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What's Really Warming the World?

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111–120 of 549 posts

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#111

Not trying to argue against manmade climate change here, but the conclusion is inconsistent with the stated point/headline. The main question is whether or not humans are the primary driving factor in the changes observed. Graphs show lack of correlation with various manmade causes and some natural causes, but then the conclusion is reached with the graph of "the influence of greenhouse gas emissions." In other words…

> it doesn't prove one way or another whether the cause of the rise in greenhouse gasses is manmade.

Does anyone seriously doubt that rises in CO2 are not principally driven by human activity? I have never even seen that as a talking point.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#112
The chart at http://d1vn86fw4xmcz1.cloudfront.net/content/royptb/363/1501... (put together by The Royal Society) shows that most deforestation in Eastern Canada occurred over 400 years ago. This one http://mongabay-images.s3.amazonaws.com/12/1203all-time-defo... shows a shift starting about 300 years ago from temperate forest removal to tropical forest removal. Together, they start to paint a picture of massive deforestation, hundreds of years ago.

It's important to note that history didn't begin in 1880, and that some effects lag their cause. Forests, along with oceanic flora, normally sequester Carbon from CO2 and return O2 to the atmosphere. However, this effect only takes place when the forests are actually there.

I don't have any religion, one way or another, about climate change and its causes, but I think we won't learn anything from media propaganda like this. It doesn't even bring up the possibility of albedo playing a role in climate change?

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#113

Please don't take this as a denial of climate change, it is an honest question. How do scientists learn the levels of ozone, aerosols, green house gases, and the other data points going so far back at a global scale? Is the data from before the latter half of the 20th century spotty? If so, why is it considered good enough to use in a context of scientific research where quality and correctness of data is paramount?

I also question how we know the difference between nature/cycles and man-made pollution.

Here is a good example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

"Several causes have been proposed: cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, an inherent variability in global climate, or decreases in the human population."

It seems we don't even know how the little ice age happened. How do we know these same forces aren't changing our environment now?

We've been having all these strange temperatures lately and also this:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

The problem is that it's too political now. When claimed scientists are coming out and saying the science is "settled", I know we have a problem. Science is never really settled.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed.

Here's a good one: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-... 44 Climate Models all fighting to out-panic one another, not a single one guessing low enough to predict the actual values for 2012 (when it seems the dataset in question ended) ... and a seemingly more reputable one showing roughly the same thing: http://phys.org/news/2015-01-peer-reviewed-pocket-calculator...

The first graph on that second link is a bit confusing and seems pretty disingenuous. It has the "observations" region stretching to 2050. The rest of the article seems much more factual and interesting, but why start with something so misleading if your supposed goal is to debunk misleading projections?

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#115

Not trying to argue against manmade climate change here, but the conclusion is inconsistent with the stated point/headline. The main question is whether or not humans are the primary driving factor in the changes observed. Graphs show lack of correlation with various manmade causes and some natural causes, but then the conclusion is reached with the graph of "the influence of greenhouse gas emissions." In other words…

> it doesn't prove one way or another whether the cause of the rise in greenhouse gasses is manmade. Does anyone seriously doubt that rises in CO2 are not principally driven by human activity? I have never even seen that as a talking point.

Does the popularity of a doubt or idea even matter here when we're supposed to be discussing science?

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#116

> "No, it really is greenhouse gasses." .. "See for yourself." Being patronising has such a great track record in turning hearts and minds, I'm glad they didn't stoop to such decadent clap track as "engaging with opposing arguments".

With the greatest respect, there are no opposing arguments with which to engage at this point. The issue is political, and not scientific.

[deleted]

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the most credible looking site, but the graphic seems well cited: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-...

Spencer is pretty out there. He's gone on record to say that warming proponents are advancing an argument that will lead to more deaths than the NSDAP's policies did, and is a signatory to the Evangelical Declaration on Climate Change, which suggests that this is largely a matter of faith for him...

He does also maintain one of the satellite records, which does show global warming over the period 1960-2000 (not so much the last 10 years because of the global warming hiatus).

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People of all stripes have the tendency to weight the believability of the evidence based on how well it matches their beliefs instead of weighing their beliefs based on how well they match the evidence.

So, here was something that bothered me this year. This peer-reviewed article was published: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/06/05/science.a... Which claims that the 'global warming' hiatus doesn't exist and is a surface measurement artefact. Adjusting a subset of the surface measurement data removes 'this artefact' and shows that global warming has still been on the rise. Sorry, it's paywalled, if you w…

> Indeed, the various satellite measurements (which do not suffer from as many methodological concerns) agree that the last 10 years have been relatively stagnant in terms of global warming.

I can't engage with the rest of what you're saying, but FWIW a 10 year period is just not a reasonable time period to attempt to draw conclusions about changes in temperature. There are multiple ten year periods of falling temperatures which can be taken out of the obvious increases in temperature which have happened over the last 60 years. Looking at a ten year period, you're going to get much more noise than signal.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#120
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i really doubt we humans can affect climate changes in any way On what basis, exactly? Would you be convinced if climate scientists critiqued your unit testing approach?

as i answered before, merely on a non-secular basis. Not all knowledge comes from science and experiments. There is so much knowledge in religious scriptures.

Is it because you believe these scriptures to be divinely influenced?

If the scripture was inspired / written / influenced etc. by divine entity, or if it was made up completely by humans, how would you tell the difference?

Science is written by man, and scripture was written by man. What is the basis for your faith in the latter's validity?

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