, you'd be saying it wasn't "global" with your last breath. Choosing to believe something because it's more likely wrong than right (vastly more people truly studying the matter conclude that it's wrong than believe otherwise) borders on psychosis.

[anoniab]

Can you answer this: You can actually have a temp of 100 in Des Moines on a summer day and a temp of -100 in Antarctica on that same day. Ok, now average the two. Please tell me what the average would mean to either of those places.

[dossthane]

Sure, it's nothing, like your argument. What part of the word "rising" is beyond your comprehension, though? If the respective temperatures are 110 and -90 a year later, you've got 10 degrees of warming. If one holds steady but the average rises, the other rises more. [Given your troubles with "rising," the 3rd law of thermodynamics is beyond hope!] Just give it up, man/woman. Strings of logical fallacy just have no persuasive power. You're wasting your time; by responding, I'm wasting mine.

[anoniab]

You'd have a 10 degree increase that still wouldn't melt ice in Antarctica.

[anoniab]

@dossthane "Christy...did sign off on the IPCC's 2007 report, too, along with hundreds of other scientists"

"Christy says, 'We were not asked to look at a particular statement and sign our names to it.'" From John Stossel's report "The Global-Warming Debate Isn't Over Until It's Over"

[dossthane]

It's not like he never got a chance to read it: Was he perjuring himself in Vermont after the report came out?

"Plaintiffs own expert, Dr. Christy, agrees with the IPCCs assessment that in the light of new evidence and taking into account remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last fifty years is likely to have been due to the increase in GHG concentrations....Christy agrees that the increase in carbon dioxide is real and primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels..."

[anoniab]

@dossthane But he doesn't agree that it's a threat.