Guest post by Thomas Fuller
Before I start, I’d like to remind readers that as a guest poster, the opinions I voice here are not those of Anthony Watts, and should not be taken as having been endorsed by Watts Up With That.
I am going to propose an idea based on my position as a Lukewarmer regarding climate change. I fully expect to get a lot of criticism from commenters here, and I welcome it. My idea is new (at least to me), and if it is a good idea it will be sharpened by your criticism–and of course, if it is rubbish, best to know quickly, right?
I think the debate on climate change needs some new ideas and criticism too. So blast away–but please bring your A game. I neither need nor want to see the equivalent of ‘you suck, dude.’
Families, businesses and yes, even governments, need to make plans for the future. Those plans used to include assumptions about the physical environment, although most of those assumptions were passive acceptance of the status quo. However, it is now difficult to make assumptions because various theories of climate change and its effects have people wondering if their homes will be threatened by sea level rise, drought, hurricanes or floods.
Because of the competing number of possible futures (the IPCC has many scenarios and many more have been pulled from the science fiction rack and offered up to us), people are somewhat paralyzed by too many choices. I think it is time to recognize that all of use engaged in the debate about climate change are not doing the rest of the world any favors. We are making their life more difficult because they cannot make plans with any confidence.
If there is one dataset that I trust regarding the Earth’s climate, it is the measurement of atmospheric concentrations of CO2. It has been freely available for examination, it is replicated by measurements in more than one site, and in my mind survived criticism from people such as the late Ernst Beck. I trust the numbers.
The numbers show that concentrations of CO2 were 315 ppm in 1958, when Mauna Loa started measuring. Concentrations now are 390 ppm. That is a rise of 19%. The central question in climate change is, ‘What is the sensitivity of the earth’s atmosphere to a doubling of the concentrations of CO2?’ Is the atmosphere easily influenced by CO2, producing more water vapor and adding to temperature rise, or is the atmosphere largely indifferent? Despite protestations from both sides, the honest answer is we don’t know now, and we are not likely to know for another 30 years.
Temperatures appear to have risen globally, although the accuracy of the data is not yet fully determined. The rise since 1958 appears to be about 0.5 degrees Celsius.
If these were the only statistics available to us, we would quickly conclude that the sensitivity of the earth’s atmosphere to all human-related activities might well be 2.5 degrees Celsius. This would lead to the supposition that, if concentrations of CO2 rise to about 600 ppm, which certainly seems possible, that the Earth’s temperature will rise about another 2 degrees C. Since it’s based on measurement of temperatures, it can be presumed to include all the effects we are having on temperatures, not just CO2.
And I am arguing, no–proposing, that we do exactly that. Attempts to refine models and measurements have been unsuccessful and have served to heighten suspicion and muddy the debate. I have seen very credible arguments for sensitivities that are both higher and lower, but these arguments are based on data or models that have much higher levels of uncertainty associated with them, ranging from differing ways of measuring tropospheric temperatures to analysis of varves from Finnish lakes.
I don’t see undisputed data that will allow us to do better than the 40 years of good data we have now. So I think we should provide a ‘rough and ready’ estimate of 2 degrees C climate change this century to the public, business and politicians, so they can start making plans for the future.
It should obviously come with an asterisk and error bars, and should be presented as ‘crude, but the best we can really do at this time.’ Much like earlier and simpler climate models have often done better in handling projections of future climate, our rougher and cruder metrics may serve us better for now.
We need to stop throwing sci-fi fantasies out as plausible outcomes. We need to provide a range of outcomes based on measurements that we trust.
We also need not to be distracted by elements of the debate that have only served a political purpose. Current temperatures are not unprecedented. There was a MWP and a LIA. Sea level is rising at 3 mm per year. The ice caps are not going to disappear this millenium.
None of that really matters. Temperatures are rising, and more quickly than they have often in the past. (Yes, they have risen this quickly on occasion.) It is the speed of change and the numbers of people those changes will affect that are actually of more concern than the total temperature rise. The people in developing countries are actually more vulnerable than the last time there was a big quick rise–hunter gatherers didn’t have homes and could just move out of harm’s way, and they were few enough in number that they would not have been labeled ‘climate refugees.’
