Forget Climate Change

[Unwardil]

Okay, it doesn't matter to you but for anyone else interested the rise in CO2 usually lags behind the rise in temperature in prehistoric data. Anyone who shows you a graph where CO2 rise is always occurring first is trying to mislead you.

Um... You're sure about that?

Because... If the CO2 increase comes after the increase in temperature... Then surely it cannot be the Carbon Dioxide that is causing the temperature increase. That would make the CO2 an indicator, not a cause. So, just making sure you got that in the right order...

 

[Aught3]

Yes I'm sure, generally the temperature increase occurred first. Are you interested now?

 

[Unwardil]

Yes I'm sure, generally the temperature increase occurred first. Are you interested now?

So... Why then are so many scientists convinced that CO2 emmisions are the cause of the increased heat?

I mean, it makes perfect sense why the CO2 would follow an increase in temperature. It would change the ballance between photosynthetic life and none photo synthetic life, causing an increase in animal life and producing more CO2 from this process. There's probably other naturally occuring processes that produce CO2 which would benefit from an increase in average temperature. Again though, that would make CO2 an indicator of change, not a cause.

 

[Aught3]

Basically, natural cycles of the Earth and Sun cause periods of heating and cooling on the Earth. When a period of heating occurs carbon dioxide is released from natural stores and causes a positive feedback through the greenhouse effect. Further heating caused by the CO2 means more CO2 is released and the feedback continues until the natural cycle ends. As the temperature drops CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and returned to the sinks. This is why temperature increases first, followed by CO2 yet we can still say CO2 causes warming. Over the past few decades the Earth has been warming but this doesn't seem to correspond to any of the natural cycles that we know about. However, we do know that atmospheric CO2 is increasing and, because we know that increasing CO2 can lead to increasing temperatures, it is very likely that CO2 from our industry is the cause of the current warming trend.

Potholer54 has an excellent video on the subject:

 

[Unwardil]

No... The graph spikes up suddenly on the heating and then the CO2 follows years behind it. That doesn't add up at all and it doesn't make sense that such a weak greenhouse gas could have so great an effect on it's own either if it is simply caused by greenhouse effect.

Or rather, it doesn't seem compelling.

The effect I'd like explained in greater detail (links are fine here if you have good ones) is why, if CO2 is the driving... Feedback component... That it continues on being produced after the heating trend has stopped but before the temperature starts to decline.

I would interpret that as follows.

With rising temperatures causes natural processes to flip the carbon dioxide equation from loss to gain. This trend continues for as long as the period of heating continues and it is the heat that is driving the increased production of the CO2. Once the heating trend stops, then whatever was driving the CO2 emmisions gradually loses momentum and natural processes again start to suck up the CO2 faster than it is produced again.

That seems like the logical conclusion to me, but if there is evidence which explains why this isn't the case, I'd love to read it.

 

[Aught3]

The effect I'd like explained in greater detail (links are fine here if you have good ones) is why, if CO2 is the driving... Feedback component... That it continues on being produced after the heating trend has stopped but before the temperature starts to decline.

Because the temperature is still high. It's not until the temperatures fall that CO2 can be reabsorbed.

A nice summary here: http://www.newscientist.com/article...ing-the-link-to-global-warming.html?full=true

 

[Unwardil]

Um... No, overlap the graphs and the temperature is falling before the CO2 levels start to diminish. That's the bit that doesn't make sense.

If the heating occured, that set off the CO2 emmisions which then caused the heating trend to continue for a long time but eventually the earth ran out of CO2, well, greenhouse gases to dump into the atmosphere allowing for the temperature to stabalize and then ultimately fall, the feedback loop explination would be congruent with the data...

But that isn't what the data shows.

The data, well, the graphs posted here anyways, very clearly shows that long after the cooling trend has already started, the CO2 level is still rising. That seems like a major fly in the ointment to me, though, if there's a good explination for that, I'm all ears.

 

[Aught3]

Either I'm not understanding your question or you aren't understanding my explanation.

When the heating cycle switches to a cooling cycle the Earth's temperature starts to decrease all the CO2 in the atmosphere slows down the temperature drop. As the Earth becomes cooler it can reabsorb the CO2. In the same way that CO2 rise lags behind temperature increase, CO2 drop lags behind temperature decrease. Obviously, I'm simplifying this, there are many other factors at play, but this is the basic outline.

 

[Unwardil]

Well, I get the explination, but it doesn't fit with the graph.

Each heating period is much shorter than the much longer period of declining temperature. So, if the feedback is responsible for the continued warming, then, there would have to be a cooling event almost imediatly after the heating event in order for the graph to look like that.

Have they managed to identify a heating event that is always followed so quickly (in geological terms) by a reversing cooling event?

 

[Aught3]

Have they managed to identify a heating event that is always followed so quickly (in geological terms) by a reversing cooling event?

Milankovitch cycles.

 

[Unwardil]

But, the climate model looks pretty much the way you'd expect it to if the oliptical orbit was the only thing causing any effect and the Greenhouse gasses were doing nothing.

There's a disproportionate warming period, followed by a slower tappering cooling period, just like the earth spends more time further from the sun than closer to it. There descrepancy in there, but the graph more or less resembles an olyptical wave, which is just what you'd expect to see if the CO2 levels were having no effect on the climate at all.

