What's Really Warming the World?

Yes. Thank you.

First, the scientific evidence for your claims is in one word, JUNK. For proof of the junk status, their predictions have already failed badly.

Again, once again, over again, yet again, one more time, this time just for you, in science, when predictions are proven badly wrong, then we junk the science. That's much of why we do look to science for solid answers.

As in the graphs in the link I gave, nearly all the models have been proven badly wrong; just click on the link and look at the picture; download the picture and use a graphics program to zoom in on the details.

So, due to the bad predictions, we junk the models.

Now we are very short on scientific evidence.

The long dark ages of the ascent of man show that non-scientific evidence is ugly, disgusting, dangerous stuff -- snake oil, witches' brews, toxic swill, leach bleeding, burning girls alive at the stake, horrible human suffering, e.g., get the Black Death, kill about a third of the population and have dead bodies piled up in the streets from the bacteria from the fleas from the rats because some idiots killed off the cats that were eating the rats.

Second, you are concentrating on CO2, and there is next to no solid evidence that CO2 is having any effect now on the temperature of the earth at all. For evidence, over at least the last few thousand years, higher temperatures were not preceded by higher CO2 concentrations (except for pulling out of the Little Ice Age clearly caused by fewer sun spots so that the pulling out was likely caused by normal sun spot activity and not the CO2 from the industrial revolution -- also note the cooling of 1940 to 1970 when if anything CO2 concentrations were higher) and lower temperatures were not preceded by lower CO2 concentrations.

Third, some of the best evidence is that the temperature variations in the earth over the past few thousand years at least up to the present are due to variations in sun spot activity with CO2 just irrelevant. The sun spot data actually fits the temperature data, and the CO2 data very much does not. A biggie is the Little Ice Age -- lower sun spot activity but not lower CO2.

Your claims that it's so hot now are from data cooked by NOAA and NASA due to what Obama and the global warming alarmists wanted. Or, really, how much warmer is it, since when, in degrees C, measured how, by whom, when, and published where? At best you are talking changes too small to be at all sure about. More likely you are being fooled by deliberately fraudulent data.

For a little more, as of 2006, the US National Academy of Sciences report, right, still at

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html

quite carefully showed (A) that the temperature of the earth in 2006 was essentially the same as in year 1000 before the Little Ice Age, and the increase in temperature in the 100 years before year 2006 was very much like the increase in temperature in the 100 years before year 1000. Just see the graph early in the report. The time series statistics were from David Brillinger at Berkeley, a student of John Tukey at Princeton and Bell Labs, and Brillinger is a good candidate for the best time series guy on the planet. It's a serious report. Clearly the increase in temperature before year 1000 was not caused by an increase in human emissions of CO2. So, CO2 is not the only cause of temperature increases or changes. So there must be other causes. So, even if you do all you want against CO2, the other causes might remain and, really, make your CO2 efforts a total waste.

Or, again, yet again, once again, over again, one more time, this time maybe you will pay attention: The Little Ice Age was real, e.g., was the cause of the ice on the Delaware River in the famous painting of Washington crossing that river and of the extreme cold when Napoleon left Moscow. Well, the Little Ice Age certainly was not caused by lower CO2 concentrations. So, why, oh why do you continue to believe that changes in CO2 concentrations are the only cause, or now even a significant cause at all, of changes in global temperature? Nothing could be more clear: (A) At the start of the Little Ice Age, temperature went down, but lower CO2 was not the cause. (B) CO2 changes are not the only cause of temperature changes. You are fully able to see this.

Warmer? Heck there was some significant warming: In the Middle Ages, they were growing grapes in England! That's warmer than now! And that warming was not from higher CO2 concentrations.

And, for more, there was nothing very unusual about the temperature in year 2006. And since year 2006, the change in temperature has been too small to be at all sure the change was not actually zero -- there's been no significant change since year 2006. Net, we're not warmer than in year 1000 when CO2 was irrelevant, and, again, it is not clear that CO2 now is having any effects at all.

Due to sun spots or whatever, it really might be warmer in 20 years as you fear. No one really knows. The IPCC doesn't know; I don't know; no one knows what the sun spots might do; no one knows what the effect of realistic amounts of CO2 might be; there is no good evidence; the evidence that CO2 is a big danger is junk science seriously debunked by the bad predictions I referenced; and you don't know.