So, I call for all those involved in the climate debate to throw down their weapons, embrace this practical solution as being of use to the rest of the world, climb aboard the Peace Train and sing Kumbaya. Right.
No, have a look at this–tell me if it’s remotely possible that the skeptic community could sacrifice its current temporary, but very real advantage in the debate and agree that a rough metric that acknowledges warming but puts sane boundaries on it would be of use to the rest of the world.
Again, I’d like to thank readers who have made it this far for listening to a different side of the debate in a forum where you are more comfortable seeing the failings of your opponents exposed. If you find the gaping flaw in my logic, my idea can die quickly, if not quietly. If you see merit in my proposal, any indication of such would be warmly welcomed.
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As someone who remains skeptical about AGW, I can’t agree with the proposition prompting this discussion. For me, the potential costs of the various means to curb human created CO2 are simply horrific for developing nations. I’d manage with a “greener” car, sure, but without the carbon-based power grids in India and China, for example, poverty, disease, and famine would run rampant. And in the rest of the developing world things would be even worse. I’m just not willing to sacrifice millions of lives based upon a shaky–to me–supposition that AGW might warm things up a bit, and that–in turn–w0uld be unequivocally bad.
The human cost in lives and suffering is simply too great.
It seems obvious to me that the only real solution to global warming is AIR Conditioners. If there really is global warming there seems little we can do about it wheather it is man made or not. the only thing we can do is to deal with its effects. That will take money and technology, two things the developed nations can surely come up with. Driving the West bankrupt with goofball schemes will only make matters worse
Thomas,
I appreciate your post and your desire to have reasoned debate without childish name calling. Having said that, I disagree with your analysis and conclusions for several reasons.
Firstly, it appears you have concluded, based on short term correlation only, that increasing CO2 is forcing temperatures up. I don’t agree with this conclusion for several reasons but most importantly because CO2 concentrations have been much higher in the past than they are now with little or no correlation to higher temperatures. If CO2 were indeed a strong driver of temperatures the earth should have experienced out of control warming long ago. From the data I have seen it appears CO2 levels are more likely to lag than lead temperature increases. This makes perfect sense as we all know liquids (oceans) release dissolved gasses as they warm.
Secondly, the proposed solutions to the perceived problem with have little or no environmental benefit and will be hugely damaging to western economies. Industrial production in the West is many times more efficient and environmentally friendly than the developing world. All of the proposed solutions I have seen to climate change involve a large transfer of wealth and production from developed nations to developing nations. Think about it, you are forcing production from efficient, highly regulated societies to inefficient societies that mostly couldn’t care less about the environment. Consider that China is building coal fired electricity plants at a fantastic rate to keep up with their increasing production requirements. Do you think those plants need to meet strict emission and environmental regulations? Keep in mind this is the same country that just flooded out millions of citizens to build a giant hydro dam and runs over students with tanks. Does it really make sense to argue for regulations and taxes that will knowingly make the worldwide environmental situation worse?
To me it is obvious that the solutions to climate change have a lot more to do with economic and political control and wealth transfer than they do with protecting the environment.
I look forward to your response.
“Tallbloke, what on earth makes you think I (Thomas Fuller) believe all the recent rise is due to CO2? ”
Well, I got the same impression based on this paragraph in the original article:
“If these were the only statistics available to us, we would quickly conclude that the sensitivity of the earth’s atmosphere to all human-related activities might well be 2.5 degrees Celsius. This would lead to the supposition that, if concentrations of CO2 rise to about 600 ppm, which certainly seems possible, that the Earth’s temperature will rise about another 2 degrees C. Since it’s based on measurement of temperatures, it can be presumed to include all the effects we are having on temperatures, not just CO2.
And I am arguing, no–proposing, that we do exactly that.”
My main criticism is why on earth would you assume that just because there is something that you can measure (i.e. “If there is one dataset that I trust regarding the Earth’s climate, it is the measurement of atmospheric concentrations of CO2.”) it must be the reason for the rise in temperatures.
Suppose the one measure you were confident in was the growth in cattle population during this time frame. By this logic, we should all just agree that the rough and ready estimate for 2100 a.d. is something like “If the cattle population continues to rise, we should prepare for 3.2C increase in temperatures.”
Nonsense.
