the day after tomorrow

[emperorharry86]

Has anyone else seen this awesome movie?
So what happens next {ok, this is like alternate-future-history or something}
Does Australia become the most powerful country? Or maybe Mexico? anyone want to try at making a TL?

[Michael]

Is that the one with the submarine captain? Because if it is then wasn't the thing that everyone died at the end?

[MerryPrankster]

The one with the submarine captain where everyone dies is "On the Beach."

I really liked "The Day After Tomorrow," though it did get a bit preachy about the Kyoto Accord and has a Dick Cheney-esque character who is in denial for waay too long. However, the special effects sequences were excellent and the story was well-plotted and emotionally involving.

[Faeelin]

It's pure and utter scientific silliness, and by making so many flaws in the way science works, actually goes towards discreditting global warming.

[emperorharry86]

It's pure and utter scientific silliness, and by making so many flaws in the way science works, actually goes towards discreditting global warming.

it was still really cool though :)

[Norman]

I enjoyed it, the science was bad, but what the heck - keep repeatng to yourself, 'it's only a movie, it's only a movie,'

[marl_d]

i just saw the movie last night and thought that as a movie it was very good and very well done, i don't agree with the sceince as well, but at lest they try to explain things like the Mammoth being flash frozen. it's a long way from the "Waterworld" idea of the world being flooded.

the only seniro that i could think of is that they have more active volcanios do to earthquakes or something causing the more greenhouse gases to be released naturaly causing the Iceshelf to break off and fall into the ocean. though of course they think it's humans causing it.
The US still has it's southern Infratructure though in shambles plus could develop ways to get by all the snow and down into resources...Large tents over cities like Chicago and NY and DC to keep some of the cold and and heat in...

[mattep74]

what happened to all europeans? Did we all die? Somehow i dont belive that Spain and Italy would froze. They are to close to the equatorian hadley cell

[Flocculencio]

what happened to all europeans? Did we all die? Somehow i dont belive that Spain and Italy would froze. They are to close to the equatorian hadley cell

It's a Hollywood movie- only people in America count. ;)

[NapoleonXIV]

I enjoyed it, the science was bad, but what the heck - keep repeatng to yourself, 'it's only a movie, it's only a movie,'

Yeh, but c'mon, this is a really political movie and its VERY misleading. There's no real reason to do this scenario to have these FX, there are lots of things that could do this in reality.

[Grimm Reaper]

So I can assume that those opposed to scientific silliness will also shun "Spiderman II" and the latest Harry Potter film? :D

Although it would be nice for Hollywood to make a global disaster movie without destroying the Statue of Liberty... :(

[NapoleonXIV]

Harry Potter is actually quite consistent, given its rationale. Spider-man is a man-superman thing where the "science" is just a story device. In DAT the "science" is trying to BE the story, and scare the crap out of people besides.

And I'll bet they're shooting the sequel now. :rolleyes:

[Valamyr]

Nice concept, but too americano-centrist, botched by hollywood. Would it have been so difficult to see what happened across the world? Anyone didnt have to massively suspend disbelief for the ending? Steel doors freeze yet dozens survive all over New York? A frozen nation of refugees still behaving like a great power, haggling over debts and conducting massive rescue operations? The President being flown out last? Please. :rolleyes:

Science a bit flawed but hey. We dont know everything about nature yet.

As for being political, well, honestly, we dont need movies to tell us that people who oppose something as basic and essential as Kyoto should consider the alternative of stopping to use our oxygen, in order to become part of the solution. :p

[wkwillis]

what happened to all europeans? Did we all die? Somehow i dont belive that Spain and Italy would froze. They are to close to the equatorian hadley cell
Spain is at the same lattitude as the Middle Atlantic states of America. Spain is warmer than New York because they have the warm North Atlantic to windward and because they are also on the Mediterranean. The North Atlantic is warm because warm water is less dense than cold water, so it floats north to displace sinking cold water from the Arctic. The Mediterranean is warm because the cold water has a hard time getting in because the entrance to the Mediterranean is higher than the level of the cold botom water from the ocean.
If the Arctic gets fresher because of meltwater, then the fresh water will not sink no matter how cold it gets because it is still less dense than seawater, even if the seawater is warm. The Gulf stream is part of this world circling cycle called the Conveyor Belt.
There is also some effect from winds that blow from the south as the Corriolis force sends air to the east, and as the mountains and weather cylces make the winds wiggle north and south, transferring heat. The Hadley cells that rise from the equator and fall to the north and create deserts also pump heat to the north. They are not affected by the salinity of seawater.
There have been periods when it got very cold around the Mediterranean. The weather could change to make Spain colder, and also moister. This would be bad for tourism and good for farmers. It would not be good for the nonmediterranean Europeans, most of whom would starve to death. But then, the Arabs would have lots of rain and woudl presumably be able to grow enough food for the Europeans to buy that no one would actually starve. Unless the Arabs started the Organisation of Potato Exporting Countries.

[basileus]

It's pure and utter scientific silliness, and by making so many flaws in the way science works, actually goes towards discreditting global warming.

I agree completely.
Such unbelievable bullshit seems the work of some oil corporation CEO, rather than pro-Kyoto propaganda.

[DominusNovus]

I agree completely.
Such unbelievable bullshit seems the work of some oil corporation CEO, rather than pro-Kyoto propaganda.
Well, that explains why it was Fox that made the movie... :D

Of course, its based off a book, which was written by liberals, I believe...

[DominusNovus]

As for being political, well, honestly, we dont need movies to tell us that people who oppose something as basic and essential as Kyoto should consider the alternative of stopping to use our oxygen, in order to become part of the solution. :p
Gee, thanks. Ever consider that we who oppose Kyoto do have some legitimate points? Or do you like saying that we should die just for having an un-PC opinion?

[edvader]

You wouldn't pay me 2 cents to see this film. IT IS not because of the Subject matter. Emmerich has screwed up Godzilla(Landshark?) and has palagarized 2 Other films for this film: Tidal wave right out of DEEP IMPACT and Frozen Manhatten from A.I. Independence day was WAR OF THE Worlds without acknowledgment: The bomb lauched from the B-2(like the YB-49 in the other film. Computer virus that attacks the mother ship is a working of the ORIGINAL biological virus. Dont Mention STAR WARS. Lucas admitted where he got his sources. Emmerich did not. :(

[zoomar]

You wouldn't pay me 2 cents to see this film. IT IS not because of the Subject matter. Emmerich has screwed up Godzilla(Landshark?) and has palagarized 2 Other films for this film: Tidal wave right out of DEEP IMPACT and Frozen Manhatten from A.I. Independence day was WAR OF THE Worlds without acknowledgment: The bomb lauched from the B-2(like the YB-49 in the other film. Computer virus that attacks the mother ship is a working of the ORIGINAL biological virus. Dont Mention STAR WARS. Lucas admitted where he got his sources. Emmerich did not. :(

I too, did not rush out to see this movie mainly because of what Emmerich did to Godzilla...and I too couldn't get past the ads showing the AI-like frozen manhattan. His movies have gotten progressively worse since Star Gate. I liked ID4 however - its only similarityto the George Pal War of the Worlds other than the basic "aliens attack earth" theme is the use of flying wings to launch the nuke - which I thoughtwas more of an homage than anything. Plus, why even defend the Pal WOTW? It was a horrible and unimaginative modernization of the Wells book.

Anyway, I'll probably see the Day After Tomorrow eventually just to see the special effects...but only after I've seen Shrek 2 several more times!

[Pax Britannia]

ID4 - Big monument destroying alien ships
The Day After Tommorow - Big monument destroying storms

This formula seems to be working well for Emmerich doesnt it :D

[Valamyr]

Gee, thanks. Ever consider that we who oppose Kyoto do have some legitimate points? Or do you like saying that we should die just for having an un-PC opinion?

Nothing to do with "un-PC". In fact, opposing opinions seems quite mainstream in places like the USA.

But there is nothing that can be legitimate about refusing to even take a first step to save our future. The economy is a moot point in comparaison.

If it was me deciding, everything coal would be shut down tomorrow morning, and driving anything but an hybrid car would be illegal by 2012. :P And by no means i consider myself a "green", I just like not having to pay to breathe clean air.

[DominusNovus]

But there is nothing that can be legitimate about refusing to even take a first step to save our future. The economy is a moot point in comparaison.
You're assuming that our future is in jeopardy. And that Kyoto is a step along the way of saving it.

If someone objects to those two contentions, then couldn't you find it in yourself to concede that they might have a legitimate point?

[Psychomeltdown]

Well, if you want to watch a movie with real science, then watch a documentary, since there is no such thing as a hollywood made movie with real science in it.

But anyway, what would happen to the world? I doubt that Mexico would allow Americans to swarm their boarders, even if they were forgiven of all debts. With America basically destroyed, what debts would they have to pay back?

Plus who would have claim to all the dead nations? Canada, England, Ireland, Norway, basically all the countries up north? With probably all their populations dead, there's a huge chuck of wealth up north and all it takes is digging it out, all that gold in New York...

There's war on the horizon also, Think of the millions of Europeans that will be heading for North Africa and the Middle East, not to mention that fact there's bound to be a huge rise in striking at hated enemies once they realize the Western World will not descend donw upon them.

America as a nation is basically gone, I'd see only about thrity percent or less surviving. no food, no fuel, no infastructure, millions more die by the end of the year. they'd be war between what's left of the US and Mexico, leading to a US run Mexico.

Plus wouldn't all those survivors crossing the boarder just be from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and southern California? there wasn't enough time to organize complete evacuation, the roads would be clogged and everyone would die on the highways as the snow piled up and food began running out.

Plus wouldn't the Southern States along the Mississippi be all flooded out, not to mention Florida.

A collapse of the World, with nations starving, fighting, and dying as they ran out of manufactured goods, medicines, crop failures, and invasion from hordes of starving barbarians from the north.

[wkwillis]

I was reading a book on natural disasters recently. It was pointing out that the loss of life, the insurance payouts, and the total damages from bad weather had increased at huge and rapidly increasing rates over the last thirty years and there was no sign that it was going to get any better. Global warming was pumping so much more energy into the situation that the hotter, drier, windier, and wetter spells were running outside "normal" bounds. You want a disaster movie that would be just as dramatic and completely in accord with today's science?
Melt all the ice in Hudson's Bay.
You ever hear of Lake Effect? It's where the cold, dry, winds come in over the relatively warm lake and evaporate a lot of water. Then they dump the water as snow over nearby land. It's why Buffalo and Chicago get so much snow every winter.
The ice in Hudson's Bay is getting thinner. It's only hurting the polar bears now because they stalk the ice looking for seals, waiting outside airholes in the ice for the seals to surface and then bashing them and hauling them on the ice and eating them. Only problem is, the ice is so thin that the seals have too many airholes and the polar bears can't ambush them.
When the ice gets thinner it won't freeze over all winter like it does now. It will stay open all winter evaporating water and getting saltier, which will make it even harder to freeze, and it will stay open longer in the winter, and evaporate even more water....Then we're screwed. We'll get Lake Effect all winter across the middle of the continent, from West Virginia to Wyoming.
Actually the winter is not bad. So we get more snow and thus more soil moisture. Big whoop. It wil actually be good for Wyoming and everything west of the Mississippi. What hurts is the earlier, wetter, spring. When the rain from the wet wind from the north lands on all that Lake Effect snow...
We'll have a '93 every year and a '21 every ten years. Imagine the movie possibilities of a Mississippi river twenty miles wide...
The people in the cars on the highways are isolated when a levee fails, and they walk up the overpass and watch the water come over their cars and float them away, and comes over the tops of the trucks, and starts lapping at their feet, and their knees... and then the propane storage tank from a refinery floats out of the rain...
We can't move the cities, the refineries, the power generation facilities, and the factories that grew up around the cheap transportation and cooling water. We can't move the pipelines and powerlines and roads and bridges. We will just have to tear them down and rebuild them inland.
We can shift the operating regime on the Missouri river dams. We are using them for hydroelectricity, irrigation, and barge transportation water level control. We just make sure they are empty at the end of every winter instead of full like they are now and we can use them for flood control.
But what do we do about the Ohio?
We can't build dams on the Ohio. The whole river bank is already built up with cities. There is no place to put a reservoir. We could build lots of little dams on the feeder rivers and creeks, but they won't cover all the watershed and they have cities there, too. We are going to be so screwed.
The Mississippi delta is absolutely flat. It stretches up from south of Lousiana all the way to Illinois, and it's going to be under water. It's some of the richest soil in America. We'll have to use it for grazing when this starts.
Look on the bright side. When we lose the aquaculture facilities in the Delta we can start importing fish from the new, year round, Hudson's Bay fisheries that will expand as the ice goes away. HydroQuebec will love getting to sell twice as much electricity to New York City. We won't have those damned cold New England winters because of the thermal effects of being downwind of an open sea. That will decrease demand for natural gas.

