Is there enough proof of global warming to warrant drastic change?

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I've spent so much time spelling out my views on this issue and everybody yawns and ignores me.

1)  The warming trend in global temperatures is inflated by land use changes and urban growth around the surface recording stations used to record temperatures.

2)  There are vast portions of the globe that are not covered by surface reports.

3)  A large chunk of the world's coldest areas has not been recorded since the demise of the USSR as the Russian government closed a large proportion of rural stations which had less "urban heat island" effect in order to save money, which drastically increased the weight of stations that have experienced such an effect.

4)  Satellite temperature measurements, which date back to only 1979, have not shown nearly the warming trend at any height in the atmosphere as the surface measurements taken by weather stations/weather buoys.

5)  The discrepancy between satellite measurements, which measure the entire atmosphere at a given altitude, and the surface stations has been growing at an increasing rate with the surface stations looking warmer and warmer.  It is no surprise that organizations that are pushing drastic changes in regards to climate change are using the incomplete, but longer time scale set of data from the surface stations.

6)  While scientists have ruled out many factors contributing to the current warming cycle, they are finding new factors every day that have wide reaching impacts.

7)  The models are crap.  They don't take into account ocean oscillations that distribute heat across the planet on multi-year to decades-long scales.  This "unprecedented" warming since 1975 also occurred during a time of unprecedented solar intensity and ocean cycles that were in their "warm" phases.  The last time period in which there was intense solar energy and warm ocean phases was from 1930-1945... a time period in which scientists were quite worried about shrinking glaciers and the shrinking polar ice cap and increased temperature.  I'll see if I can find some links to the paper published in the '30s lamenting a hotter future world.

The next 30 years will likely see a declining temperature as solar intensity has slowed dramatically in the past 2 years and is expected to remain low for the next 30 years.  This has also coincided with a switch to the cool cycle of the Pacific ocean.

Greenhouse warming, while a component of climate change, is smaller than Al Gore would have you think, and I think there are other more pressing reasons to make drastic changes to our lifestyles.

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Here is a graph of the satellite temperatures with the CO2 concentration overlaid on it since 2002.

This is a very biased source, but the information in the graph is correct.  Of particular interest has been the sudden downturn in global temperatures since the new year began.



Below is a graph of the number of days with no sunspots for the solar minimum we are currently in (red) and the last solar minimum in early 1996 (blue).

The solar sunspot cycle is a cycle that last approx. 11 years where the sunspots, areas of intense magnetic activity on the sun's surface which are actually dark (thus the spot) but produce more energy, wax to a peak, and then wane.

The last cycle, number 23 since measurements began in the mid 1700s, peaked in 2000/01 and has been waning since.  The solar scientists originally predicted the new cycle, 24, to begin in late 2006.  As a cycle progresses, the spots form at higher latitudes and work their way towards the solar equator as the cycle goes on, so 2 cycles can be going at one time.

There were no cycle 24 sunspots, however, until January of 2008, a full 18 months after the forecast beginning.  To date there have only been 4 spots that were assigned to cycle 24, at a time when solar scientists thought the sunspot number would be around 80.  The smoothed number for July was approx. 0.8, well below the 80 that "should" have been occurring by now.

Some solar scientists think this is normal and that cycle 24 will begin to ramp up.  Many others think this is more reminiscent to cycles that occurred during the 19th century which were much slower to start and generally much weaker.  THis also coincided with falling global temperatures.  A few scientists believe this is a significant slowing of the sun not seen since a nearly spotless period in the 17th century, at the peak of the little ice age.

Either way, the conveyers on the sun that foretell solar activity have slowed to a record slow crawl and we haven't seen a cycle 24 sun spot since April, while we've only been seeing a smattering of old cycle 23 spots near the equator since.

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Snowguy, we disagree on a lot (we agree on a lot too, but tell anybody), but I must say, you do a great job on the global warming issue.  Thank you for your input.  You could easily be a puppet like many others, but you've obviously done your research past what the Al Gore's of the world preach to you and came up with a reasonable position on the subject.  We need more people like you on your side of the aisle.  Again, thank you.

You're only praising his effort because you agree with him.  If he had shown the consensus opinion of scientists rather than a minority opinion, he could have also written long paragraphs and showed charts, but I don't think you would have praised him then.

What exactly is the consensus opinion, Harry?  You've never told me.

Oh yeah, the consensus opinion is that humans have increased the CO2 level to very high levels not seen in a very long time and that this is *almost certainly* having *some* effect on global temperatures, leading to an overall increase.

Again, as I've said before, it says nothing of how much.

The 2.5-5*C warming figures you get from the IPCC come from models put out in 2001 that don't take ocean currents into account.  In fact, they take almost no natural variability into account.  The only variable in these models are greenhouse gases.  They don't even take clouds into account.  That says nothing of solar output or multi-year/decade/century-long ocean/atmosphere oscillations.. many of which we dont' even really know about yet.

Now the planet has been cooling for 6 years despite a 3% increase in atmospheric CO2.  Some scientists are saying it was a switch in the Pacific Decadel Oscillation to its cold phase.. the same phenomenon that occurred from 1945-1976 and cooled the planet then, as well.

You have to subtract all other factors from the equation before you can single out greenhouse gases as the culprit.

The models have not done that.

Solar output was higher in the past 70 years than it has been in the past 1000 years.  You might say "Well, then if solar output has been high, but relatively flat for the past 70 years, then why are temperatures still rising"?  Well, they're not, actually... the peak occurred in 1998 and the temperatures have been falling since 2002.

Solar output increased dramatically from 1910-1950 and then remained at those high 1950 levels until very recently.  The ocean oscillations, which do not add or subtract energy to the atmosphere, but distribute it unevenly over different periods of time, acted as an energy sink from 1945-1976 as cold ocean water sucked up solar energy and kept the planet cool.  