James
The real problem with your idea is that it asks us to selectively choose to accept some facts and to ignore other facts. As you state…in the last 40 years, CO2 and temperatures (generally) have been increasing. That is a fact. But here are some other facts:
2. In the 30 years before that, CO2 was increasing, but temperatures were decreasing.
3. In the 40 years before that (1900-1940) CO2 was not increasing much, but temperatures were increasing similarly to the more recent decades.
Is it reasonable to ask us to ignore the last two facts and look at only at the first one? Is it wise? Why even purpose that we look only at the first one and ignore the other two? Because of data quality issues? Then in 2050 we can ignore the data from 1970 to 2010, because we will certainly have better data in 2050! No, we can not ignore the older data on the grounds that it is ‘not as good’. It is good enough to support 2 & 3 above. The only reason I can think of for a person to ask us to ignore some of the things we know to be true, is to fool us.
You also ask us to accept the assumption that all climate change in the last 40 years was man made. This is the ‘Mann’ assumption and it is obviously false. There is no reason to accept it, even for the sake of argument, particularly when that argument calls for the spending of trillions of dollars.
With your selective facts and false assumption, you determine that a 2 degree warming is what we should try to mitigate. If, on the other hand, you start with the assumption that a portion of the recent warming is natural, then 2 degrees is already over the the maximum that humans could possibly produce. Then if you accept facts two and three above, one must logically conclude that the CO2 forcing is weaker than the natural forcing, which leads to a maximum of less than 1 degree C of additional warming for a doubling of CO2 over pre-industrial levels.
Now that is a reasonable argument based on all the things we know, and it doesn’t start off with a known ‘false assumption’. Of course, a warming of less the 1 degree C may not need any mitigation at all. There would be no need for more regulations, government or taxes. There would be no need to restrict the life giving flow of energy! There would be no need for people to blow up children who don’t cut there emissions by 10%!
In fact, the warming of less than 1 degree, coupled with the CO2 enrichment would be amazingly beneficial for humans and the rest of the biosphere (with some very minor exceptions). If we humans were truly rational, we would be trying to double the atmospheric CO2!
Please don’t ask me to be irrational for the sake of compromise and the goal of ‘doing something’. Jim Jones wanted to do something, but that doesn’t mean we should all drink the kool-aid.
@fuller
I wish you could at least get a handle on basic physics of CO2 that was experimentally demonstrated 150 years ago. Increasing amounts of it have exponentially less effect. You cite a rise of 20% in the past 50 years and marginally correlated rise in average temperature of 0.5C. Fair enough, so long as we acknowledge that correlation is not causation. Where you go off the reservation of fact and into uninformed fallacy is when you go on to say it is reasonable to presume a 2.5C rise from a 100% increase in CO2. This would only happen if there was a linear relationship between CO2 concentration and its capacity to work as an infrared insulator. It is NOT a linear function. It would take a 40% future increase in CO2 concentration to get the same effect as the previous 20%.
An apposite question for Tom Fuller would be: what would be the circumstances which would falsify the lukewarmer position? If the “global mean temperature” continues to flatline or fall slightly for X years, how big would X have to be before the lukewarm hypothesis were to be abandoned?
“Thanks for comments so far. I just want to point out that I am proposing a 2 degree temperature rise this century from all causes, not just CO2.
Does that make a difference to how you perceive this?”
Sorry, but you are just plucking a figure out of thin air, and running with it. In fairness, you are not alone in this…..
The truth is that the climate system is extremely complex.
The truth is that these complexities remain very poorly understood.
The disturbing truth seems to be that the entire climate science community, under considerable pressure for answers from the political elite, is effectively “conning” the world into believing that their understanding of these complexities is far greater than it actually is.
Is human activity having an effect on the Earth’s climate? That may be the one certainty amongst all this, but to try and quantify precisely what this effect is, given our current level of understanding, quite frankly laughable.
As things stand at the moment, we are on the cusp of making huge, far-reaching long-term policy decisions on the basis of something that, essentially, remains speculation. To me, that is a far bigger danger than anything that the climate system is likely to throw at us……….
Mr. Fuller,
Thank you for the thoughtful and well-laid out post. To answer your essential question, “tell me if it’s remotely possible that the skeptic community could sacrifice its current temporary, but very real advantage in the debate and agree that a rough metric that acknowledges warming but puts sane boundaries on it would be of use to the rest of the world.”