[DominusNovus]

The Mississippi delta is absolutely flat. It stretches up from south of Lousiana all the way to Illinois, and it's going to be under water. It's some of the richest soil in America. We'll have to use it for grazing when this starts.
So, basicly, this would be like the Nile river, where the agriculture depends on the annual floods. Well, actually, for us, it would be the agriculture depends on the floods going away, since the soil is good on its own.

I can picture the farms built on man made mounds, above the water line (probably with walls around, just in case). In the spring, they'll run fisheries in the lake sized mississippi, and travel by boat and plane (probably those pontoon planes that can land on the water). After the floods go away, they'll start working the land. I can't see much grazing, as the grass would all have to be replanted anyway. More likely, they plant normal crops, which would have to be planted by us, even if the river wasn't flooded like that.

An interesting scenario. Especially since it isn't the end of the world, just a major inconvenience. My home town of Chicopee is next to the connecitcut river, but half the city is actually high above the river, so I think i'll be safe.

[wkwillis]

So, basicly, this would be like the Nile river, where the agriculture depends on the annual floods. Well, actually, for us, it would be the agriculture depends on the floods going away, since the soil is good on its own.

I can picture the farms built on man made mounds, above the water line (probably with walls around, just in case). In the spring, they'll run fisheries in the lake sized mississippi, and travel by boat and plane (probably those pontoon planes that can land on the water). After the floods go away, they'll start working the land. I can't see much grazing, as the grass would all have to be replanted anyway. More likely, they plant normal crops, which would have to be planted by us, even if the river wasn't flooded like that.

An interesting scenario. Especially since it isn't the end of the world, just a major inconvenience. My home town of Chicopee is next to the connecitcut river, but half the city is actually high above the river, so I think i'll be safe.

There are grasses that have evolved to be tolerant of soaking in water. They will take over.
Farmers can't farm until they get their tractors into the fields after they have dried out.
The water is full of floating things that damage pontoons. This is a bad thing to happen at 80 miles an hour when you are taking off or landing.
Farming is a trivial part of the American economy. Losing cities is important. Losing farmland is not important because there is so much of it in America that it has essentially no value without government crop subsidies. The farmers will just be paid not to grow on land that is under water. The rest of the economy is in trouble. It's only a few percent of American farmland anyway. The extra water in the Plains states and longer growing season in New England will make up for the shortfall.

[DominusNovus]

There are grasses that have evolved to be tolerant of soaking in water. They will take over.
Farmers can't farm until they get their tractors into the fields after they have dried out.
The water is full of floating things that damage pontoons. This is a bad thing to happen at 80 miles an hour when you are taking off or landing.
Farming is a trivial part of the American economy. Losing cities is important. Losing farmland is not important because there is so much of it in America that it has essentially no value without government crop subsidies. The farmers will just be paid not to grow on land that is under water. The rest of the economy is in trouble. It's only a few percent of American farmland anyway. The extra water in the Plains states and longer growing season in New England will make up for the shortfall.
You'll forgive me for my mistakes. I grew up on a livestock farm, not a crop farm. :p

The pontoon planes would work after a few years of all this flooding, when there's not much left in the flood zone, wouldn't it? Untill then, they'd just have to build up some land for a few airstrips. It'd definately be an interesting enviroment to live in. What time of year do you think would be better for building these islands? In the spring, when prefab forms could be just floated into place, or when the waters recede, when you could build it up, without worrying about the water?

Imagine what a city built in this region would look like. Everything would be built on foundations that extend many feet about the ground (how high is the water supposed to get?), with bridges going over the roads, connecting the various foundations. Come springtime, the roads become canals, so you've basically got Venice. Interesting.

[Torqumada]

I was reading a book on natural disasters recently. It was pointing out that the loss of life, the insurance payouts, and the total damages from bad weather had increased at huge and rapidly increasing rates over the last thirty years and there was no sign that it was going to get any better. Global warming was pumping so much more energy into the situation that the hotter, drier, windier, and wetter spells were running outside "normal" bounds. You want a disaster movie that would be just as dramatic and completely in accord with today's science?

The lead Climatologist for the state of GA was recently interviewed on the movie. He stated that the movie was entertaining, but bad science. He also noted that from the late 40's to late 70's there was an actual decrease in severe weather world wide. As such, the people who lived and grew up in the post WWII era, were not used to long sustained periods of severe weatheras compared to the weather patterns from before WWII. They don't know why, but there was a signicant drop. Since 1980 there has been a return to the previous severe weather patterns. So if insuracne companies are comparing the relative costs from 40 years ago and now, that is one of the reason for an increase in costs for damages from storms.

Torqumada

[Jesse]

Well, that explains why it was Fox that made the movie... :D

Of course, its based off a book, which was written by liberals, I believe...

It was based on The Coming Global Superstorm (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671041916/102-5841360-0444139), written by UFO abductee crackpot Whitley Strieber and conspiracy theory crackpot Art Bell. I'll let you take these gentlemen as representative of "liberals" only if I'm allowed to take the "Left Behind" authors as representative of "conservatives".

This (http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0528/p01s04-sten.html) article explains how the movie's premise is based on a crazy embellishment of a possible climate scenario that has been suggested by scientists:

In the movie, global warming melts the Arctic ice cap, fresh water shuts down critical currents in the North Atlantic that transport heat north, and the big chill begins. The impetus for that scenario comes from Dr. Broecker's early work on a 1,000-year chill-down known as the Younger Dryas, which occurred at the end of the last glacial period. Yet recent studies have shown that at the time, sea ice covered virtually the entire northern Atlantic Ocean.

Today, the climate is far too warm to support such extensive amounts of ice. To shut the circulation down under today's conditions, he says, simulations indicate that global average temperatures would have to rise by 4 to 6 degrees. This would generate enough rainfall and river runoff to freshen the North Atlantic sufficiently to halt the "conveyor." But given current trends, he adds, it could take 70 to 100 years to get to that point - not 10 days, as the movie suggests.

The article also points out the problem with the idea of "superstorms" drawing cold air down from the upper atmosphere and flash-freezing everything below:

As air moves down into the eye, it gets compressed by more air flowing down from aloft. Air heats up when compressed.

"It's absurd," Stone sighs. "This is basic physics that has nothing to do with projections of global change."

[Peter Cowan]

Some of the story appears to be based on a book I read back in the 1970's - The Sixth Winter. Back then, the idea of an impending Ice Age was very popular. This book had severe ice storms when air from the stratosphere (actually, I don't think there is that much air in the stratosphere) dipped down to ground level freezing everything into ice blocks.

So far as the rest goes, it's Hollywood - the world where super weapons can be developed in a day, the maverick is always right, big events always happen in well known locations and, somehow, the good guys manage to triumph. Entertainment but not science.

By the way, apropos Global Warming - last year Itay had a drought - shock - evidence of Global warming. This year, floods. Guess what this was evidence of? Yes...Global warming. And now we are asked to believe that an Ice Age is evidence of things getting hotter......

Maybe, global warming is happening. We may be reverting to temperature levels of the 11-1300's. If I recall, this has been referred to as a 'climatic optimum' Certainly, in Europe at least, things were pretty good.

On a philosophical note.... Aren't we being just a bit arrogant assuming that humans are somehow affecting whole global systems ?

[Torqumada]

That is one of the things that I argue with friends of my that are scientist. There are several problems with the theory of Global Warming.

1)The same scientific establishment that spent the last 20 years or so crying about Global Warming spent the 70's crying about an impending Ice Age
2) We have only been keeping accurate records of the weather for the last 150 years or so, which happens to coincide with the Industrial Revolution. The Earth has been around for 4 billion years. It has had climatological change before humans were around. How do we not know that its not time for a warming spell?
3) One of the first pieces of evidence that scientists used to point out global warming, was using the weather records from major cities for the last 150 years. Problem? Yes. All of those cities have grown in size. They have added more stone, concrete, brick and steel, which causes them to for what is called a heat bubble around the city. The buildings trap the heat, and end up heating the air around them, causing the local temperature to rise. So is the temperature rise due to global warming or larger cities with more buildings made out of brick, stone, concrete and steel?
4) Too much reliance on remote data gathering and hypothesis based on limited data. There was a large iceberg that broke off of the antartic last year. It was the size of the state of Delaware. Global Warming proponents jumped up and down, pointing at the satellite photos of this ice berg yelling "GLOBAL WARMING IN ACTION!!". Problem? Yes. No one was on the scene to see what was actually happening. For all they know, there could be some 3 eyed, tentacled aliens from Beta Reticuli using heat lasers to slice that berg off of the Antartic. For a more scientificall rationale explanation, maybe there was a series of long, low powered, seismic events that could have set up a harmonic vibration in the ice, causing it to break off of the ice shelf.
5) Ozone layer. No one knew a hole was in the ozone layer until someone looked and found it. How do we not know that it wasn't there before we found it. We don't state that when Columbus "discovered" the Americas, that it hadn't existed until it was found. The whole is shown to open and close on a regular basis now.

Now does this mean that I don't think the theory has its good points. No. I think it requires more rational sutdy and less chicken little. Now, I am all for less pollution. Cleaner air, less waste and cleaner water is good for everyone. I drive a fuel efficient car. I limit my waste and water use. Global warming may be a reality, but there needs to be btter evidence gathering and hypothesis based on that evidence, instead of fitting the evidence to a pre-conceived hypothesis.

Torqumada

[Adam Parsons]

Sounds good, Torqumada.

Personally, I think that, even when the glaciers are scrubbing America from the map, Russia will still hold out. This is, after all, a country renowned for having a climate that kills invading armies easily. I'm sure the Russians could take a little more permafrost.

[Jesse]

1)The same scientific establishment that spent the last 20 years or so crying about Global Warming spent the 70's crying about an impending Ice Age

"Crying" makes it sound like you have already made up your mind to be dismissive about this. My understanding is that climate scientists did not have anything like the same degree of confidence in the possibility of global cooling in the 70s, I think it was basically a speculation about what aerosols in the atmosphere could do based more on simple models than empirical data (see this article (http://www.fact-index.com/s/st/stephen_schneider.html) on Stephen Schneider, who first proposed the idea).

2) We have only been keeping accurate records of the weather for the last 150 years or so, which happens to coincide with the Industrial Revolution. The Earth has been around for 4 billion years. It has had climatological change before humans were around. How do we not know that its not time for a warming spell?

Although we only have direct instrumental records for the last century or so, it's possible to reconstruct older temperatures using things like tree ring and ice core data. From this (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html) article, a graph of reconstructed temperatures over the last 1000 years:

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/images/smnhemmill.gif (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/images/nhemmill.gif)

And from this page (http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/), here's a much longer-term tempurature reconstruction based on Antarctic ice core data, which also shows reconstructed carbon dioxide levels:

http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/IceCores1.gif

Another graph showing temperature, methane and carbon dioxide from this paper (http://www.nicl-smo.sr.unh.edu/documents/1998/icwghtml.html) on the Ice Core Working Group (http://www.nicl-smo.sr.unh.edu/icwg.html) page:

http://www.nicl-smo.sr.unh.edu/documents/1998/images/420Vostok.jpg

5) Ozone layer. No one knew a hole was in the ozone layer until someone looked and found it. How do we not know that it wasn't there before we found it. We don't state that when Columbus "discovered" the Americas, that it hadn't existed until it was found. The whole is shown to open and close on a regular basis now.