Then, that warm water, heated up from the unusually strong sun, was let loose beginning in 1977 and the planet began to warm quickly until it reached equilibrium with the strong solar output.  Now the Pacific ocena has entered its cold phase again and it is once again acting as a sink, so the planet is cooling.  On top of that, now the sun is much weaker than it was during the last "cold" period, so temperatures will likely drop further than they did in the previous cold period (from 1945-1976).

So, once you subtract the solar output increase and adjust for decades long variances in global temperatures caused by oceanic cycles, you then get an underlying temperature.

We don't know what that temperature is because nobody has tried to figure it out.  INstead, they ahve completely ignored solar output variability, dismissing them.. saying they aren't big enough to have any effect on global temperature.

They've also dismissed oceanic cycles and have arbitrarily taken the temperature in 1900 and subtracted from the temperature in 2000 and attributed it all to a rise in greenhouse gases.  You should be comparing points in time where the ocean cycles were similar and then compare those two temperatures to find the real increase caused by other factors, such as greenhouse gases.  The oceanic cycles were similar in 1945 to what it was in 2007... both times were near the end of warm phases in the Pacific... and the increase wasn't nearly as great as it was from the coldest period to the warmest... but again, just arbitrarily measuring from the earliest records to the most recent is bad science.  That's like saying 8+3+3=11 and then saying "well we don't know much about that other 3, but we think it's unimportant so just leave it out.. the answer is 11, God damn it!!"

But scientists can't research the subject and introduce new material anymore, because the issue has been SO politicized that changing the message would be devastating to a lot of people that have a lot of money and influence on the science community.  So, instead of researching the subject and seeking answers, they are seeking evidence for their pre-determined outcomes.

Isn't science supposed to be about having a theory and then trying your best to disprove that theory until you can't disprove it anymore and thus accept it as almost certainly true?  Rather than starting out with a theory, politicizing it, and then forever trying to find proof that fits the desired outcome?  Maybe I have a different idea of what science is.

There's a good phrase when it comes to the computer models used to predict future global climate:  Garbage in, garbage out.

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Well, Good.. because to date you've answered none of my questions instead defaulting to platitudes put out by politicians.

You've also been very quick to dismiss what I've said without ever realizing that this "consensus" you speak of isn't nearly as specific or as wide reaching as you allege... or even realized taht I don't disagree with the consensus that humans are to blame for all warming caused by greenhouse gas buildup.

The question is not whether, but by how much.

I am not stupid.  I can't sit here and say "well, we know that sulfur dioxide cools the planet, but CO2 just sits up there and doesn't do a damned thing".. because that's not true.  But scientists haven't found a figure for the actual warming caused by increased greenhouse gases... and the models are horribly incomplete.

If you dismiss all I have to say because I don't agree with Nancy Pelosi or Al Gore and blame Hurricane Katrina or the heatwave in the plains on global warming... then you ahve a very poor understanding of the issue.

isolated weather events≠Global Warming

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This is an interesting paper highlighting the effect that the sun's rotation about the center point of the solar system has on the earth's rate of rotation and various atmospheric/oceanic oscillations that drive global temperatures up and down.

It is, of course, no surprise that following this process, it leads to show that the past 30 years were in fact rather unusual in a way that supports unusual warming of the planet.  That unusual "warm cycle", if you will, has recently reversed as the asymmetry of the sun around its central rotation point changes.

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/IanwilsonForum2008.pdf

Edit:  You won't find this in the climate models.

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Be careful Smid.. using "if, then" statements when discussing science is dangerous.

It's not that the people here from the pro-global warming crowd don't ahve the evidence to back up their claims.. it's just a combination of not really knowing the issue well and laziness.

There are plenty of good arguments for the greenhouse theory... including the planet Venus.. it's a perfect example of greenhouse warming run amok.

My stance is that we have not finished the research, and we don't fully understand the climate system, and thus we are assigning the observations only to known variables, rather than assuming that there are not-yet-known variables which very well could be responsible for most of our current warming.

This is evident by the fact that we have seen high greenhouse concentrations in the past on earth with very cold temperatures... just as we've seen very warm temperatures on earth with lower greenhouse gas concentrations.

My beef is that most of the warming of the past century is actually due to natural causes and that only a fraction of it (though more and more significant as we progressed through the century) is due to manmade causes... and if we don't do anything at all, our impact will soon become noticeable and will begin canceling out the natural climate variables that could save our butts in the next 30 years.

And not to worry... I still think Inhofe and the other global warming deniers are nuts... they're just as bad as the Boxers and Pelosis who have done absolutely NO research on the issue but are ready to give you an earful.

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Here is some data from International Falls, Minnesota on the Canadian border.  Northern Minnesota has been a target by many environmentalists when it comes to documenting climate change because so much of the region is still wilderness and it was expected that this area of the country would warmer more and faster than many other parts of the lower 48.

The region has had some interesting trends in climate though, and a new cooling trend is becoming evident, especially during the summer growing season.

Here is the May-July period, or the first 3 months of our 4-5 month growing season.  You can see that the warming trend was clear during the 1970s and '80s, but has since flattened and temps have even declined somewhat.  Notice the unusual cold from 2004 and this year that was rather unprecedented.



Here is the most recent 6 month period (Feb-July) from 1948-2008.  Notice how much of an outlier 2008 has been compared to the past 30 years.  Also notice that while there was an obvious warming trend from the 1950s to the 1980s, since then there has been no obvious trend.



While it is clear that there isn't an obvious reversal in trends, it is clear that other natural climate variations are playing a bigger role than the most ardent Global Warming pushers would admit.