I thought the well-informed skeptic community already acknowledged that. The gist of what I’ve seen over the past years tends to agree that it has warmed since the end of the LIA, with recent warming since the 1970’s. There is at least the tacit assumption that it COULD continue warming. The MWP, Holocene Climate Optimum and other past periods are widely regarded as having been warmer than present, so why couldn’t temps go up further.
The problem is that even if we all decided to go along with this 2 degree figure, there are too many differing assumptions about what will happen. If you use the Hockey Stick as a guide, we could very well have catastrophic problems since we simply don’t know what happens when it gets that hot. Since some believe the Earth has not experienced temps like that in a long long time, it is perhaps possible that there would be positive feedbacks, and it would ratchet the temps up even further.
I see what you are doing here, trying to inject some common sense into a rancorous and important debate. But looking what it is at stake here, I think a very hot debate is in order. On the one side, many AGWers believe that millions if not billions of people will die. Not to mention all sorts of other species. If they believe that, they really OUGHT to be fighting tooth and nail, right? And for the skeptic crowd, the clear economic and human costs of cutting back carbon use are unacceptably high. In fact, not only does it hurt our wallets, it would probably cause higher mortality in the poor. And as any poor person will tell you, economic prosperity is not something you want to throw away just to calm someone else’s gibbering fear.
I have two serious problems with this post, Tom.
The first is that the AGW science supposedly underlying all this is simply not believable. (Dr. Judith Curry has a series of excellent posts at her blog on the IPCC’s “Detection and Attribution” section — and she is neither a skeptic nor an enemy of science.) And all of the actual measurements looking for phenomena predicted by the theory on which all the catastrophism is based has disconfirmed, rather than reinforced, the AGW theory; it’s been wrong every time.
Moreover, we’re already at a 30% rise in CO2 from 1950 — which means that, since the effect of CO2 is logarithmic, we should have already seen about 40% of the expected rise. If that’s half a degree C, with all feedbacks etc., then the actual sensitivity — making the obviously wrong assumption that all the rise is due to CO2 — can’t be greater than a degree and a quarter, which is clearly nothing to worry about. In fact, the best estimates from real climate scientists is that the doubling sensitivity will be somewhere between half a degree and unmeasurable.
Second, all of the proposed measures are insanely destructive. Wind turbines are disfiguring landscapes, destroying wildlife habitat, and blowing taxpayers’ money into fat cats’ pockets all over Europe, Canada, the US, and Australia, without generating any useful power whatever. Likewise solar, which in Europe is bankrupting Germany and has already bankrupted Spain. Idiotic little swirly florescents are polluting to manufacture (but that pollution stays in China), polluting to dispose of, and feeble to read by.
Tom, the AGW hysteria has already done more damage to the planet and its people than any possible global warming could. The time to stop it cold is now. I appreciate the reasonable tone of your post, but please forgive me for pointing out that the time for sweet reason is long past.
It takes 2 to Tango, Thomas. Have you posted this on any “warmist” sites? Or submitted it as an agenda item at any upcoming IPCC conference – Cancun for example? Or offered it up to any of the many NGO’s, companies, etc. who have a vested interest in pushing the EOTWAWKI view of climate, and/or alternative energy, food production, transportation, and lifestyle agenda’s? From what I’ve seen and read they are the ones who would need convincing of your proposal, not the skeptic community. Skeptic’s have been trying to get this kind of a debate from the likes of Al Gore for years.
Thomas Fuller, when I first started reading and hearing about global warming, that is the anthropogenic type, I was, as I have been all my life and as a man of science, skeptical. I could remember from my chemistry lessons that the CO2 component in our atmosphere was 0.03% or thereabouts. I remember saying to myself, “but how can this insignificance affect the global temperature?” During those years, when I was working hard and raising three kids, I did not have the time to go scientific on the subject and in due time, reading the papers, hearing the news and watching Discovery Channel, I came to the conclusion that since all the world’s scientists were saying so, then I must be the only fool on the planet not accepting AGW. So I became a BELIEVER and like a gull gulped down all that was being said and became fearful that my grand children will not have a planet where to live.