The ozone layer issue is unrelated to global warming, it's thought to be caused by CFCs, not greenhouse gases. I don't know much about it, but this page (http://www.ciesin.org/TG/OZ/cfcozn.html) gives a quick summary of the evidence--apparently it's been demonstrated in lab experiments that CFCs catalyze the destruction of ozone, and they talk about the data showing trends in ozone concentration and CFCs in the atmosphere:

A primary objective for researchers in addressing this issue has been analysis of Measurements and Trends in Ozone and Chlorofluorocarbon Levels (http://www.ciesin.org/TG/OZ/trends.html). Global monitoring of ozone levels from space by the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument has shown statistically significant downward trends in ozone at all latitudes outside the tropics. Measurements at several ground-based stations have shown corresponding upward trends in CFCs in both the northern and southern hemisphere.

Global warming may be a reality, but there needs to be btter evidence gathering and hypothesis based on that evidence, instead of fitting the evidence to a pre-conceived hypothesis.

It doesn't sound to me like you've studied the theory or the evidence used to support it in any great detail (I haven't either), so maybe it would be better to withold judgement. And whenever there's a strong consensus among scientists about something, my default assumption is that they probably know what they're talking about--I don't really know much about the evidence used to support quantum field theory either, but I assume there's something to it.

[mattep74]

why didnt the americans try to use nukes to stop the storm? Thats what they always do in movies like this. 10.5 did that, ID4, etc etc:)

wouldnt have made things worse atleast.

[Chris Oakley]

what happened to all europeans? Did we all die? Somehow i dont belive that Spain and Italy would froze. They are to close to the equatorian hadley cell

I'm guessing tidal waves did the job on most of them,and hail took out the rest.

[Doctor What]

So--how many people here have actually seen the movie?

p.s. In honour of all those disaster movies, I offer my new sig! :p

[Torqumada]

Jesse, thank you for posting those graphs. However, they don't prove that humans are at fault for global warming. What they show is that there is a cycle present to the increase in CO2 levels, Methane levles and temperature. Based on the evidence in the graph, we are due for an upswing of the cycle. I have no doubts that the Earth is getting warming. My doubt is if human's are causing it. Many scientists will point at that graph and say "Global Warming! Global Warming! Bad Humans!" I think the Earth will just do as itpleases and we won't be able to stop it, just like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. Here is a piece of data that the people who want to blame human's for global warming never talk about: There has been a 0.5% increase in the amount of solar radiation ever year for the last 20 years. (I am trying to find my reference again, I lost in transitioning to a new computer earlier this year. I believe its in Geophysical Letters). Now more radiation means more heat energy strikiing the Earth, thus causing a rise in temps. I have never seen any proponents of Humans causing global warming mention this, because it doesn't fit the theories. It would hurt their agenda to do so. Lets gather ALL the data up and look at it without a bias. 1. Is the temperature of the Earth rising? I would say yes. 2. Based on the data is an unusual phenomena or part of a natural cycle? Looks to be part of a natural cycle. 3. Is there anything that humans can do to exacerbate or hinder the temperature rise? Hinder no. Exacerbate? Maybe, slightly.

Regarding the ozone layer: I am sorry I didn't make myself clear. It doesn't really have much if anything to do with Global Warming. CFCs do break down ozone, however they have to have lots of sunlight to provide the necessary energy to do so. This is why it happens at high altitudes instead of down around the cities where ozone is a health hazard. My point was that many scientist started immediately blaming man for the hole and still does, though it has been found that despite an almost constant level of CFCs in the atmosphere world wide, the hole changes size. If CFCs are to blame and the amount of radiation has actually increased in the last 20 years, shouldn't the hole be bigger? It was scientists with an agenda. Science shouldn't be about agendas, but about rational, unbiased approach. However, when you get humans mixed up in anything you have egos and agendas involved and then things can go wrong. you get bad science, which can be as bad as bad religion.

Torqumada

[Jesse]

Jesse, thank you for posting those graphs. However, they don't prove that humans are at fault for global warming. What they show is that there is a cycle present to the increase in CO2 levels, Methane levles and temperature. Based on the evidence in the graph, we are due for an upswing of the cycle.

Well, the first graph shows the temperature upswing of the last century is unprecented in the last 1000 years, and the second graph shows the current carbon dioxide levels are much higher than they've been for the last 400,000 years (and I think it's pretty easy to show that the amount of carbon dioxide released by human activities is the main source of increased CO2).

I have no doubts that the Earth is getting warming. My doubt is if human's are causing it.

Do you doubt that humans are the main cause of the sharp increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the last century? Do you doubt that there is an association between carbon dioxide and global temperature? This isn't just based on past temperature records, I believe it's possible to show carbon dioxide's greenhouse effects in the lab.

Here is a piece of data that the people who want to blame human's for global warming never talk about: There has been a 0.5% increase in the amount of solar radiation ever year for the last 20 years. (I am trying to find my reference again, I lost in transitioning to a new computer earlier this year. I believe its in Geophysical Letters). Now more radiation means more heat energy strikiing the Earth, thus causing a rise in temps. I have never seen any proponents of Humans causing global warming mention this, because it doesn't fit the theories. It would hurt their agenda to do so. Lets gather ALL the data up and look at it without a bias.

That's a ridiculous accusation, and again, this just shows that you aren't reading much actual writing on global warming, let alone actual scientific research. Look at this page (http://www.secretsoftheice.org/icecore/warming.html) on ice core research, for example:

The mechanisms that trigger an ice age or an extended period of global warming are the subject of much research and debate. Scientists have identified a complicated mix of interacting variables that appear to influence long-term climate trends. Three such factors that are thought to control climate are solar radiation, the presence of atmospheric dust, and the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

Regarding the ozone layer: I am sorry I didn't make myself clear. It doesn't really have much if anything to do with Global Warming. CFCs do break down ozone, however they have to have lots of sunlight to provide the necessary energy to do so. This is why it happens at high altitudes instead of down around the cities where ozone is a health hazard. My point was that many scientist started immediately blaming man for the hole and still does, though it has been found that despite an almost constant level of CFCs in the atmosphere world wide the hole changes size. If CFCs are to blame and the amount of radiation has actually increased in the last 20 years, shouldn't the hole be bigger? It was scientists with an agenda. Science shouldn't be about agendas, but about rational, unbiased approach. However, when you get humans mixed up in anything you have egos and agendas involved and then things can go wrong. you get bad science, which can be as bad as bad religion.

A "rational, unbiased approach" would also require understanding a theory at something more than the most superficial level before calling it bad science and accusing the proponents of bias. This is something it doesn't look like you have done. For example, can you tell me the details of how scientists would explain the variability in the size of the hole from year to year? I bet they have some explanations, and are not just sweeping this fact under the rug as you falsely accused them of doing with the effects of solar radiation on temperature.

[zoomar]

"A "rational, unbiased approach" would also require understanding a theory at something more than the most superficial level before calling it bad science and accusing the proponents of bias. This is something it doesn't look like you have done. For example, can you tell me the details of how scientists would explain the variability in the size of the hole from year to year? I bet they have some explanations, and are not just sweeping this fact under the rug as you falsely accused them of doing with the effects of solar radiation on temperature"

Jesse, since you seem perfectly comfortable questioning Torquemada's understanding of basic scientific theory, could you please enlighten us as to your own formal training in climatology?

[Paul Spring]

Remember, 1000 years ago the earth was actually warmer than it is now. That's why they had vineyards in England and the Vikings could sail to Iceland and Greenland with little threat from pack ice or icebergs. In the 14th - 17th centuries the temperature dropped severely (the "Little Ice Age"), and then it started to get warmer again.

Those models saying that the world has been steadily warming up for the last 1000 years are fantasies. I think that the world's just going through normal climate cycles, though it's possible that human activity is having some effect. It's actually possible that raised carbon dioxide levels from the clearing of forests and burning of greenhouse gases prevented the Little Ice Age from turning into a big one.

There's just still so much we don't know about the earth's climate. Even if there was a major climatic catastrophe, there would be no way to tell how much of it was natural and how much of it was man-made.

[Jesse]

Jesse, since you seem perfectly comfortable questioning Torquemada's understanding of basic scientific theory, could you please enlighten us as to your own formal training in climatology?

I already pointed out in an earlier post that I have no particular expertise in this area:

It doesn't sound to me like you've studied the theory or the evidence used to support it in any great detail (I haven't either), so maybe it would be better to withold judgement. And whenever there's a strong consensus among scientists about something, my default assumption is that they probably know what they're talking about--I don't really know much about the evidence used to support quantum field theory either, but I assume there's something to it.

But it does not take any particular expertise to recognize that attempts to discredit established scientific theories with simple one-liners inevitably ignore the fact that these scientists are not idiots and will already have some answers to this objection (even if a more detailed critique might point out flaws in their answers). If someone with expert training in the ozone issue wrote a detailed technical critique of the evidence used to support the idea that ozone was being depleted, showing why the usual answers to such criticisms are insufficient, I'd be willing to listen. But Torqumada's argument was nothing more than "it has been found that despite an almost constant level of CFCs in the atmosphere world wide the hole changes size", which glosses over the fact that the level of CFCs has not been found to be constant (he says 'almost', but gives no indication of what amount of change in CFCs he thinks would be sufficient to cause the change in ozone levels that has been observed, and how he arrived at the conclusion that the actual amount of change is too low), and also seems to ignore the fact that it's possible to see long-term trends in a quantity like ozone or temperature even if there is a fair amount of short-term variation (the fact that the annual high and low temperatures vary from year to year doesn't mean we can't spot a longer-term warming trend over the last century, for example).

[Jesse]

Remember, 1000 years ago the earth was actually warmer than it is now. That's why they had vineyards in England and the Vikings could sail to Iceland and Greenland with little threat from pack ice or icebergs. In the 14th - 17th centuries the temperature dropped severely (the "Little Ice Age"), and then it started to get warmer again.

Although it's true that Europe warmed up in this period, most climatologists would disagree with the claim the the global temperature was warmer than than it is now. If you look at the graph of temperature over the last 1000 yeas, based on tree ring and ice core data, it's clear that according to that reconstruction, the current temperature is much warmer than it was in the medieval warm period. The article (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html) where that graph comes from (in the Paleoclimatology (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html) section of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (http://www.noaa.gov/) website) talks more about this issue:

Norse seafaring and colonization around the North Atlantic at the end of the 9th century was generalized as proof that the global climate then was warmer than today. In the early days of paleoclimatology, the sparsely distributed paleoenvironmental records were interpreted to indicate that there was a "Medieval Warm Period" where temperatures were warmer than today ... The idea of a global or hemispheric "Medieval Warm Period" that was warmer than today however, has turned out to be incorrect.

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/images/smnhemmill.gif (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/images/nhemmill.gif)

For larger viewing version of graph, please click here (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/images/nhemmill.gif) or on image.

There are not enough records available to reconstruct global or even hemispheric mean temperature prior to about 600 years ago with a high degree of confidence. What records that do exist show that there was no multi-century periods when global or hemispheric temperatures were the same or warmer than in the 20th century. For example, Mann et al. (1999) (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann_99.html) generated a 1,000 year Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction (shown above) using data from multiple ice cores and tree ring records. This reconstruction suggests that the 1998 annual average temperature was more than two standard deviations warmer than any annual average temperature value since AD 1,000 (shown in yellow). (For complete scientific reference of this study, please click here (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/references.html#mann99). Link to Mann 1999 FTP Data (ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/contributions_by_author/mann1999/).)

