Sorry, Climate Change is Real
October 30, 2010 5 Comments
For those who think that climate change doesn’t exist or is some sort of natural process that recycles from century to century, you may not this summary. Man is dumping CO2 into the air and it is accumulating at a rate never known to scientists test covering tens of thousand of years. I you live in Florida you will face the consequences much sooner than you think, indeed you are already feeling the results of climate change.
“The amount of carbon dioxide humans are putting into the atmosphere is smaller but it’s not balanced, and so it builds up over time and it causes a sizable net gain,” Ruddiman explained.
“It may be 10 billion tons a year but much of it builds up year after year after year,” he said, and persists in the atmosphere, trapping heat like a chemical blanket.
Scientists who have used a variety of techniques to track earth’s changing climate over hundreds of thousands of years have found data that show carbon dioxide levels during that period never grew faster than 30 parts per million per 1,000 years. Yet the level has risen by that amount in just the last 17 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international organization widely regarded by the scientific community as a leading authority on the topic.
The result is the warmer temperatures and melting icecaps widely documented around the globe.
via Politifact slams climate science denier John Loughlin « Climate Progress.
About Stephen E. McGaughey
Coral Gables Watch 
Sorry to contradict you but , if you know something that I don’t, please share it with me.
That something would be some empirical evidence supporting the “Anthropogenic CO2 causes global warming” hypothesis.
You might also need to explain why the world has been warmer than today many times in its history including a number of times during the history of man in spite of a low CO2 concentration.
You may also ponder that observations of temperature rises and some vague correlations with CO2 do not constitute evidence in any shape or form
Also ponder on the costs of meeting the CO2 reductions demanded by the IPCC which are conspicuously absent from their reporting.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Thanks for your comments. I think that there is a huge and powerful literature, reports and opinions on climate change that lead me and many people to be concerned about it negative impacts on humankind in the future. Hopefully, all that are interested will read for themselves and what to do. While the rich countries will be affected they have the resources to adapt somewhat to the problem and the poor and vulnerable countries do not. That is the essence of the problem to me.
There may be the mountain of literature that you mention, but there is also an increasingly large mountain of literature criticising it as well.
Here are some academic papers which refute much of what the IPCC asserts and there are plenty more around.
An assessment of validation experiments conducted on computer models of global climate using the general circulation model of the UK’s Hadley Centre
(Energy & Environment, Volume 10, Number 5, pp. 491-502, September 1999)
– Richard S. Courtney
An Alternative Explanation for Differential Temperature Trends at the Surface and in the Lower Troposphere (PDF)
(Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 114, November 2009)
– Philip J. Klotzbach, Roger A. Pielke Sr., Roger A. Pielke Jr., John R. Christy, Richard T. McNider
Altitude dependence of atmospheric temperature trends: Climate models versus observation (PDF)
(Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 31, Issue 13, July 2004)
– David H. Douglass, Benjamin D. Pearson, S. Fred Singer
A test of corrections for extraneous signals in gridded surface temperature data (PDF)
(Climate Research, Volume 26, Number 2, pp. 159-173, May 2004)
– Ross McKitrick, Patrick J. Michaels
– Are temperature trends affected by economic activity? Reply to Benestad (2004) (PDF)
(Climate Research, Volume 27, Number 2, pp. 175–176, October 2004)
– Ross McKitrick, Patrick J. Michaels
A null hypothesis for CO2 (PDF)
(Energy & Environment, Volume 21, Number 4, pp. 171-200, August 2010)
– Roy Clark
A natural constraint to anthropogenic global warming
(Energy & Environment, Volume 21, Number 4, pp. 225-236, August 2010)
– William Kininmonth
A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions (PDF)
(International Journal of Climatology, Volume 28, Issue 13, pp. 1693-1701, December 2007)
– David H. Douglass, John R. Christy, Benjamin D. Pearson, S. Fred Singer
A Climate of Doubt about Global Warming
(Environmental Geosciences, Volume 7, Issue 4, December 2000)
– Robert C. Balling Jr.