Time went by, my kids got their PhD’s and MSc’s and so, having some free time for myself and watching Al Gore telling us that the only livable place would be Antarctica, I commenced making some basic searches on the subject by hitting the net. AND I GOT THE SUPRISE OF MY LIFE. Because you see, I found out that I had made a mistake in becoming a believer and that I was right-the-first-time in being initially a skeptic. And:
• There was no scientific consensus; only 50 scientists had really signed the papers.
• The planet had stopped warming in 1997.
• The oceans were not rising.
• While glaciers were receding, others were growing.
• Glaciers that were for some time receding are now in reverse mode
• The oceans are cooling.
• The supposedly smoking gun of global warming: temperature rise at high atmospheric levels was not found, and the warmists’ hope in this smoking gun turned to…….smoke.
• Kevin Trenberth’s other smoking gun, that is, oceans heating up, turned into a cold case.
• Antarctica was not melting.
• The hockey stick got stuck.
• The total global biomass is increasing due to the increase in CO2, even the Sahel is greening.
• During man’s written history, the planet experienced four coolings and five warmings, some warmer than the present (past?) one.
• Civilisations thrived during warmings and suffered, even collapsed, during coolings. (The Romans built their empire during the Roman warm period and collapsed during the following global chill, better known as the Dark Ages, when civilization practically disappeared from the European continent and knowledge was transferred to the warmer north African countries. The renaissance followed with the MWP’s arrival.
• Warming oceans release their stored CO2. This is simple chemistry. Hence the theory that atmospheric CO2 increases due to global warming is more scientifically sensible than the opposite theory.
• Solar variability has a measurable effect on the planet’s temperature and may well be the major driver of climate change.
• Climate is dependent on a myriad of forcings, while AGW rests its case on one and only one single forcing. This is scientifically irresponsible at least.
• The CRU scientists made an ass of themselves and reduced science to the garbage heap while feeding same to the IPCC, that entity which has become the laughing stock of the world following Climategate and Copenhagen.
• Science, especially climate science, has been hijacked by:
1. The journalist for selling his hyped-up end of the world stories. Stories saying that all’s well with the planet don’t sell.
2. Hollywood, for the same reason.
3. The politicians, as an excuse to tax us and reduce our liberties. And
4. Big Energy for getting the billions of grants (our money) to build their monstrosities that our ancestors discarded when they discovered coal, oil and gas.
• Al Gore became the first carbon billionaire.
• My grand children will inherit the same planet that I had, maybe even a better one.
In short Thomas, the worst thing one can do is to believe, while asking questions, that is, being skeptical, is the root of all knowledge and the truth.
Conclusion:
increase in CO2 = Global warming? One can believe in it but one cannot deduce it scientifically. Even Time has killed off the theory.
Going back 180 years (Beck 2007) shows CO2 at about 425-ppm in 1825. Going back 6E8 years (Berner 2001) shows CO2 has been as high as 7,000-ppm. All during this period temperatures have cycled within 12C and 22C (Scotese’s PaleoTEMP), oblivious to CO2 concentration.
Doesn’t the above data have more weight than 52 years of Mauna Loa data taken on the world’s largest active volcano in the middle of the CO2 belching pacific Ocean?
“…tell me if it’s remotely possible that the skeptic community could sacrifice its current temporary, but very real advantage in the debate and agree that a rough metric that acknowledges warming but puts sane boundaries on it would be of use to the rest of the world.”
=======
Interesting statement and sincere post but, in my opinion, temperatures are not going to continue to rise over the next 30 years and CO2 levels are actually going to fall. Humans simply don’t produce enough CO2 to double the ppm.
If the typical 60 year cycle continues to play out, we’re headed into 30 years of cooler temperatures and thus declining CO2 levels. Temperature drives CO2 and CO2 typically lags temperature rise and fall.
Stewardship, Sustainability, Clean Energy, and legitimate Climate Science are great goals but not at the expense of Common Sense.
The problem isn’t the goals. The problem is the Eco-Hysteria, which is driving poorly conceived methods, flawed Science, and unnecessary taxation.
I think its reasonable to say that ALL Scientists agree that the Climate Models fail to account for significant aspects of the climate system. So its actually not the Skeptics that are the issue in the debate. Skeptics are already aware of the flawed science and appear to be the only reasoned voice in the debate.