In summary, it appears that the 20th century, and in particular the late 20th century, is likely the warmest the Earth has seen in at least 1200 years. To learn more about the so-called "Medieval Warm Period", please read this review published in Climatic Change, written by M.K. Hughes and H.F. Diaz. (For complete review reference click here (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/references.html#medieval).)

There was a paper published recently by two scientists named Baliunas and Soon (both of whom are paid consultants for the George T. Marshall Institute, a non-profit organization which opposes limits on carbon dioxide emissions) which got a lot of publicity for the claim that the medieval warm period was warmer than today, but most other scientists strongly disagreed with their use of data and statistics:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa004&articleID=000829C7-70D9-1EF7-A6B8809EC588EEDF

In contrast, the consensus view among paleoclimatologists is that the Medieval Warming Period was a regional phenomenon, that the worldwide nature of the Little Ice Age is open to question and that the late 20th century saw the most extreme global average temperatures.

Scientists skeptical of human-induced warming applaud the analysis by Soon and Baliunas. "It has been painstaking and meticulous," says William Kininmonth, a meteorological consultant in Kew, Australia, and former head of the Australian National Climate Center. But he acknowledges that "from a purely statistical viewpoint, the work can be criticized."

And that criticism, from many scientists who feel that Soon and Baliunas produced deeply flawed work, has been unusually strident. "The fact that it has received any attention at all is a result, again in my view, of its utility to those groups who want the global warming issue to just go away," comments Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, whose work Soon and Baliunas refer to. Similar sentiments came from Malcolm Hughes of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, whose work is also discussed: "The Soon et al. paper is so fundamentally misconceived and contains so many egregious errors that it would take weeks to list and explain them all."

...

The most significant criticism is that Soon and Baliunas do not present their data quantitatively--instead they merely categorize the work of others primarily into one of two sets: either supporting or not supporting their particular definitions of a Medieval Warming Period or Little Ice Age. "I was stating outright that I'm not able to give too many quantitative details, especially in terms of aggregating all the results," Soon says.

Specifically, they define a "climatic anomaly" as a period of 50 or more years of wetness or dryness or sustained warmth (or, for the Little Ice Age, coolness). The problem is that under this broad definition a wet or dry spell would indicate a climatic anomaly even if the temperature remained perfectly constant. Soon and Baliunas are "mindful" that the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age should be defined by temperature, but "we emphasize that great bias would result if those thermal anomalies were to be dissociated" from other climatic conditions. (Asked to define "wetness" and "dryness," Soon and Baliunas say only that they "referred to the standard usage in English.")

Moreover, their results were nonsynchronous: "Their analysis doesn't consider whether the warm/cold periods occurred at the same time," says Peter Stott, a climate scientist at the U.K.'s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research in Bracknell. For example, if a proxy record indicated that a drier condition existed in one part of the world from 800 to 850, it would be counted as equal evidence for a Medieval Warming Period as a different proxy record that showed wetter conditions in another part of the world from 1250 to 1300. Regional conditions do not necessarily mirror the global average, Stott notes: "Iceland and Greenland had their warmest periods in the 1930s, whereas the warmest for the globe was the 1990s."

The Editor-in-Chief of Climate Research (along with two other editors) actually resigned over this paper, saying that "the review process had utterly failed" and wanting to publish an editorial to that effect, which the publisher vetoed--you can read about this here (http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/CR-problem/cr.2003.htm) and here (http://w3g.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/storch/pdf/cr.wsj.pdf).

[Torqumada]

Jesse, you didn't address the other graph that showed a ccyle to temperature rise, CO2 levels and Methane levels over the last 420,000 years. That graph shows the cycle that I am speaking of. Now you point to the 1000 year temperature cycle as proof of Global warming. I am sorry, but 1000 years of data points is not statistically significant on a planet that has an accepted age of 4.55 billion years old (that is 4.55 x 10 to the 9th power years old) That is only .000000022 % of the entire climatological history of this planet. Every statistician and scientist will tell you that those data points can't be consider statistically significant. Even the other graph of 420,000 years only covers .000092% of the Earth's climatological hisotry, but that is still 4,181 times larger than the 100 years of temeperature readings you listed. Good sicence requires good data that is significant to the study. That is the current problem ,we don't have enough dataand are only making to what amounts as guesses.

Regarding the ozone layer hole, after further research it appears that I am wrong. There is a good reason for the hole changing in size due to ambient weather patterns. There has to be set condtions for the depletion to start. The Ozone Hole was in fact, at its largest diamter last year, instead of shrinking, though it didn't appear in 2002. Thats right it was at its largest diameter last year, when CFC levels were at their smallest level since the hole was found. Now if CFCs are responsible for the hole in the ozone layer, how can there be less CFCs in the atmosphere, but a larger hole? Jesse? See this page for relevant information: http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/1z2.html

Remember that big ice shelf I mentioned in my earlier posts and how the more rabid memebers of the Global Warming camp were crying "Global warming in action!"? I stated that there may be another reason, but that many of the Global Warming scientists were not gathering evidence, but fitting the event into the Global Warming theory. Now, some good scientist, who also happen to be proponents of the Global Warming theory decided to go down to the Antartic and see what was going on. This is good science. They got close to the mystery to find out what was going on. Does anyoone know what they found? A VOLCANO! Thats right, a seismic event. There was an unknown volcano near the ice shelf that is making the water in that area warmer, not global warming. Those scientist did the right thing. They went down there to collect the data, instead of looking at a picture and saying it was proof. Now, if they had gone down there, found the warter warmer than expected and found no discernable cause, it could add weight to the Global warming theory. Here is the relevant data: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/05/040527235943.htm

Again, I ahve no doubts that the planet is warming. The data clearly shows that there is a cycle of an increase in temperature, Methane and CO2 levels. Humans have probably added slightly too that. According to the graph you posted, the current CO2 concentrations are 365ppm, but at aprroximately 325,000 years ago, they appear to be almost as high. Why? Man wasn't around at that time,so what cuased that high level? Man has added a little, but the cycle is unchanged. To be honest, short of a nuclear winter, I don't think man can change the climate on a global scale. We can sure screw things up locally, but I think the planet is just going to do what it wants, regardless of what we do. Cleaner water and air are goals we should all work towards, I don't advocate hiding our head sin teh sand either. I just want us to look at the data rationally, not with preconceived ideas of what the evidence means.

Torqumada

[zoomar]

I already pointed out in an earlier post that I have no particular expertise in this area:



But it does not take any particular expertise to recognize that attempts to discredit established scientific theories with simple one-liners inevitably ignore the fact that these scientists are not idiots and will already have some answers to this objection (even if a more detailed critique might point out flaws in their answers). If someone with expert training in the ozone issue wrote a detailed technical critique of the evidence used to support the idea that ozone was being depleted, showing why the usual answers to such criticisms are insufficient, I'd be willing to listen. But Torqumada's argument was nothing more than "it has been found that despite an almost constant level of CFCs in the atmosphere world wide the hole changes size", which glosses over the fact that the level of CFCs has not been found to be constant (he says 'almost', but gives no indication of what amount of change in CFCs he thinks would be sufficient to cause the change in ozone levels that has been observed, and how he arrived at the conclusion that the actual amount of change is too low), and also seems to ignore the fact that it's possible to see long-term trends in a quantity like ozone or temperature even if there is a fair amount of short-term variation (the fact that the annual high and low temperatures vary from year to year doesn't mean we can't spot a longer-term warming trend over the last century, for example).


Sorry, I missed your admission. When I read this thread, I see both you and Torq essentially referring to the scientific literature to support views which you probably hold more on philosophical/moral grounds. The fact is that, while the majority of climatologists support the traditional model of global warming, there are some who do not. Take this as paranoia if you will but in my field (anthropology/archaeology), once a "consensus" is reached in science, serious scholars who present serious arguments and data against that consensus are often treated as cranks and not given due respect - forcing them to seek alternative outlets for publishing their studies and data - or they don't publish at all. This even further marginalizes them and creates the impression of scientific unaniminity when it in fact doesn't exist.

No doubt there is a strong "official" consensus supporting a significant human role in global warming among nationally and internationally reknown climatologists and research establishments - and these are the opinions which get media attention. However, when you talk to professional people lower down on the scientific food chain (like the Georgia Climatologist cited earlier) you begin to see some skepticism about the consensus. This skepticism is generally unknown, ignored or glossed over by the popular media (outlets like Scientific American, Nature, National Geographic,and Discovery, etc) because they have long ago accpeted the environmentalist view on Kyoto and global warming.

[Torqumada]

That the point I have been trying to make Zoomar, though I am not sure how successful I have been at it.

In any system of learning, there are established "Truths". Those "Truths" are sacrosanct. Anyone questioning them is a heretic. In relgion they are burned at the stake. In science, they lose grants for research and are ostracized from the mainstream. Remember the theory that the Earth was the center of the universe? When it was challenged the establishment at the time came down heavy on those that callenged the "Truth." I think Zoomar can think of some in his field, like the existence of Troy, Soddam or Gamorrah. Those were not considered real places and the people who knew the "Truth" called those who didn't crackpots or worse, until someone dug them up. Global Warming is the accepted "Truth" in climatology right now. Some of its proponents will twist the evidence to fir the "Truth". Anyone who offers a different analysis of the evidence is wrong or has an agenda, not like the Global warming people dont' have one either. Their character and qualifications get questioned. I have seen it happen. How dare they question the "Truth"! Science should be above that. Leave the finding of the "Truth" to theologians and phiolosophers.

torqumada

[Jesse]

Jesse, you didn't address the other graph that showed a ccyle to temperature rise, CO2 levels and Methane levels over the last 420,000 years. That graph shows the cycle that I am speaking of. Now you point to the 1000 year temperature cycle as proof of Global warming.

My answer did address the 420,000-year graph, and nowhere did I point to the 1000 year graph as "proof" of global warming:

Well, the first graph shows the temperature upswing of the last century is unprecented in the last 1000 years, and the second graph shows the current carbon dioxide levels are much higher than they've been for the last 400,000 years (and I think it's pretty easy to show that the amount of carbon dioxide released by human activities is the main source of increased CO2).

I then asked the following questions:

Do you doubt that humans are the main cause of the sharp increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the last century? Do you doubt that there is an association between carbon dioxide and global temperature?

What are your answers?

I am sorry, but 1000 years of data points is not statistically significant on a planet that has an accepted age of 4.55 billion years old (that is 4.55 x 10 to the 9th power years old) That is only .000000022 % of the entire climatological history of this planet. Every statistician and scientist will tell you that those data points can't be consider statistically significant.

But "statistics" doesn't demand a complete history of a phenomenon to infer causal relationships, it just demands a statistically significant number of data points. Radioactive decay has been going on since the earth was formed, yet we have only begun to measure it in the last century; by your logic, physicists therefore have no justification for saying anything about the laws governing radioactive decay. Likewise, people have been smoking for thouasands of years, but we only have data on the relationship between smoking and lung cancer for the last century or so, yet this doesn't stop us from coming to some strong conclusions on the causal relationship between the two. The data above shows a strong link between global temperature and greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide for a statistically significant number of data points over the last half a million years or so; of course one must be careful not to mistake correlation for causation (there could be some other factor driving both temperature and CO2 levels), but I believe there are also plenty of physical arguments as to why greenhouse gases should have a significant effect on temperature.

Regarding the ozone layer hole, after further research it appears that I am wrong. There is a good reason for the hole changing in size due to ambient weather patterns. There has to be set condtions for the depletion to start. The Ozone Hole was in fact, at its largest diamter last year, instead of shrinking, though it didn't appear in 2002. Thats right it was at its largest diameter last year, when CFC levels were at their smallest level since the hole was found. Now if CFCs are responsible for the hole in the ozone layer, how can there be less CFCs in the atmosphere, but a larger hole?