A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-treering proxies (PDF)
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1049-1058, December 2007)
– Craig Loehle
An empirical evaluation of earth’s surface air temperature response to radiative forcing, including feedback, as applied to the CO2-climate problem
(Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, Volume 34, Numbers 1-2, pp. 1-19, March, 1984)
– Sherwood B. Idso
An upper limit to global surface air temperature
(Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, Volume 34, Number 2, pp. 141-144, June 1985)
– Sherwood B. Idso
Also there are increasing numbers of scientists speaking out against the literature you mention.
Click to access UN_open_letter.pdf
http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=54
http://www.petitionproject.org/
The reason for this is mostly based on the assertion in my first comment-” Where is the empirical evidence supporting the “Anthropogenic CO2 causes global warming” hypothesis?”
In other words one has to use ones own brain to examine the logic of what we are being bombarded with, and the answer to the above question is not amongst the bombardment it seems.
Let me also leave you with a paragraph from another comment I left at another blog recently.
Will CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere caused by our industry and population, if unchecked, eventually cause the death of our planet? Ooops sorry, there is no proof or logic behind that assertion, although if you come across and empirical evidence to the contrary, I will among the first to embrace it.
Why worry about AGW then if I do not believe in it?
Did I worry about the theory of evolution or plate techtonic theory? Not at all, because whether these theories are right or wrong, it does not effect me or my family. eg we will get earth quakes etc either way.
But Anthropogenic Global Warming? The belief in this is likely to effect us all adversely very much indeed, regardless if there is any truth behind the yet to be proven “anthropogenic CO2 causes Global Warming” because:
The cost of meeting the CO2 emission reductions and the wealth transfers demanded by the IPCC will simply break western economies.
What does a broken economy mean?
It means fewer jobs, perhaps none. It means poverty and probably starvation. It will not be just a few dollars out of paypacket every month.
The fact that this subject is absent from any IPCC reporting, and indeed some sources would have us believe it will be the opposite, concerns me and anyone who has a few clues about economics.
In your case, sit down and imagine what the effect on you and your family would be if the price of oil rose so much that to fill your car up cost more than your monthly salary? Not only would your car be almost useless, but imagine the price of transporting food to your supermarket. Could the business you work for operate with a rise in costs like that? Think of other essential products that you need and think how much oil is used for their production.
Well I will leave you to ponder on that one. My point being that the IPCC is really ready to break our economies over an UNPROVEN theory.
What I am saying is, before we break our economies, in order to save the planet, let us see some better proof that AGW is real.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
I am sure our readers will enjoy your comments, however, they are outliers in terms of received scientific work. The evidence is hard to read for the average person. I rather trust institutions like the US National Academy of Sciences, but certainly, if you want to accept a different scientific view then you may be doing so at your own risk. Rather than ruining economies, climate change policies have the effect of shifting resources to new and different sectors–away from oil production and consumption, more fuel efficient houses and cars, away from coal, etc. It’s just different, not worse. In any case, many thanks for your sincere and interest comments. P.S. I will look up some the articles your suggest.
Thanks for your reply.
” Rather than ruining economies, climate change policies have the effect of shifting resources to new and different sectors–away from oil production and consumption, more fuel efficient houses and cars, away from coal, etc. It’s just different, not worse”
I wish that was the case.
The truth is we do not have the technology to keep energy prices down to a reasonable level and it may not ever be possible.
Governments trying to shift consumption away from oil and coal by using tax payers money will exacerbate the problem.
Of course a shift away from fossil fuels is inevitable in the long run, but that is a different issue from AGW.
The immediate (in economic terms) shift away from fossil fuels via the IPCC CO2 emission reduction demands is economy breaking stuff. The wealth transfers in themselves are enough to have a huge impact.
This blog is worth a read.
http://www.examiner.com/seminole-county-environmental-news-in-orlando/global-warming-scare-industry-suppresses-benefits-of-co2
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com