The best thing that could occur at this point is to disband the IPCC, each country should pursue its own environmental agenda, and to stop scaring children with fairy tale Science.
To Alan Clarke, who said:
“The temperature proxies of Mann et-al have been debunked by M&M. The surface temperature data has been credibly challenged by A. Watt et-al.”
Yes, Mann et al have been debunked, but we aren’t discussing the fact that there really was was a Medieval Warm Period and a Little Ice Age, and that Mann et al keep making things up as they go along. We are trying to understand what has been happening in the last half century, when CO2 has seen most of its increase since the “pre-industrial” level of 280 ppm, and when other man-made emissions of various types also increased.
Yes, Anthony Watts and Ross McKitrick and Patrick Michaels have all shown that in various ways the surface temperature records are likely to be on the high side, when the urban heat island effect is properly dealth with.
So to be properly empirical, we need to use the satellite record of temperatures, not the surface record.
That record shows an increasing trend, but a bit less of one than the ground record. So we are seeing temperature increases, but less than almost all models, and less than the surface record. And the satellite record is more or less showing the 2 degrees per C that Thomas Fuller posits, when taking into account all the different forcing agents, it seems to me.
Hi to Thomas from Australia. I understand that the best sceptics like Lindzen predict about 1 deg C warming from doubling CO2. This is not a huge figure. And most of the more lurid scenarios from, say, Gore’s movie have not stood up to scrutiny.
However, I can see the point of a precautionary emission cut – provided we do it sensibly. We should be precautionary about alarmism too. Otherwise scientists a few decades hence may find themselves being asked why they loudly lobbied for a Son Of Y2K Hysteria and mostly just succeeded in putting a lot of people out of work.
The efficiency of CO2 is Logarithmic so doubling it will not reach the 2deg. (unfortunately) if CO2 is the Main factor!
I prefer the approach of the engineer to examine the problem.
Energy source 1) the sun
Energy source 2) earth core
storage and transport of energy 1) the oceans
storage and transport of energy 2) the atmosphere
considering that the power provider #1 is more(much more) than 500 time more than the provider 2 lets consider first the sun
Considering that the storage and transport of energy #1 is more than 500 time more than the #2 let’s concider the ocean
let’s admit an error of at most .2% and forgot about the core and the atmosphere
To my opinion this is the smart way to understand not meteo but climat. Sun variation and ocean streams
Every engineer will act like that!
“Tallbloke, what on earth makes you think I believe all the recent rise is due to CO2? (I don’t–but it’s possible I expressed myself poorly.) Even the IPCC doesn’t think that.”
I read it that way too, Tom.
So let me ask it this way –at what percentage of causation of warming attributable to C02 would your plan be unattractive/unnecessary in your mind? And how confident are you that the actual percentage is north of that number? Why are you confident?
If, say, 1/3 of the rise since 1958 is attributable to C02, are you still a backer of your plan?
thomaswfuller says:
October 20, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Hi all,
Thanks for comments so far. I just want to point out that I am proposing a 2 degree temperature rise this century from all causes, not just CO2.
Does that make a difference to how you perceive this?
I suppose you mean a “…possible maximum 2 degree rise this century from all causes…” since we do not know exactly what the total effect of the increasing CO2 is and we also (and arguably more importantly) do not know exactly what the causes of the temperature rise since the LIA are.
Since we’ve seen that historically temp rises/falls before CO2 rises/falls, we can say that anthropogenic contributions to atmospheric CO2 is changing that apparent relationship. However, without knowing what the primary cause(s) of the post-LIA temp increase is, we do not know for sure that they won’t stop tomorrow or this year or this decade, etc. If they did, the subsequent cooling might overwhelm any possible effect of rising CO2 levels.
Just an observation or two.
The issue that over-reaches everything is natural effects vs. man’s effects which I still think is impossible to determine at this point in time.
Hi Tom,
As I replied to you over at Collide-s-Scape (the narrative vacuum thread), I agree that 2.5 to 3 deg per doubling for climate sensitivity looks like the most likely ballpark indeed, though not so much for the reason you provide (as mt and Brian over there also explained: The net forcing over the 20th century is not well constrained because of aerosols and that there still is an energy imbalance reflecting warming in the pipeline). But indeed, taking several constraints by measurements into consideration, this result seems fairly robust (see e.g. [bad link ~ac]http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2006/03/climate-sensitivity-is-3c.html)
So if the motion is, let’s go wih the 2.5 number and move the discussion to how we’re gonna deal with that, mitigation- and adaptation-wise, then I’m all for it! (As I’ve said to you over a year ago already too, but I’m happy that you’re seconding my motion now finally! http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/my-next-generation-questions-on-climate-change/ )
(Btw, how do you know that “The ice caps are not going to disappear this millenium.”?)