You are back to the thinking of the Mayans who killed people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky. You want stop humans from emitting CO2 to keep from warming the planet, and your evidence is, net, no better than that of the Mayans. Your solution is similar: Sacrifice.

Or, you have in mind a classic trilogy: (A) Human transgression, sin, this time against Mother Earth, (B) retribution from an angry god, Mother Earth, with global warming that hurts our children, (C) redemption for our sins from sacrifice, like the Mayans did, that causes us to suffer, e.g., shut down much of our economy. You are going for the attractions of an old pagan religion. You are being manipulated by people who want money from subsidies, etc. No thanks. Wise up.

We don't know what the climate will do. We can't cure all cancers, either. Relax. For CO2 and the climate, f'get about them. Do something else.

And, no carbon taxes. No higher electric bills. No attacking our cars, trucks, and airplanes. No shooting our economy in the gut. No thanks.

What you call "the graphs in the link I gave" is not the most recent graph from the (denialist) source that you'd like to use, it's from 2013, and since then we have had the warmest year ever recorded (2016). Here's the discussion of the more recent graph from your sources, which your sources used in their 2016 testimony (and that graph still doesn't include the results of 2016 and it's still "cooked"). Note that the baseline was "cooked". Here the discussion:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/05/compar...

and the corrected graphs, done without bias:

http://www.realclimate.org/images/christy_trop_new.png

To be precise, in the graphs, the prediction of the models is compared to the satellite data which don't measure surface temperatures and which are confirmed to have slower warming trend at the moment. Are the measured data below the range of the models in some years? Sure. Will the measurements move in the direction of the model once 2016 data are there? Yes. Does the surface temperature data (which you avoided by picking only the satellite ones) match the models significantly better? Yes, and that isn't on these graphs at all. Here's how it looks when we use all the data we have and compare with the models:

https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/models/

In short, what you believe to see on that graph is not what most of the scientists see (I'm not counting among the "most" John Christy and Roy Spencer, who produce or promote these cooked versions and ignore all the evidence they don't like). The scientists see that the measured satellite data did go below the lines of what the model would have expected, but they don't consider that the models are invalidated with these measurements, and even less so once 2016 is included.

https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/global-temperature-t...

The report from 2006 that you refer to is also not concluding what you believe it concludes. Reading the report is enough to see that.

https://www.nap.edu/read/11676/chapter/4#p200108c09970027001

So, by supporting what you support, you're still destroying the future of your children and grandchildren, if you ever plan to have them, and you obviously do it only for the very egoistic goals of not even trying to make any change because from your perspective you're doing fine. (your words: "no carbon taxes. No higher electric bills. No attacking our cars, trucks, and airplanes. No shooting our economy in the gut. No thanks.")

Like I've said, it will be obvious in only 20 years, but then it will be even harder to do anything -- and the effects will last for hundreds of years. And if you write the letter to your children and grandchildren (or the kids of the relatives if you don't plan to have children) and they survive to read it, they will be able to see who and how influenced their future, so please do that. If you're right, they will celebrate you as a hero. If you aren't right, and unless you are already planning to die sooner than in 20 years, you'll see it for yourself, then I'm sure they'll use some other words for you, reading your message.

Your view of a lot of the methodology in science, and more so in engineering, is correct or nearly so, and I agree with it nearly so.

BUT!!!! So far in saying what human sources of CO2 will do to the temperature of the earth, as in the graph at the link I gave, we're in deep, fuming, reeking, brown sticky stuff -- the predictions from nearly all the models were badly wrong.

So, one approach to something better is to return to first principles of physics. History shows that that approach has been known to work. And IIRC by now the Navier-Stokes equations have been quite good for boat hulls and airplane wings. But as I outlined and you noticed, using first principles to say what the temperature of earth will be in 100 years is too difficult, absurdly too difficult, even if ignore turbulence around leaves, too darned difficult -- and it might even be unstable. So, that approach won't work, either.

So, as you outlined, we need to find a way that does work. In such a case we will need to check it, test it, validate it, etc. And at this point, from the graphs, no one but 10 year old sweet, cute, darling, adorable but gullible and naive Virginia will believe any testing based on predicting old data and, instead, will want a prediction of the NEXT 20 years and the WAIT 20 years to take the work seriously.

