What global warming?, Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news84542296.html

http://www.physorg.com/news84542296.html

The average global termperature is lower than it was in 1998.

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2Scien...s/V9/N48/C2.jsp

Based on what data? Is the average global temperature higher than any years since 1998, if so how many? Was the year 2006 warmer than 15 of the past twenty years? On average of course. It is generally accepted that 1998 was a freakishly warm year by global standards...but what was the point of that statement? Do we not need to worry whether the southern ocean can retain more heat and CO2 than previously thought because global warming is a myth? I live in central ontario Canada, it is December 05, it hasn't snowed yet......

Ice on Mars is melting. Means sun's heating up.

Global warming is a farce.

I'm certain it's cold enough to snow, but it's still dry. Yet CO2 levels haven't dropped. What gives? Could it be a dried atmosphere has less water vapor (a much more significant and variable greenhouse gas than CO2) and so cold and dry tend to go together, like hot and humid?

Here in California we've been seeing record colds:

San Diego Hit With Dry Weather & Record Cold
http://www.kfmb.com/story.php?id=71869

(Sacrmento and Northern California)
People, Plants, Pests Suffer In Record Cold Temps
http://cbs13.com/topstories/local_story_334093936.html

And in the L.A. area, where I live it's been very cold also.

There was another article on this site stating that ocean temperatures have been dropping for a few years.

Yet, I've heard claims by some that a direct correlation with CO2 levels and temperatures has been found (yet any man-made component of CO2 over the last 100 years or so is seen as being not more than ~1/10,000th of the atmosphere).

Well CO2 is still inching its way up, while temperatures drop for years ... so what gives? So even assuming CO2 has an influence on global temperatures, it's minor and ultimately transitory as you can't maintain higher levels of CO2 without continually replacing losses and there are other factors that have a much more significant role on temperatures.

This can make people wonder what the motivation behind the CO2 hype is about ... I wish more people would think about this. The problem claimed isn't even over current temperatures (obviously noone could be claiming any harm from supposed global warming right now), but instead over worries about whether or not much higher temperatures could result in the future. So you don't have much of any legitimate current grievances. Then consider that not everyone in the world would necessarily like to see people try to make the world colder. So some people might believe they benefit, but there are costs to others. Now consider that out of all the many factors that can affect temperatures, CO2 at such a low level is claimed as being the primary concern (if we're going to limit ourselves to looking at greenhouse gases that can fluctate, water vapor has much more of an impact and can be altered by human actions as well) and then the benefits of seeing a slight return to higher CO2 level are almost totally ignored as well (more vegitation, and if it provides a warming influence, it could even delay the next Ice Age some, prehistoric times had much higher levels of CO2 and were apparently able to support life to such a greater extent that dinosaurs would likely die of starvation currently if they hadn't become extinct long ago) ... and then the biggest problem is that many people that if we could just create a global agency with an ability to monopolize control over our natural energy resources we'd actually be better off (I'm actually surprised Bush hasn't jumped on this idea already ... perfect excuse to invade Iran ... can't let them have independent nuclear power nor petroleum etc.).

And if you look at who the people are preaching global warming, it's the same old 'royal families' who just can't accept that there are people doing stuff without them being able to run the show (or at least skimming off the top).

This post has been edited by StevenA on Dec 5 2006, 09:13 PM

You've got the idea upside down. The burning of huge amounts of fossil fuels is increasing the atmospheric CO2, but the destruction of natural habitats is decreasing the biosphere's ability to remove it.
We have been extremely lucky that nature has been able to absorb more of our waste CO2 than expected. It's not about maintenance, we are overloading a finely balanced equilibrium.
If temperatures aren't increasing, then why are both of the polar ice caps shrinking? If we continue to ignore the warning signs we are headed for disaster.

The ten warmest years on record have all occurred within the last 14 years, and the warmest ever was 2005. It is no coincidence that Katrina happened that year. Please see the film "An Inconvenient Truth" and see what the consensus of scientists is saying about global warming. Face reality and do something positive about it. Naysayers never accomplish a thing.

Isn't that what I was saying? Natural energy reserves add additional organic material for life, whereas using existing vegitation (as in burning wood etc.) don't do this.

CO2 in itself isn't a problem and is beneficial to life in many ways. If the issue is temperatures, then consider that there's only a fraction of a percent change in temperatures to the Earth (relative to absolute zero) and you could likely address this more efficiently and directly by reflecting some of the solar energy back into space or keeping it from hitting the Earth in the first place, and not have to try to lower carbon levels (with questionable impact and larger costs across the globe).

CO2 isn't a long term problem anyway. Despite the claims, at least in the U.S., there's more vegitation now than there was hundreds of years ago. As CO2 increases, so does the rate that natural sinks absorb it, including plant growth.

If you fly across the country sometime, look at arid area where people have settled and you'll find agriculture and vegitation. Yes, you have things like logging, but at the same time even this industry is replacing older forests with newer ones that grow faster and absorb CO2 at the same time. It's ironic that many environmental policies encourage recycling organic materials when a landfill is a perfect way to put carbon back underground.

So nature can start out with an atmosphere like Venus with literally tens of thousands of times the CO2 levels we currently have (which are only about 1/3,000th of the atmosphere of which ~25% is considered attributed to human actions) and a molten surface to the Earth etc. and have life evolve from an atmosphere almost purely CO2 and then animals thrive with levels of CO2 almost 100 times higher than now, meanwhile the Earth continued to cool (the solid mantle is very thin ... the Earth is still cooling and it's ultimately a one way process) and then you can have massively destructive evens like asteroid impacts wiping out most the dinosaurs and releasing massive amounts of CO2 and you can find organisms living miles underground without sunlight or oxygen ... and that's a delicate system that can't tolerate a minute fraction of a percent change in CO2 levels over maybe 100 years?