As I said, I don't know, but the main point is that I think we can be pretty certain that scientists have some arguments as to why this is compatible with the CFC theory (perhaps there's a time lag in terms of how long it takes for new ozone to be produced even after CFC levels are dropped), so any credible critique of the theory must at least take these arguments into account and show why they fall short. An uninformed critique that can't even anticipate how defenders of the theory would respond is of little value; maybe it'd be hard to explain the failure of the hole to shrink and maybe it'd be easy (just like you now apparently say it is easy to explain annual changes due to ambient weather patterns, although you presented this as a serious problem earlier), I don't know and neither do you.

Remember that big ice shelf I mentioned in my earlier posts and how the more rabid memebers of the Global Warming camp were crying "Global warming in action!"?

Who were these "more rabid members", exactly? Were real scientists claiming with a high degree of confidence that it was definitely an effect of global warming, or are you just talking about environmental activists? As you said, it was real scientists who also happened to be global warming advocates who discovered the volcano in this case.

Again, I ahve no doubts that the planet is warming. The data clearly shows that there is a cycle of an increase in temperature, Methane and CO2 levels. Humans have probably added slightly too that. According to the graph you posted, the current CO2 concentrations are 365ppm, but at aprroximately 325,000 years ago, they appear to be almost as high.

The graph shows that for the last 420,000 years CO2 levels never got higher than about 300 ppm, which I would not call "almost as high" as 365 ppm--that's about 20% higher than the highest levels its ever been over the last half a million years or so, and from the looks of things about 50% higher than the average levels. What's more, just based on the known amount of CO2 released by human activities, I don't think it's disputed even by most global warming skeptics that the main cause of this sudden upswing in CO2 is human-caused (if nothing else, it would be a pretty huge coincidence that this upswing coincided so precisely with industrialization, if it was a natural phenomenon that was just as likely to occur in any of the 420 centuries covered by the graph). Are you indeed arguing that there's a significant chance the change in carbon dioxide is primarily due to some other cause?

[zoomar]

Evidence for this bias can also be seen in how outlets like Scientific American and Science handle the situations when they do publish articles opposing the mainstream consensus (which they do). Rather than just putting them in print sans comment, they almost always arrange for rebuttal articles or critical reviews by the establishment side in the same issue - or include in their issue introduction a statement that the views are controversial or not widely accepted. This is strong disincentive for a young, upcoming, researcher to submit controversial artcles and is not how they handle the vast majority of arcticles they publish which represent mainstream views. You see this in professional journals as well - and sometimes this is even more nasty. Witness how the American Anthropological Society handled a recent scholarly book very critical of Margaret Mead and her research methods.

[Torqumada]

My answer did address the 420,000-year graph, and nowhere did I point to the 1000 year graph as "proof" of global warming:



I then asked the following questions:



What are your answers?


[QUOTE=Jesse]
But "statistics" doesn't demand a complete history of a phenomenon to infer causal relationships, it just demands a statistically significant number of data points. Radioactive decay has been going on since the earth was formed, yet we have only begun to measure it in the last century; by your logic, physicists therefore have no justification for saying anything about the laws governing radioactive decay. Likewise, people have been smoking for thouasands of years, but we only have data on the relationship between smoking and lung cancer for the last century or so, yet this doesn't stop us from coming to some strong conclusions on the causal relationship between the two. The data above shows a strong link between global temperature and greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide for a statistically significant number of data points over the last half a million years or so; of course one must be careful not to mistake correlation for causation (there could be some other factor driving both temperature and CO2 levels), but I believe there are also plenty of physical arguments as to why greenhouse gases should have a significant effect on temperature.

You're right statistics doesn't require an exhaustive sampling of each possible data point to be complete. However, you must have enough data points to be statisically significant. 1000 data points in 4.55 billion is not statistically significant. Its like polling one person in the United States, lets say Mike Collins, and asking them who will you vote for in the next election and then reporting the Bush will win by an unprecented land slide of 100% of the electoral votes (the ratio is roughly the same). In that case, the period of time is the deciding factor since you are measuring an event over a period of time. If your period of time is too short, then your data points won't be significantly accurate. In regards to smoking, you don't have to worry about time, since millions of people die or are effected by lung cancer from smoking every year. Those are your data points in that case, the number of poeple with lung cancer vs the number of people with lung cancer that smoke vs the number of people with lung cancer that don't smoke. As an example, if you have 1 million people that are getting lung cancer every year, and say 70% of them smoke and 30% that don't and you poll that for 10 years, that is 10 million data points. That is enough data points to say that something is going on.



As I said, I don't know, but the main point is that I think we can be pretty certain that scientists have some arguments as to why this is compatible with the CFC theory (perhaps there's a time lag in terms of how long it takes for new ozone to be produced even after CFC levels are dropped), so any credible critique of the theory must at least take these arguments into account and show why they fall short. An uninformed critique that can't even anticipate how defenders of the theory would respond is of little value; maybe it'd be hard to explain the failure of the hole to shrink and maybe it'd be easy (just like you now apparently say it is easy to explain annual changes due to ambient weather patterns, although you presented this as a serious problem earlier), I don't know and neither do you.

Did you read the website I posted? That is where the information came from on how the "local" (local in quotes because we are talking about a weather pattern over the entire Antarctic) weather effects the ability of the Ozone hole to form. Did you think I just made this up of the top of my head? As i said, I was wrong on that theory.

Who were these "more rabid members", exactly? Were real scientists claiming with a high degree of confidence that it was definitely an effect of global warming, or are you just talking about environmental activists? As you said, it was real scientists who also happened to be global warming advocates who discovered the volcano in this case.

I remember quite clearly on several television and radio news programs that Scientists (or at least people with PhD after their name) were talking about the collapse of the Ice shelf as a result of Global warming. I am sorry that I didn't record those for posterity and get their names. I can't be sure the following people were not one of those experts giving the interviews on said programs, but they were advocating Global warming as the culprit: Tim Naish of the Institute of Geological and Nuclear sciences, Ted Scambos, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Christina Hulbe of Portland State University, Mark Fahnestock (University of Maryland, College Park, MD) are some of the ones that have reported ont he event.



The graph shows that for the last 420,000 years CO2 levels never got higher than about 300 ppm, which I would not call "almost as high" as 365 ppm--that's about 20% higher than the highest levels its ever been over the last half a million years or so, and from the looks of things about 50% higher than the average levels. What's more, just based on the known amount of CO2 released by human activities, I don't think it's disputed even by most global warming skeptics that the main cause of this sudden upswing in CO2 is human-caused (if nothing else, it would be a pretty huge coincidence that this upswing coincided so precisely with industrialization, if it was a natural phenomenon that was just as likely to occur in any of the 420 centuries covered by the graph). Are you indeed arguing that there's a significant chance the change in carbon dioxide is primarily due to some other cause?

The picture is a bit blurry for me, maybe the resolution dropped. I went looking for the original and cannot find it at the site you indicated. Which figure is it please? Some of the data points appear to go above 300 ppm on the CO2, but I want to be sure on that. As for other sources of CO2 on this planet and the reason for its rise, I can think of a couple of natural sources, that provide the majority of the CO2 in the atmosphere anyway.
1) Volcanic gases. There have been several large volcanic releases and many small low key eruptions (more like leaks in terms of volcanoes I guess) in the last 200 years or so: St Helens, Pinatubo, Krakatoa, Vesuvius, the one in Iceland I can't remember, downtown LA (if you can believe Hollywood. :p ) as well as others like those in Hawaii that are low key. I am not sure if there has been a relative upswing in activity to account for this but its a possibility.
2)Earthquales also can release lots of gases trapped in the Earth crust. If these events take place in an area that can't be easily observed, like the ocean floor, and CO2 can be relased without us seeing it.
3) Inhibtion of the ocean from absorping CO2 like its supposed to. Maybe there is a threshhold to how much the ocean can absorp. Once it reaches that limit CO2 begins to build up in the atmosphere, until the temperature rises, causing an explosion in the growth of plants, both terrestrial and aquatic that can once again absorp the excess CO2 and start the cycle over again. Maybe there are cycles to the algal and protozoan populations that last 125,000 years or so to account for this.
4) Everyone breathing my air! (thats a joke. this is a firendly debate after all. :p )
5) Earth passing through an interstellar cloud of gases, composed primarily of CO2 and metthane, causing it to seed the atmosphere with excess that the eco-system then has to deal with. (Least likely, but plausible)
6) This one might be a bit circular one or at least a positive reinforcement system. If the amount of solar radiation has increased, causing temps to increase, then the melting ice of the Arctic and Antarctic of the Earth, could release trapped CO2 during the melting process, increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
As I have said before, I have no doubts that humans have added to the CO2 levels, I jsut don't think its a primary cause of Global warming. I think its a natural part of Earth's climatologicla cycle and we just happen to have the technology and knowledge to witness it at this time.

Torqumada

[MerryPrankster]

I still wonder why nobody didn't set off a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of the super-storms. That would certainly solve the problem, but then the long-term effects might be difficult.

[Torqumada]

I still wonder why nobody didn't set off a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of the super-storms. That would certainly solve the problem, but then the long-term effects might be difficult.

A mature Hurricane contains and releases an incredible amount of energy. Depending on how you calculate that energy is can be anywhere from 1/2 of the total electrical generation for the world (using cloud and rain formation) or 200 times the total electrical generation for the world, using total kinetic energy generated. Guessing from the previews, those superstorms were more powerful that any hurricane ever seen before. As such, a nuclear weapon wouldn't be able to dissapate one. See this website for information:http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html

Torqumada

[Jesse]

You're right statistics doesn't require an exhaustive sampling of each possible data point to be complete. However, you must have enough data points to be statisically significant. 1000 data points in 4.55 billion is not statistically significant.

No, you are misunderstanding how "statistical significance" works. Only the absolute number of data points determines the statistical significance, the fraction (number of data points)/(number of all possible data points) is completely irrelevant. I already gave some examples showing why your interpretation makes no sense in my last post:

Radioactive decay has been going on since the earth was formed, yet we have only begun to measure it in the last century; by your logic, physicists therefore have no justification for saying anything about the laws governing radioactive decay. Likewise, people have been smoking for thouasands of years, but we only have data on the relationship between smoking and lung cancer for the last century or so, yet this doesn't stop us from coming to some strong conclusions on the causal relationship between the two.

Likewise, to deal with your own example:

Its like polling one person in the United States, lets say Mike Collins, and asking them who will you vote for in the next election and then reporting the Bush will win by an unprecented land slide of 100% of the electoral votes (the ratio is roughly the same).

The reason that would be a bad poll is because the absolute number of people polled is too low. But again, the fraction (number of people polled)/(total number of voters) is irrelevant to the statistical significance. If I polled 100,000 people about the upcoming election, the statistical significance of this result would be the same regardless if I wanted to predict an election for governor of Kentucky, with about 2.5 million registered voters, or an election for Supreme Emperor of the Andromeda Galaxy, with 70 trillion registered voters.

In that case, the period of time is the deciding factor since you are measuring an event over a period of time. If your period of time is too short, then your data points won't be significantly accurate. In regards to smoking, you don't have to worry about time, since millions of people die or are effected by lung cancer from smoking every year. Those are your data points in that case, the number of poeple with lung cancer vs the number of people with lung cancer that smoke vs the number of people with lung cancer that don't smoke. As an example, if you have 1 million people that are getting lung cancer every year, and say 70% of them smoke and 30% that don't and you poll that for 10 years, that is 10 million data points. That is enough data points to say that something is going on.

I agree that time has to be considered in some cases, although not for the reason you give. Time is a factor when you believe the relationship between different variables is likely to be changing over time. The relationship between lung cancer and tobacco smoking is a matter of biology, and probably has not changed much over the centuries, so it's not really necessary to have data points from all centuries. On the other hand, if you wanted to study the relationship between nutrition and growth rates, if all your data points came from three-year-olds it would not be legitimate to assume the relationships found would hold for people of all ages (for example, adults basically won't grow or shrink at all, regardless of how they eat).