Soooo, right, we fall back to some back of the envelope approaches.

Here's one such I've already explained here:

(1) For CO2, for nearly everything in the record for the past 800,000 years (the geologic time intervals in the lecture seem to be different) shows that temperature went up without preceding CO2 concentrations going up and temperature went down without preceding CO2 concentrations going down. So, net, CO2 is not nearly the only cause of temperature changes. And, since we are now willing to do first cut approximations, we conclude in practical terms that, under anything like current conditions, CO2 is irrelevant. Bluntly, the variations in CO2 concentrations don't match the variations in temperature worth a darn.

(2) The stuff I outlined about sun spots fit the temperature data much better. The example that sticks out like sore thumb is the Little Ice Age -- that is, the Maunder Minimum after guy Maunder who noticed that there were nearly no sun spots during the Little Ice Age.

Otherwise, so far we don't know even as much as dip squat about the change in temperature, from CO2 or anything else, in the next 100 years. Clearly the first cut, safe bet is that there won't be any change.

And, it helps a lot that currently the temperature and the changes in temperature don't look at all unusual. I.e., it was hotter in the Medieval times when people were growing grapes in England.

Or, worry about if going to get cancer and f'get about CO2. Sure as heck f'get about carbon taxes.

Okay, I read your

https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau1508/

So, there were measurements of larger, easier to see sun spots, all sun spots including small ones, and sun spot clusters. There have been some old records and also some data from some tricky chemistry on earth in some rocks or some such of effects of sun spots, data that goes way back, maybe thousands of years, maybe more. So, someone applied Kelley's Variable Constant and Fink's Finagle Factor with their thumb on the scale and corrected all the data and got, presto, bingo, wonder of wonders, a grant for CO2 research from the old Obama Administration?????

Even taking that article at face value, for discussing global warming, CO2, and sun spots, the article doesn't look nearly as relevant as we would want. Actually it looks like it is knocking down arguments I was not making, picking arguments it could knock down, setting up straw men just to knock them down, and not very directly addressing global warming.

E.g., the article knocks down an argument about a long term, increasing "trend" of sun spots. Okay. I was never aware that anyone claimed that there was such a "trend".

E.g., apparently there have been claims of a recent "maximum" of sun spots, and the article claimed to knock down that claim, also. Gee, the article was the first I'd heard of any such "maximum" -- I was not arguing for such a "maximum".

It remains that the Little Ice Age was darned cold, and it was in force when Washington crossed the Delaware and Napoleon returned from Moscow. IIRC from the last time I looked up The Little Ice Age on Wikipedia, the LIttle Ice Age lasted much longer than the link's relatively short interval for the Maunder Minimum.

Q. 1. So, what the heck caused the fall in temperature at the beginning of the Little Ice Age?

A. 1. Apparently no one is arguing, or has data on, lower CO2 concentrations as the cause. So, CO2 is not the only cause of global cooling.

Then, sure, cancel that cause, i.e., suppose whatever it was it goes away, and we should see some global warming without considering CO2 unless there was lower CO2 at the beginning of the cooling.

Q. 2. What got us out of the Little Ice Age?

A. 2. Maybe CO2 from the Industrial Revolution? Or maybe the earth just returned to what it was doing before it got cold, whatever the cause of that warmer globe was, and not CO2.

For,

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/sci...

that's really sad stuff; I'm sorry to see the UCS push that stuff: So, they argue that to the best they know how, just "natural" can't explain the temperature variations. Then in their models, they put in what they believe would be the effects of CO2 and, presto, bingo, wonder of wonders, and I can believe after some appropiate debugging and grant from the Obama Administration, the model fits old history. That's weaker than over cooked pasta.

Didn't one of those links mention how warm it is now? I don't believe it is especially warm now: From what I've seen, there's been no significant increase in temperature for the past 16 or so years. So, in particular the temperature is essentially the same as in year 2006 when the NAS report I referenced claimed that the temperature in 2006 was essentially the same as in year 1000 before any influence from human sources of CO2.

I can't be very sure about the sun spot explanation, but to me it looks much better than the CO2 explanation.

Net, I don't see work that lets us predict the temperature 100 years from now other than just guess "no change".

Also, in just simple terms from lots of just simple temperature evidence, I see no reason for alarm.