There's a natural selection process that occurs and plants that consume CO2 at faster rates have a natural advantage when levels are higher, not to mention that additional areas in which plantlife can only live under borderline conditions will have a greater ability to be fertile as well.

Even ignoring the fact that many claims have been made that we'll run out of fossil fuels soon (how long has that statement been made), if you could somehow manage to maintain the current level of CO2 production for the next 100 years, you'd have ever greater and greater natural forces at work reducing those levels.

If the polar ice caps are shrinking to any considerable extent, why isn't there some obvious evidence of this on the shorelines? I've heard claims that if the polar ice caps melted that ocean levels would flood coastal cities but if you've been hitting the beach for the last few decades you wouldn't even notice anything.

There's no significant change in numbers or strengths of storms in the last century (if anything they were worse in the 50s) and no cities are flooding. The hype about a "runaway" greenhouse effect is bogus. We've already had CO2 levels many many times higher and the Earth still cooled and no amount of pleading with nature will reverse this.

To show you how insignificant an effect CO2 levels have on temperatures, I wish I could find a better one of these but here's a plot of prehistoric CO2 levels (basically they all show CO2 levels being much higher in the past):



Now we're at 1 currently (the scale is in multiples of current CO2 atmospheric densities), and it's claimed human actions have increased CO2 levels by ~25% ... so that would be an increase of 0.25 units on this graph. That's approximately 1/100th of the range of CO2 levels during this.

Anyway, like I said, if global temperatures are closely tied to CO2 levels and becoming too warm is a problem then after ~100 years of human influences and steadily increasing CO2, if the weather still seems about normal and we're still making record lows, then obviously there's a lot more to think about.

I've flown over several countries that might disagree with you.

• Monsoon rains have been largely absent from most of northern India.
• Not much of Bangladesh left above water.
• The Great Barrier Reef is disappearing due largely to increased water temperature.
• In Indonesia, the air is thick with the smoke from forests that have been burned for farmland.

That's personal experience.

I doubt that a bit of shrubbery in suburbs that were once grasslands or forrests will help much.

Get out and see the world sometime.

Why have the winds moved towards the pole? The answer is as simple as the ground beneath your feet. Earth's axis is not stable.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle

livescience.com/forcesofnature/050330_earth_tilt.html

"The Earth's axial tilt varies between 22.1° and 24.5°, with a 41,000-year period, and at present, the tilt is decreasing."

The common figure given for the tilt is 23.5 degrees. That figure is incorrect, in 2000, its mean value was about 23°26′21″ and it's less than that now.

Any proponent of human activity as the prime force in climate change, who ignores the much larger factors of the variability of the sun and the orbital mechanics of the Earth... well, they're not practicing good science.

Here's a project to keep people occupied for a while.

Calculate the total insolation hitting Earth, based on its cross-sectional area.

In otherwords, calculate the area of a circle the diameter of Earth, and multiply by 1370.

Why 1370? That's the solar constant in watts per square meter at Earth's average distance from the sun.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation

Then you'll have an idea just how much energy is constantly hitting this planet all the time, and possibly an appreciation for just how large the seemingly small (when presented in percentages rather than hard numbers) variances in solar output (due to sunspot cycles and other factors) actually are.

As that old song goes (before They Might Be Giants remade it) "The Sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic NUCLEAR FURNACE!"

Now where did I put that .98 AU long stick and the bag of marshmallows...

Anyone who ignores the billions of tons of carbon being dug or pumped out of the ground and burned and ignores the destruction of the world's carbon sinks is not practicing good science.

NotParker. Wrong again.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/s2772.htm

You can take both your feet from your Bush loving mouth now NP.

NotParker was talking GLOBAL TEMPS

You posted about US temps.

Even that is wrong based on your link:

An improved data set being developed at NCDC and scheduled for release in 2007 incorporates recent scientific advances that better address uncertainties in the instrumental record. Small changes in annual average temperatures will affect individual rankings. Although undergoing final testing and development, this new data set also shows 2006 and 1998 to be the two warmest years on record for the contiguous U.S., but with 2006 slightly cooler than 1998.

Finally you will notice from the graph that the THIRD warmest year was in the 30s.

OOPS.

And that although temps have risen for ~ 30 years this is following a 40 year trend of FALLING TEMPS.

Which is why the climate scientists who projected the falling temps to continue in the 70s to a NEW ICE AGE were wrong.

OOPS

Arthur

I read that we were actually supposed to be 'going into' an ice-age due to natural cooling, but we're not just cancelling that out - we are adding on top of it to produce a warming, which should be a cooling. The amount we are actually warming the planet, should therefore be far greater due to alot of the warming being countered by the natural cooling of the ice-age we were supposed to be going into.
If we had no natural cooling or warming of the planet, and could just see the amount our artificial warming is doing. I think we would see that it is far far more warming being done, than we are currently giving ourselves credit for.

That's my little hypothesis on global warming anyway

Only Arthur would try to suggest that the 1930s was the 3rd warmest! He wouldn't have suggested it if he wasn't so blinkered/biased:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environme...05_warmest.html 24 Jan 2006:

Try looking at the graph again. He is ignoring the simple fact that the graph has points for every year. He is simply looking at the peaks - not very scientific I must say!, but then he is trying to mis-lead as usual (just look back through some of my posts). All years since about 1997 have been warmer than the peak in the 1930s.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/s2772.htm
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/i...-1895-2006b.jpg


OOPS Arthur! (except that 'Oops' is more about accidental stuff, not deliberate mis-information).

Regards Smithy