So, it might not be legitimate to say the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature observed for the last 400,000 years is certain to work the same way 10 million years from now. But it seems to me that generalizing results found over a certain time period to the same time period is perfectly legitimate. For example, suppose I study the relationship between exercise and muscle growth for a group of men for a period of 4000 days, or about 11 years. Suppose all these men all have the same birthday, were all aged 25 at the start of the study, and the study ended right on their 36th birthday. Since I only studied a particular age group, it would clearly not be legitimate to generalize whatever results I found to 10-year-olds, or to 80-year-olds. However, I think it would be perfectly legitimate to generalize the result to men aged 36-and-one-day. Although it's possible men go through growth changes which alter the relationship between exercise and muscle growth overnight, if I didn't see any such changes in the dates of my study and I have no prior reason to think there's anything special about the dates I picked, it would be unreasonable to estimate the probability of such a change happening the day after the study ended as much higher than 1/4000. Similarly, although it might be possible to imagine the earth going through sudden phase transitions which alter the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature, if you assume such phase transitions have nothing to do with human activities, the chances of one coincidentally happening in the same century as our massive industrial buildup and altering the regular relationship seen in the last 4200 centuries should not be much greater than 1/4200. Of course one could argue that such a change might happen for non-coincidental reasons, ie that human activities would actually cause such a transition, but then we'd be back to the idea of humans causing serious changes to the climate, even if not in the way that climate scientists usually imagine.

In reality it's not actually true that climate scientists base their belief in the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature on nothing but statistical analyses--as I understand it there are a lot of other reasons involving things like lab experiments on the properties of carbon dioxide, observations of the atmosphere of Venus which is rich in greenhouse gases (Venus has the hottest surface of any planet, despite being further from the Sun than Mercury), computer models, theoretical analyses, etc. But my point is that even if we rely on nothing but statistical relationships, your argument that a sample of data points from the last 420,000 years is not enough to draw any conclusions doesn't really make any sense.

As I said, I don't know, but the main point is that I think we can be pretty certain that scientists have some arguments as to why this is compatible with the CFC theory (perhaps there's a time lag in terms of how long it takes for new ozone to be produced even after CFC levels are dropped), so any credible critique of the theory must at least take these arguments into account and show why they fall short. An uninformed critique that can't even anticipate how defenders of the theory would respond is of little value; maybe it'd be hard to explain the failure of the hole to shrink and maybe it'd be easy (just like you now apparently say it is easy to explain annual changes due to ambient weather patterns, although you presented this as a serious problem earlier), I don't know and neither do you.

Did you read the website I posted? That is where the information came from on how the "local" (local in quotes because we are talking about a weather pattern over the entire Antarctic) weather effects the ability of the Ozone hole to form. Did you think I just made this up of the top of my head? As i said, I was wrong on that theory.

I think you're missing my point, I never accused you of making it up off the top of your head, in fact that would go against my whole argument. My argument, again, is that it's a waste of time when people try to discredit established scientific theories with simple one-line arguments without even bothering to do any research into how scientists would respond to these arguments, since it is extremely unlikely that the scientists will have just completely failed to have noticed a devastating critique of their theory. You proved my point when you first made the simple argument about the size of the hole changing over the year, then actually did some research and found that this observation is easy to explain, and does not actually discredit the CFC/ozone hole theory at all. What I'm saying is that the same is likely true of your argument "the hole hasn't shrunk even though CFC levels have gone down, therefore the hole cannot be caused by CFCs"--if you actually did some research on how scientists explain the failure of the hole to immediately shrink, I'd be willing to bet a large sum that they aren't completely stumped by this observation. I speculated on one possibility in my last post when I said "perhaps there's a time lag in terms of how long it takes for new ozone to be produced even after CFC levels are dropped". Another possibility might be that although CFC levels are dropping, they are dropping so slowly that we wouldn't necessarily expect to see a significant effect on the size of the hole--this might be suggested by a quote on p. 237 of The Earth's Biosphere (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262692988/103-0027379-2543054), where the author writes:

Although the long atmospheric lifetime of CFCs means that the stratospheric effect will be felt for decades to come, atmospheric concentration of these compounds have been falling since 1994 (Hall et al. 2001), and the stratosphere may return to its pre-CFC composition before 2050.

And I also found this article (http://www.aig.asn.au/resurgent_ozone_hole.htm) which says that although the hole's size did drop to its lowest size in a decade in 2002, the size increased again last year, and that the size in any given year depends a lot on meteorological conditions that year:

A single molecule of chlorine can degrade more than 100,000 molecules of ozone. And there are large amounts of them in the air – largely stored within intermediate and inactive 'reservoir' compounds, but activated by particular meteorological conditions, notably those found above the South Pole in winter.

...

Small ozone holes have also been known to form over the Arctic, but meteorological conditions there prevent the stratospheric temperature dropping enough to cause thinning on an Antarctic scale. The small size of the 2002 Antarctic ozone hole was due to the same reason – unusual wind patterns and warm weather prevented more ice cloud formation. But this year’s measurements show there is little room for complacency on this issue.

“Since the end of the 1990s, there is experimental evidence that the total chlorine loading in the stratosphere is decreasing, but this is a slow process,” observed Dominique Fonteyn of BIRA-IASB. “Superimposed on this is the meteorological variability which this year still allows sufficient chlorine activation over a large area and for a longer period than last year.”
(emphasis mine)

So again, I don't know enough about this issue to give much of an answer, but these quotes suggest to me that scientists do have some understanding of why the hole has a given size in any given year, and that it was never expected that curtailing CFC emissions would cause an immediate dramatic reduction in its size.

Who were these "more rabid members", exactly? Were real scientists claiming with a high degree of confidence that it was definitely an effect of global warming, or are you just talking about environmental activists? As you said, it was real scientists who also happened to be global warming advocates who discovered the volcano in this case.

I remember quite clearly on several television and radio news programs that Scientists (or at least people with PhD after their name) were talking about the collapse of the Ice shelf as a result of Global warming. I am sorry that I didn't record those for posterity and get their names. I can't be sure the following people were not one of those experts giving the interviews on said programs, but they were advocating Global warming as the culprit: Tim Naish of the Institute of Geological and Nuclear sciences, Ted Scambos, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Christina Hulbe of Portland State University, Mark Fahnestock (University of Maryland, College Park, MD) are some of the ones that have reported ont he event.

Fair enough. I'd say that what's important is not who exactly said it, but what degree of confidence they put in the idea that it was due to global warming, and how wide the consensus was that this was definitely the explanation. There's nothing wrong with putting forth theories that turn out to be falsified by later observation, that's just how science works after all. And as theories go, surely it is fairly reasonable to suggest that this was an effect of global warming--you yourself agree that the earth has gotten significantly warmer in this century, even though you disagree about the explanation.

The graph shows that for the last 420,000 years CO2 levels never got higher than about 300 ppm, which I would not call "almost as high" as 365 ppm--that's about 20% higher than the highest levels its ever been over the last half a million years or so, and from the looks of things about 50% higher than the average levels. What's more, just based on the known amount of CO2 released by human activities, I don't think it's disputed even by most global warming skeptics that the main cause of this sudden upswing in CO2 is human-caused (if nothing else, it would be a pretty huge coincidence that this upswing coincided so precisely with industrialization, if it was a natural phenomenon that was just as likely to occur in any of the 420 centuries covered by the graph). Are you indeed arguing that there's a significant chance the change in carbon dioxide is primarily due to some other cause?

The picture is a bit blurry for me, maybe the resolution dropped. I went looking for the original and cannot find it at the site you indicated. Which figure is it please? Some of the data points appear to go above 300 ppm on the CO2, but I want to be sure on that.

Are you sure you were looking at the right site? The one I posted was http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/ and it's the only graph that appears in that article. Meanwhile, the book The Earth's Biosphere (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262692988/103-0027379-2543054) which I referred to earlier gives some exact numbers:

As noted in chapter 4, only approximate reconstructions of CO2 levels are possible for more distant periods, but air bubbles from Antarctic and Greenland ice cores (the largest one is 3,623 m deep) make it possible to trace CO2 levels with high accuracy for the past 420,000 years (Petit et al. 1999). During that time CO2 levels have stayed between 180 and 300 ppm, and during the 5,000 years preceding 1850, they fluctuated only between 250-290 ppm (Petit et al. 1999; fig 4.10). Their post-1850 rise will be described in chapter 9. (p. 135)

Then in chapter 9 he discusses measurements of current CO2 levels (measurements made far away from civilization):

The first systematic measurements of background CO2 levels (i.e., far away from major anthropogenic sources of the gas as well as from extensively vegetated areas) began in 1958 at Mauna Loa and at the South Pole, with stations in north Alaska and American Samoa added later (Keeling 1998). Mauna Loa's 1958 average CO2 was 320 ppm, whereas in 2000 the mean observation surpassed 370 ppm (fig. 5.8). This increase of more than 30% in 150 years is of concern because CO2 is a major greenhouse gas whose main absorption band coincides with the Earth's peak thermal emission (see chapter 4). (p. 234)

So, that figure of 370 ppm in 2000 would be about 28% larger than it's been at any time in the 5000 years before 1850, and about 23% larger than it's been at any time before 1850 in the last 420,000 years.

As for other sources of CO2 on this planet and the reason for its rise, I can think of a couple of natural sources, that provide the majority of the CO2 in the atmosphere anyway.
1) Volcanic gases. There have been several large volcanic releases and many small low key eruptions (more like leaks in terms of volcanoes I guess) in the last 200 years or so: St Helens, Pinatubo, Krakatoa, Vesuvius, the one in Iceland I can't remember, downtown LA (if you can believe Hollywood. :p ) as well as others like those in Hawaii that are low key. I am not sure if there has been a relative upswing in activity to account for this but its a possibility.
2)Earthquales also can release lots of gases trapped in the Earth crust. If these events take place in an area that can't be easily observed, like the ocean floor, and CO2 can be relased without us seeing it.
3) Inhibtion of the ocean from absorping CO2 like its supposed to. Maybe there is a threshhold to how much the ocean can absorp. Once it reaches that limit CO2 begins to build up in the atmosphere, until the temperature rises, causing an explosion in the growth of plants, both terrestrial and aquatic that can once again absorp the excess CO2 and start the cycle over again. Maybe there are cycles to the algal and protozoan populations that last 125,000 years or so to account for this.
4) Everyone breathing my air! (thats a joke. this is a firendly debate after all. :p )
5) Earth passing through an interstellar cloud of gases, composed primarily of CO2 and metthane, causing it to seed the atmosphere with excess that the eco-system then has to deal with. (Least likely, but plausible)
6) This one might be a bit circular one or at least a positive reinforcement system. If the amount of solar radiation has increased, causing temps to increase, then the melting ice of the Arctic and Antarctic of the Earth, could release trapped CO2 during the melting process, increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Well again, your arguments seem to be based on virtually no research into what led scientists to conclude the increase in CO2 was primarily due to human sources--you seem to be under the impression that scientists are pretty much in the dark about the contribution from other sources like volcanic gases, but from what basic research I've done that doesn't seem to be the case. For example, according to this wikipedia article on CO2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide):

Volcanic activity now releases about 130-230 million metric tons (145-255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year. Volcanic releases are about 1% the amount which is released by human activities.

Since the annual gain in carbon in the atmosphere from increased CO2 concentration is measured to be about 3.2 billion tons (see this page (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/edu/dees/V1003/lectures/global_carbon_cycle/)), scientist's estimates of the contribution from volcanic activity would have to be off by more than a thousand in order for it volcanic activity to play any significant role in the increase in CO2.

