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Post by rsmith7 on Feb 20, 2012 14:17:39 GMT 1
I'm having a good old ding dong with a mathematical physicist and director of science festivals on another forum. He is trying to get me to accept that co2 has a positive net effect on global temperature and is asking where that heat has gone. I'm arguing that co2 hasn't been proven to have a positive effect on temperature but don't have time to find references or evidence. Can anyone help?
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Post by StuartG on Feb 20, 2012 15:07:09 GMT 1
CO2 can have a cooling effect. In a place called the mesopause [as the Wiki page says "Not to be confused with menopause."!] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MesopauseThe CO2 there has a cooling effect. It's the "coldest naturally occurring place on Earth with temperatures below 130 K" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MesosphereThis forms part of the Ionosphere ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IonosphereA lot is not known about these areas regarding their effects upon weather and climate. The solar wind affects various parts of the ionosphere to differing degrees. A lot is not known or understood. CO2 does have a warming effect on the atmosphere, but whether it's fair to blame it all on CO2 is debateable as it's only a trace gas. What has a greater effect, despite their transience are water vapour and clouds. Methane is often blamed too, but this reacts strongly ... "the reaction typically progresses all the way to carbon dioxide and water even with incomplete amounts of oxygen" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MethaneThere are so may things that are not considered when 'climate simulations' are run on a computer that none of them can be any more than estimates, and very often incorrect.
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Post by principled on Feb 20, 2012 15:42:56 GMT 1
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Post by striker16 on Feb 20, 2012 17:42:29 GMT 1
"Human activity since the Industrial Revolution has increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to increased radiative forcing (more energy coming in) from CO2, methane.....
The concentrations of CO2 and methane have increased by 36% and 148% respectively since 1750. These levels are much higher than at any time during the last 800,000 years, the period for which reliable data has been extracted from ice cores. Less direct geological evidence indicates that CO2 values higher than this were last seen about 20 million years ago. Fossil fuel burning has produced about three-quarters of the increase in CO2 from human activity over the past 20 years. The rest of this increase is caused mostly by changes in land-use, particularly deforestation."en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Greenhouse_gaseswww.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/global-thermometer-still-climbing.html
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Post by striker16 on Feb 20, 2012 17:59:04 GMT 1
The second question is whether the sum total of global warming is down solely to the increase in CO2 through human activity. I very much doubt that. It's too simplistic. Anyway, here are three websites discussing water vapour etc. No, it's not solely down to CO2 but it is a major contributor that is a consequence of human activity, this is the point. The problem with AGW sceptics is that they refuse to accept what the evidence is indicating, preferring instead to place their own prejudiced interpretation on it. This is not scientific and just because the evidence isn't perfect still strongly supports the hypothesis that CO2, due to human beings, is a main driver of global warming. If someone flatly refuses to face reality, no amount of evidence will persuade them and they will continue to nitpick while overlooking the overwhelming data to the contrary. I call this 'The King Canute Syndrome.'
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Post by marchesarosa on Feb 20, 2012 18:39:51 GMT 1
I heard a discussion about equations this morning on Start the Week. The only thing that stuck was that Kepler noticed (from observation) that the planets moved in ellipses and Isaac Newton said "aha, that can be expressed as an equation".
I would therefore, Mr Smith, ask the mathematical physicist what are the "observations" showing the "effects" of CO2 on the climate and what is the equation which describes them. Mere correlation between rising CO2 in ppm and a few decades of slight temperature rise is not enough. This is not to say correlation is irrelevant but that it is a necessary not a sufficient reason for positing causality between 2 variables.
I would also suggest abacus sticks to the science without trying to explain away well founded scepticism with psychologising. People in glass houses, abacus, should not throw stones.
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Post by rsmith7 on Feb 20, 2012 19:38:26 GMT 1
Thanks Stu, Principled, Marchessa. Striker - bog off. I've already covered the divergence between co2 levels and observed "temperature"...although I like your request for an equation that describes it. Stu, Like the co2 cooling the menopause link - very interesting. Principled, Thanks for the links - the water vapour observations are very illuminating. The guy I'm arguing with on facebook is a local ex-teacher/local radio host/science guru and he stepped in when I made a derogatory remark about an £800 million pumped storage proposal in Scotland. It is purely to balance the grid in response to wind energy's intermittant nature. I might have said he was advocating CAGW in order to get invited to fashionable parties...not to mention science festival directorships. Thinly veiled threats of lawyers at dawn ensued. hee hee
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Post by rsmith7 on Feb 20, 2012 20:00:52 GMT 1
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Post by mak2 on Feb 20, 2012 20:52:25 GMT 1
Striker's graph looks impressive until you look closely at the temperature scale....a rise of about 1 deg F since 1880. Hardly a disastrous increase! I suppose they used Fahrenheit instead of the normal scientific Celsius temperature scale in an attempt to conceal just how insignificant the warming has been.
This is the weakness of the warmist case. There is no doubt that carbon dioxide absorbs infra-red radiation and makes the earth warmer than it would otherwise be. But their climate models could be seriously over-estimating the size of the effect, judging from the actual temperatures. It may be that the effect of "greenhouse" gases is smaller than the other factors effecting global temperature.
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Post by nickrr on Feb 20, 2012 21:58:51 GMT 1
Firstly, most of the increase has been in the last 30 - 40 years. In geological terms this is a very fast rise. Secondly, the real problem is not how far it has risen so far but how far it might rise in the future.
What evidence do you have for this? Is it based on your own intuition?
True, and this answers Smithy's original question (i.e. he's on the wrong side of the argument).
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Post by rsmith7 on Feb 20, 2012 22:01:20 GMT 1
Then where has all this heat gone nicky boy? Under the collar of Guardian readers, perhaps?
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Post by nickrr on Feb 21, 2012 14:43:20 GMT 1
Into the atmosphere - that's why it's warmer than it used to be.
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Post by rsmith7 on Feb 21, 2012 17:43:46 GMT 1
Into the atmosphere - that's why it's warmer than it used to be. But not as warm as the co2 fetishists predict...or even close.
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Post by StuartG on Feb 22, 2012 8:42:39 GMT 1
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Post by fascinating on Feb 22, 2012 11:28:41 GMT 1
Stuart, can I respectfully ask you and others, when providing a link, to give a short statement as to why you are posting that link? That first link you give has a whole load of text plus the graph of rising temperatures which was given in the earlier post. I am mystified as to what point you are making in providing that link. It doesn't seem to explain what is meant by the "Maunder Maximum". And that last link, obviously about the winter of 1963, what point are you making in including that?
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