I think the relevant matter is that we need to locally/regionally adapt to changing climate, whatever the reason and the sign of that change, be it warming or cooling, as humankind has always done, instead of globally (and dangerously in many bizarre cases) trying to fight back what we cannot/should not fight back.
My main concern on this issue is to see how most of the developed world governments (and not only) spending huge amounts of our hard earned money trying to fight back the allegued causes of global warming mainly by uselessly trying to reduce CO2 emissions (as climate sensitivity to it is not well known at all and even though we cannot reduce emissions enough except, perhaps, if all 7 billion humans come back to the caverns ages), but not trying to mitigate/avoid climate effects – whatever- at least with the same amount of effort and money spending (plan “A”, which would be much more useful to more efectively help the communities suffering natural disaters), nor even thinking in having a medium/long term “plan B” working in parallel consisting in strongly investing in the investigation/use of the alternative cheap massive energy needed to bring all 7 billion people to comfortable and safe levels of existence whatever the climate. I’m talking nuclear (both fusion and fision), of course, keeping oil reserves for better uses other than burning them.
Such two “plans” are of utmost importancy if the climate turns to come to a slight global cooling for the next decades instead of keeping on warming, as it looks like and several important voices are warning about. Cold is the name of the problem, not the protecting warming that has allowed humankind to come from some 1 million individuals a mere 10.000 years ago all the way up to present numbers.
Cheers.
Sorry, Thomas Fuller, but both your data and conclusions are wrong.
In early 2010 the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin put questions to Professor Jones, including several gathered from climate sceptics. The questions were put to Professor Jones with the co-operation of UEA’s press office.
Roger Harrabin – “Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?”
Professor Jones – “An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I’ve assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.
Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).
I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.
So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.”
Here are the trends and significances for each period:
Period……Lgth(yr).. Trend(C)
1860-’80 21 0.163 Significance = Yes
1910-’40 31 0.15 Significance = Yes
1975-’98 24 0.166 Significance = Yes
1975-2009 35 0.161 Significance = Yes
Hi Philip,
Once again–I have no agenda and approach you with an open declaration of my own beliefs and policy preferences. And I will be returning to commenter status when Anthony comes back.
…‘you suck, dude.’….
O……I guess I should add why I suppose. From the mouth of the IPCC itself.
Untill you come to terms with clouds…you have jack.
If you are off on your cloud cover est, you are WAY off on the effect vs CO2.
…..as an albedo decrease of only 1%, bringing the Earth’s albedo from 30% to 29%, would cause an increase in the black-body radiative equilibrium temperature of about 1°C, ….
which is the same amount a doubling of CO2 will give without the unproven feedbacks.
And if there are feedbacks, they do not know if they are a net positve or neg.
……..”… the amplitude and even the sign of cloud feedbacks was noted in the TAR as highly uncertain….”
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-5-2.html
“… the amplitude and even the sign of cloud feedbacks was noted in the TAR as highly uncertain, and this uncertainty was cited as one of the key factors explaining the spread in model simulations of future climate for a given emission scenario. This cannot be regarded as a surprise: that the sensitivity of the Earth’s climate to changing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations must depend strongly on cloud feedbacks can be illustrated on the simplest theoretical grounds, using data that have been available for a long time. Satellite measurements have indeed provided meaningful estimates of Earth’s radiation budget since the early 1970s (Vonder Haar and Suomi, 1971). Clouds, which cover about 60% of the Earth’s surface, are responsible for up to two-thirds of the planetary albedo, which is about 30%. An albedo decrease of only 1%, bringing the Earth’s albedo from 30% to 29%, would cause an increase in the black-body radiative equilibrium temperature of about 1°C, a highly significant value, roughly equivalent to the direct radiative effect of a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Simultaneously, clouds make an important contribution to the planetary greenhouse effect. …”