The Earth's Biosphere (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262692988/103-0027379-2543054) also has a detailed section on the carbon cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle) in which the author mentions that it is "the best studies of all elemental cycles". This lists all the various carbon sources and sinks that contribute to the annual flux of carbon in the atmosphere, like 100 Mt of carbon being buried each year by plankton sinking to the bottom of the ocean; it seems as though all the various elements of the carbon cycle are fairly well-measured. The page (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/edu/dees/V1003/lectures/global_carbon_cycle/) I linked to earlier also gives figures for the various sources and sinks of carbon, summed up in this diagram:

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/edu/dees/V1003/images/global_carbon_cycle.gif
(this is obviously simplified, since many of these categories can be broken up into further subcategories)

I can't vouch for the accuracy of this page, but very similar numbers are also given on this page (http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/carbon_cycle/carbon_cycle_new.html). Also, I don't know what the error bars on the various numbers given are, but they're good enough that when you sum the various fluxes from the atmosphere into carbon sinks with the fluxes from carbon sources into the atmosphere, you get 107 Gt - 102 Gt = 5 Gt, only 1.8 Gt off from the measured flux of 3.2 Gt. It's possible that this is just luck, but again, I think it's foolish to argue the estimates may be badly off without even bothering to learn how scientists arrive at these numbers in the first place.

This page gives some other reasons why it's thought to be fairly certain that the main source of increased CO2 is human activities:

http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/scq.CO2rise.html

For one thing, they point out that the total mass of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere each year is actually less then the mass of CO2 emitted by human activities:

The rise of airborne CO2 falls short of the human-made CO2 emissions.
** Taken together, the ocean and the terrestrial vegetation and soils
** must currently be a net sink of CO2 rather than a source [Melillo,
** p 454] [Schimel 94, p 47, 55] [Schimel 95, p 79] [Siegenthaler].

The geographical distribution of increased CO2 also matches human activities:

Most "new" CO2 comes from the Northern Hemisphere.* Measurements
** in Antarctica show that Southern Hemisphere CO2 level lags behind
** by 1 to 2 years, which reflects the interhemispheric mixing time.
** The ppmv-amount of the lag at a given time has increased according
** to increasing anthropogenic CO2 emissions. [Schimel 94, p 43]
** [Siegenthaler]

Finally, the ratio of carbon isotopes in the air matches that of human emissions, but not that of CO2 emitted by the biosphere or the ocean:

Fossil fuels contain practically no carbon 14 (14C) and less carbon
** 13 (13C) than air.* CO2 coming from fossil fuels should show up in
** the trends of 13C and 14C.* Indeed, the observed isotopic trends
** fit CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.* The trends are not compatible
** with a dominant CO2 source in the terrestrial biosphere or in the
** ocean.* If you shun details, please skip the next two paragraphs.

** The unstable carbon isotope 14C or radiocarbon makes up for roughly
** 1 in 10**12 carbon atoms in earth's atmosphere.* 14C has a half-life
** of about 5700 years. The stock is replenished in the upper atmosphere
** by a nuclear reaction involving cosmic rays and 14N* [Butcher,
** p 240-241].* Fossil fuels contain no 14C, as it decayed long ago.
** Burning fossil fuels should lower the atmospheric 14C fraction (the
** `Suess effect').* Indeed, atmospheric 14C, measured on tree rings,
** dropped by 2 to 2.5 % from about 1850 to 1954, when nuclear bomb
** tests started to inject 14C into the atmosphere [Butcher, p 256-257]
** [Schimel 95, p 82].* This 14C decline cannot be explained by a CO2
** source in the terrestrial vegetation or soils.

** The stable isotope 13C amounts to a bit over 1 % of earth's carbon,
** almost 99 % is ordinary 12C [Butcher, p 240].* Fossil fuels contain
** less 13C than air, because plants, which once produced the precursors
** of the fossilized organic carbon compounds, prefer 12C over 13C in
** photosynthesis (rather, they prefer CO2 which contains a 12C atom)
** [Butcher, p 86].* Indeed, the 13C fractions in the atmosphere and
** ocean surface waters declined over the past decades [Butcher, p 257]
** [C.Keeling] [Quay] [Schimel 94, p 42].* This fits a fossil fuel CO2
** source and argues against a dominant oceanic CO2 source.* Oceanic
** carbon has a trifle more 13C than atmospheric carbon, but 13CO2 is
** heavier and less volatile than 12CO2, thus CO2 degassed from the
** ocean has a 13C fraction close to that of atmospheric CO2 [Butcher,
** p 86] [Heimann].* How then should an oceanic CO2 source cause
** a simultaneous drop of 13C in both the atmosphere and ocean ?

As I have said before, I have no doubts that humans have added to the CO2 levels, I jsut don't think its a primary cause of Global warming. I think its a natural part of Earth's climatologicla cycle and we just happen to have the technology and knowledge to witness it at this time.

There are two separate questions here though:

1. Do you agree that the increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is most likely due to human causes?
2. Do you agree that the increase in CO2 concentration is a primary cause of global warming?

My guess is that the minority of climate scientists who are "global warming skeptics" would cast doubt on #2, but virtually none would have significant doubts about #1. I'd be curious as to whether you could find even a single real scientist who thinks #1 is likely to be false, and whether they have responses to the various lines of evidence mentioned in the website above.

[wkwillis]

SO2 droplets suppress rainfall and increase cloud cover, thereby cooling the earth. Even as CO2 levels were going up and increasing global warming, the cloud cover increase was cooling it.
Unfortunately, the SO2 washes out of the atmosphere much faster than the CO2 is absorbed.
When the world was industrializing and using much more coal, oil, and gas every year, the SO2 was offsetting the CO2 and preventing global warming. Then around 1970 we started pulling out the SO2 to reduce acid rain and particulate coal ash. So the CO2 was up there with nothing to offset it and global warming was going great guns..
Now China is dumping huge quantities of coal ash and acid into the air. The SO2 is offsetting the CO2 again, at the cost of making the Chinese rivers run dry because they are preventing rainfall over China.

[Torqumada]

Just to simplify things for the moment, since its been a long 24 hour shift and I need some rest before looking at all the data
There are two separate questions here though:

1. Do you agree that the increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is most likely due to human causes?
2. Do you agree that the increase in CO2 concentration is a primary cause of global warming?

My guess is that the minority of climate scientists who are "global warming skeptics" would cast doubt on #2, but virtually none would have significant doubts about #1. I'd be curious as to whether you could find even a single real scientist who thinks #1 is likely to be false, and whether they have responses to the various lines of evidence mentioned in the website above.
1. I think that humans have added to the CO2 levels, but even the graph you posted has shown that it is only a fraction of the total CO2 level over the last 450,000 years or so. Now as to what the causes are for the 125,000 or so year fluctuation, I would say that is part of the normal biosphere.
2. I still think overall global warming is part of a normal Earth heating and cooling cycle. The data you have provided suggests that strongly. To the best of our knowledge there was no industry on Earth 450,000 years ago and yet the CO2 levels and temeprature rose on its own.

Torqumada

[Torqumada]

Jesse, I was speaking of the 2nd grapg that had CO2 levels, Methane levels and temperature. I couldn't find that one.

Torqumada

[Jesse]

Jesse, I was speaking of the 2nd grapg that had CO2 levels, Methane levels and temperature. I couldn't find that one.

Torqumada

Ah, sorry, that one is a little harder to find...go to the paper (http://www.nicl-smo.sr.unh.edu/documents/1998/icwghtml.html) I linked to and scroll down to the section titled "The Greenhouse Gas/Temperature Relationship", and click on the link "Figure 2", which takes you to this figure (http://www.nicl-smo.sr.unh.edu/documents/1998/fig2.html). At the top of the page it says "To see this plot extended to 420,000 years, click here (http://www.nicl-smo.sr.unh.edu/documents/1998/images/420Vostok.jpg)" which takes you to the graph I posted.

[Jesse]

So, that figure of 370 ppm in 2000 would be about 28% larger than it's been at any time in the 5000 years before 1850, and about 23% larger than it's been at any time before 1850 in the last 420,000 years.

Incidentally, as of 2004 the CO2 levels are up to 379 ppm (google "carbon dioxide" and "379 ppm" to find a number of sources), so it's about 31% larger than it's been at any time in the 5000 years before 1850 (max. 290 ppm), and about 26% larger than it's been at any time before 1850 in the last 420,000 years (max. 300 ppm).

[Torqumada]

Ah, sorry, that one is a little harder to find...go to the paper (http://www.nicl-smo.sr.unh.edu/documents/1998/icwghtml.html) I linked to and scroll down to the section titled "The Greenhouse Gas/Temperature Relationship", and click on the link "Figure 2", which takes you to this figure (http://www.nicl-smo.sr.unh.edu/documents/1998/fig2.html). At the top of the page it says "To see this plot extended to 420,000 years, click here (http://www.nicl-smo.sr.unh.edu/documents/1998/images/420Vostok.jpg)" which takes you to the graph I posted.

Thank you. I had clicked all the figures in that paper and couldn't find the one you linked. I must have missed the secondary link off of that primary. More later.

Torqumada

[Gedca]

[QUOTE=wkwillis]I was reading a book on natural disasters recently. It was pointing out that the loss of life, the insurance payouts, and the total damages from bad weather had increased at huge and rapidly increasing rates over the last thirty years and there was no sign that it was going to get any better. Global warming was pumping so much more energy into the situation that the hotter, drier, windier, and wetter spells were running outside "normal" bounds.QUOTE]

1. Inflation has caused property values to increase over the last 30 years. For example if the house I am currently living in was smashed in a tornado in 1970 in insurnce payout would be a lot less than it would be if it was smashed now.
2. The population of the earth has increased over the last 30 years.
Member. Particularly along coasts. For example, the popuation of California and Florida has skyrocketed over the last 30 years.
3. Bigger houses means higher payouts.
4. So you can blaim every single weather abnormality on glabal warming, how convient.

Now more points:
"Scientists also point out that nature produces far more greenhouse gases than we do. For example, when the Mount Pinatubo volcano erupted, within just a few hours it had thrown into the atmosphere 30 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide - almost twice as much as all the factories, power plants and cars in the United States do in a whole year. Oceans emit 90 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, every year. Decaying plants throw up another 90 billion tonnes, compared to just six billion tonnes a year from humans. What's more, 100 million years ago, there was six times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is now, yet the temperature then was marginally cooler than it is today. Many scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide doesn't even affect climate. 'When proper satellite measurements are done of world temperatures, they do not show any increase whatsoever over the last 20 years.'According to Piers Corbyn, Director of Weather Action, many scientists do not accept the idea that pollution is causing global warming. Environmentalists claim that world temperatures have risen one degree Fahrenheit in the past century, but Corbyn points out that the period they take as their starting point - around 1880 - was colder than average. What's more, the timing of temperature changes does not appear to support the theory of global warming. Most of the rise came before 1940 - before human-caused emissions of 'greenhouse' gases became significant. "
quotes from: http://www.users.bigpond.com/smartboard/aginatur/prog1.htm#suspend

[wkwillis]

[QUOTE=wkwillis]I was reading a book on natural disasters recently. It was pointing out that the loss of life, the insurance payouts, and the total damages from bad weather had increased at huge and rapidly increasing rates over the last thirty years and there was no sign that it was going to get any better. Global warming was pumping so much more energy into the situation that the hotter, drier, windier, and wetter spells were running outside "normal" bounds.QUOTE]

1. Inflation has caused property values to increase over the last 30 years. For example if the house I am currently living in was smashed in a tornado in 1970 in insurnce payout would be a lot less than it would be if it was smashed now.
2. The population of the earth has increased over the last 30 years.
Member. Particularly along coasts. For example, the popuation of California and Florida has skyrocketed over the last 30 years.
3. Bigger houses means higher payouts.
4. So you can blaim every single weather abnormality on glabal warming, how convient.

Now more points:
"Scientists also point out that nature produces far more greenhouse gases than we do. For example, when the Mount Pinatubo volcano erupted, within just a few hours it had thrown into the atmosphere 30 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide - almost twice as much as all the factories, power plants and cars in the United States do in a whole year. Oceans emit 90 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, every year. Decaying plants throw up another 90 billion tonnes, compared to just six billion tonnes a year from humans. What's more, 100 million years ago, there was six times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is now, yet the temperature then was marginally cooler than it is today. Many scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide doesn't even affect climate. 'When proper satellite measurements are done of world temperatures, they do not show any increase whatsoever over the last 20 years.'According to Piers Corbyn, Director of Weather Action, many scientists do not accept the idea that pollution is causing global warming. Environmentalists claim that world temperatures have risen one degree Fahrenheit in the past century, but Corbyn points out that the period they take as their starting point - around 1880 - was colder than average. What's more, the timing of temperature changes does not appear to support the theory of global warming. Most of the rise came before 1940 - before human-caused emissions of 'greenhouse' gases became significant. "
quotes from: http://www.users.bigpond.com/smartboard/aginatur/prog1.htm#suspend

1. That is the cost after inflation.
2. The population of California and Florida has not increased eight times in the last thirty years. It has barely doubled.
3. The size of houses per capita has not increased significantly. It has increased, but not significantly. They are larger but not that larger.
4. Yes

I don't think it is possible to prevent global warming. I think that because of the increase in population and energy use/crop area per capita, it was too late in 1950. We have cleared vast amounts of land in the last few thousand years. Iron makes cutting down forests for moist soil farming very much easier. Explosives make mining coal very much easier.

It is possible that some part of global warming is nonanthropogenic. We haven't had a decent volcanic eruption in 1400 years. A decent volcano eruption is one that kills a significant part of the earth's population. Tambura doesn't count as a decent eruption.

I think we should be looking at ways to adapt to global warming. It isn't going to stop or even slow down. I do not support Kyoto. It's way too late for that.

For the record, sticking my head in the sand and my butt in the air is not a recipe for success in life. If something is coming at me I want to see it so I can decide if I want to fight or run.

[Torqumada]

wkwillis, you're saying that all of the temperature rise is caused by humans? According to you "It is possible that some part of global warming is nonanthropogenic" Did you look at the discussion that Jesse and I are having in this thread? He posted data that showed that every 125,000 to 140,000 years there is an increase in temperature, atmospheric CO2 and atmospheric Methane. While the overall CO2 level is 26% or so over the high listed, the spike is occuring at roughly the same time as the previous ones in the past. Are you telling me that all of those temeprature changes are the fault of humans? Please show me the archaelogical data that shows that humans or anyone had the same industiral capacity as we do now 140 to 420 thousand years ago. I think both Jesse and I agree that there has been an increase in atmospheric CO2 and temps, but humans are only responsible for a fraction of it and that it has happened before humans had the capacity for industry.

Torqumada

[wkwillis]

wkwillis, you're saying that all of the temperature rise is caused by humans? According to you "It is possible that some part of global warming is nonanthropogenic" Did you look at the discussion that Jesse and I are having in this thread? He posted data that showed that every 125,000 to 140,000 years there is an increase in temperature, atmospheric CO2 and atmospheric Methane. While the overall CO2 level is 26% or so over the high listed, the spike is occuring at roughly the same time as the previous ones in the past. Are you telling me that all of those temeprature changes are the fault of humans? Please show me the archaelogical data that shows that humans or anyone had the same industiral capacity as we do now 140 to 420 thousand years ago. I think both Jesse and I agree that there has been an increase in atmospheric CO2 and temps, but humans are only responsible for a fraction of it and that it has happened before humans had the capacity for industry.

Torqumada

Quote
************************************************** ***
It is possible that some part of global warming is nonanthropogenic. We haven't had a decent volcanic eruption in 1400 years. A decent volcano eruption is one that kills a significant part of the earth's population. Tambura doesn't count as a decent eruption.
************************************************** **
What part of 'It is possible that some part of global warming is nonanthropogenic' don't you understand?

'It is possible that some part of global warming is nonanthropogenic.' means that some part of global warming might not be caused by people. It could be caused by changes in solar output, by changes in atmospheric greenhousing not caused by people, like, some large natural gas deposit in the ocean sprung a leak after an earthquake, or some new species of temite is more efficiently recycling cellulose into methane, or god knows what.
No offense, but I believe that most global warming is caused by coal mining (CO2 and CH4), by oil burning (CO2 and CH4), by forest clearing, by hydroelectric power plant reservoirs degrading biological carbon in covered soils, by farting cattle (though, weren't the deer eating the same vegation before?), or god knows what else. There are undoubtedly more stuff going on that I don't know about, and stuff going on that nobody knows about yet.

[Torqumada]

"No offense, but I believe that most global warming is caused by coal mining (CO2 and CH4), by oil burning (CO2 and CH4), by forest clearing, by hydroelectric power plant reservoirs degrading biological carbon in covered soils"

None of those events existed 420,000 years ago, and yet CO2 and methane levels rose and the temperature went up. If industrialization is,as you argue, the primary reason for Global warming how did it happen without any industry? The data so far suggests that global warming is a normal part of the Earth's biosphere and that so far humans can only account for 26% of the total CO2 increase in this current cycle. I agree that there are other unknown factors going on, but I don't believe that Global warming is soley caused by human activity as you have stated above. It it were, then there wouldn't be this cycle as already presented in this discussion. It would be a relatively flat graph on CO2, methane and temp levels until after 1850 or so. Its not. Its a cycle. I think its the ultimate in human hubris to say that its all our fault that a natural process is taking place. We might as well say we command the tides, cause the sun to rise and set and the seasons to change. After all we are here to see those events take place, so we must be causing them. We should take responsibility for the pollution that we put into our environment and take steps to clean it up and prevent excess.

Torqumada

[Mark]

I haven't read the most up-to-date literature, but from the stuff a few years ago (few, not many and post grad school), the vast majority of the increase in global temperatures was/is from natural or unexplained causes. The discussion then was what percentage was caused by humans (which most climate folks accepted was/is occurring). The number I remember was approximately 5% of the global warming could be caused by human activities. The concern is that this amount may be enough to kick the natural climate changes to a higher state.

I also remember a speaker in grad school (late '80s) who mentioned the 1940s to 1970s were abnormally calm in terms of weather and the 1980s were returning to historic variations. Which would explain why so many weather records are fairly old.

[wkwillis]

We learn new stuff every day. We unlearn old stuff a little slower. That's why the 'get your lie in first' tactic succeeds. People operate their whole lives on what they learned in high school because that's the last time they study science.

[Mark]

One of the things we've learned that hasn't changed is that Earth's climate is constantly changing due to natural causes. And some of the changes can be fast and large. So to blame the great majority/most of the recent change on human activities, you had better have a great deal of evidence. (Computer models in and of themselves are not evidence. Even the best ones have problems recreating past climates at fine enough scales for what people want for predictions. I wish they were accurate enough, because I am much more interested in past climates.)

Also, change in and of itself is not bad. Michigan, where I live, is habitable because of climatic changes that caused the ice sheet to melt, freeing the land between 14,000 and 12,000 years ago. Those or other changes also caused Earth to be warmer than now approxiamtely 13,000 to 11,000 years ago (I can't remember the dates off the top of my head). The question is who will benefit and who will lose as Earth's climate changes.

[Chris Oakley]

If a new ice age starts,we'll all lose.

[Torqumada]

If a new ice age starts,we'll all lose.

Well, you live in MA. Of course you'll lose. :p Those of us in more temperate climes might have a little colder winter to deal with. :o

torqumada

[Faeelin]

Also, change in and of itself is not bad. Michigan, where I live, is habitable because of climatic changes that caused the ice sheet to melt, freeing the land between 14,000 and 12,000 years ago. Those or other changes also caused Earth to be warmer than now approxiamtely 13,000 to 11,000 years ago (I can't remember the dates off the top of my head). The question is who will benefit and who will lose as Earth's climate changes.

The midwest, in a decade long drought, appears to be a loser.

Seriously, I don't get this. We have a side that says global warming is happening, and a side that says we might not be responsible.

Isn't this like buckling a seatbelt? We might not crash, but why take that chance?

[Torqumada]

The midwest, in a decade long drought, appears to be a loser.

Seriously, I don't get this. We have a side that says global warming is happening, and a side that says we might not be responsible.

Isn't this like buckling a seatbelt? We might not crash, but why take that chance?

Yes, but if those who push Man as the primary cause of Global Warming have their way, we won't be able to find the true cause of it. They will have us looking in the wrong places for the right answers. We are spending all our time looking at emissions of this or that chemical, we are missing the simple answer in front of us. It has become politics and not science.

Torqumada

[Mark]

[Torqumada]"Yes, but if those who push Man as the primary cause of Global Warming have their way, we won't be able to find the true cause of it. They will have us looking in the wrong places for the right answers. We are spending all our time looking at emissions of this or that chemical, we are missing the simple answer in front of us. It has become politics and not science."

Thank you, Torqumada.

My points are that climate changes happen naturally and that the reference point for most people was a period with a benign climate. I am not arguing that humans are influencing the changes or the amount of change. Nor am I arguing that even if we are adding a small percentage to the change, it isn't important. An analogy - if I am standing in knee-deep water, who cares if the water level increase 6 inches (15 cm). However, if I am standing in chin-deep water, then a 6 inch increase becomes much more important. The problem with climate studies is that we are still working out how deep the water is and how much it will increase.

If I am overly skeptical about the politics of climate change, it is partly due to hearing all about the coming Ice Age due to global cooling in the 1970s.

Today I found a reference to a paper in press in Surveys in Geophysics (I think, based on the abreviation) that discussing our impact on the climate. I checked and the paper doesn't appear to have been published yet. If this or a similar thread is going when it gets published, I'll let ya'll know.

[Dave Howery]

I go along with the "climate changes are happening due to things beyond our control, but human activities have a small impact on it" crowd. All in all though, even if it gets proven beyond a doubt that humans aren't responsible for climate changes, we still should make all efforts to clean up industry, harvest forests responsibly, etc.... living cleaner is always better....

[Doctor What]

Welcome back david--you've missed quite a bit in your absence.

[Mark]

As one who makes his living cleaning the mess left by industry, I agree with Dave. It's also much nicer to breathe clean air, swim in clean water, eat crops from clean soil, etc. I don't know what that has to do with the movie, but it is nicer.

[Dave Howery]

Dr. What> thanks... missed this site a lot. I've been spending this day off catching up... as I look at the clock, I see I've been online for... 3 hours?! Dang, I better get in the shower while there's still daylight left.... :)

[Chris Oakley]

Long time no see,Dave. :)

[Doctor What]

Where's dave?

Dave's not here, man.....

Sorry--couldn't resist throwing in a cheech and chong reference... :p

[Dave Howery]

Grooooaaaaannnnn...... do you know how often I heard that joke when I was a kid (of course, when I was a kid that joke was new....).... you know how it is, kids have to tease everyone in some way about their name, and my last name doesn't lend itself much to teasing, so they had to pick on my first name :)

[Doctor What]

:D

I hear you man--got more than my fair share of teasing when I was a kid too--at least all they did to you was make fun of your name--try being a short, dark-skinned, nerdy kid with coke bottle glasses in a school filled with tall, white jocks :rolleyes:

So--why the long absence--I seem to recall something about you moving to a new job/city, right?

[Chris Oakley]

Where's dave?

Dave's not here, man.....

Sorry--couldn't resist throwing in a cheech and chong reference... :p

Who could? :D

[Dave Howery]

yeah, quit my old job in OR (the company I worked for is slowly going out of business, so I got out while the getting was good), moved to Cheyenne WY (I have family here), found a new job. Staying with family here until I get a place of my own... in which case, I will have to set up my account on this board yet one more time after I get my own IP account :)

[Chris Oakley]

How much is your salary in your new post?

[Torqumada]

Bump

Torqumada