 

[Aught3]

CO2 amplifies the normal warming effects. If CO2 had no effect then the temperature would not increase so much. Tbh, it seems like you have a lot to learn about this area. I can suggest a couple of popular level books if you are interested.

The Weather Makers - Tim Flannery (my fav)
Global Warming: The Complete Briefing - John T. Houghton
Storms of My Grandchildren - James Hansen (prob a little over dramatic, but then it is a serious issue)

 

[Th1sWasATriumph]

I'm of the opinion that concentrating on ecological "green" issues and cleaning up the environment, reducing pollution etc. is a far better idea than concentrating on anti climate change initiatives. However valid proof for climate change may be, I can't hep but cringe when I see the way it's approached. But generally cleaning up the planet would have exactly the same effect that anti CC initiatives would have, with the added benefit that it's somewhat more tangible in consequence and no-one can really argue with it.

A lot of people just don't WANT to believe that climate change is something attributable to human activity, and being faced with emotionally loaded sentiments about it just drives people away. But, as the OP said, it's incredibly hard to deny that pollution, destruction of landscapes/habitats etc., and general ecological fuckwittery is the direct result of human activity. And sorting those problems out would sort out, or help to sort out, CC in exactly the same fashion that current CC summits hope to achieve - plus we get clean air and grass and shit like that!

 

[AndromedasWake]

To anyone misunderstanding the mechanism for anthropogenic global warming or the dangers of CO2, Potholer54's videos are extremely clear and well produced. The entire playlist is here. ESSENTIAL VIEWING if you're even slightly unclear or remotely sceptical about the validity of climate science.

You should also be subscribed to greenman3610 and watch his frequent series illustrating how the majority of all AGW 'scepticism' is predicated on ignorance and/or dishonesty.

Lastly, I recommend putting RealClimate.org in your RSS reader.

We are not trying to brainwash you. Climate scientists are not part of a conspiracy or religion. I know several who are active in the field and share similar concerns to Triumph. It's a difficult situation, because in the current state of Not Getting Anything Done (tm) climate scientists are having to get louder and more panicky, which is perhaps only making things worse, but is at the very least making them seem desperate. The question is, if everything within your field of expertise tells you we're heading towards an unprecedented global disaster, and other experts are in very strong agreement with you, would you be desperate to solve it?

It's bad enough that scientists have to fight governments to make progress, but when significant proportions of the populations of influential nations are 'sceptical' because they're too lazy to investigate the science, and so untrusting of the consensus, it's understandable that scientists get a little desperate. I have to quote Giliell from earlier in the thread, because this cartoon summarises my feelings on the subject perfectly.

It's been posted already but I think this one asnwers the question completely:

 

[e2iPi]

A lot of people just don't WANT to believe that climate change is something attributable to human activity, and being faced with emotionally loaded sentiments about it just drives people away. But, as the OP said, it's incredibly hard to deny that pollution, destruction of landscapes/habitats etc., and general ecological fuckwittery is the direct result of human activity. And sorting those problems out would sort out, or help to sort out, CC in exactly the same fashion that current CC summits hope to achieve - plus we get clean air and grass and shit like that!

This is the problem when issues become politicized along polarizing lines in society. People who have no understanding of the science involved form an opinion based on their political ideology. Conservatives portray climate change as a hoax by "socialists" to destroy capitalism, liberals typically see conservatives as ignorant asshats who promote the interests of "big business" at the expense of the environment.
The truth and the solution lie somewhere in the middle. The need for business and economic development must be balanced with a healthy respect for how our actions will impact future generations (and in extreme cases, our current generation). Until both sides can leave the political posturing behind and have a rational and informed discussion of the issues, no progress will be made and we will be stuck in the current quagmire until a true crisis, either environmental or economic, forces rash, reactionary policies into place which will ultimately exasperate the situation.
As an avid outdoors-man (outdoor-person for the political correctness nazis out there) I support just about any efforts to keep the environment clean and everyone agrees that clean air is preferable to smog. I certainly agree with the OP that since pollution is a much less emotionally charged issue, it is definitely an avenue worth pursuing.

-1

 

[scalyblue]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm

When the Earth comes out of an ice age, the warming is not initiated by CO2 but by changes in the Earth's orbit. The warming causes the oceans to give up CO2. The CO2 amplifies the warming and mixes through the atmosphere, spreading warming throughout the planet. So CO2 causes warming AND rising temperature causes CO2 rise.

related video

 

[Nogre]

First of all, CO2 isn't a leading factor in the creation of smog. I don't think it's a factor at all come to think of it.

I've never heard anyone come even close to stating this idea. It's widely accepted that cars, coal plants, and other things that burn fossil fuels are the main contributer to smog in major cities. What else would it possibly be? The butterflies?! Normally, I would present evidence, but I think that this point is well accepted enough that the burden of proof lies on you, as no one on any end of the spectrum denies the basic facts about air pollution.

Once again, I don't care if you understand the science of climate change or not. But anyone that's been in Salt Lake on a day with high pressure either agrees with clean air efforts or is insane. It's one of the few places where you can see all the crap we're pouring into the atmosphere all concentrated into one area. It's called an inversion. In fact, I'll save you a trip. Here are some pictures:

Normally, I think the valley is truly beautiful, both the mountains and the city. But some people are so obsessed with their political stance against the prevailing scientific opinion that they're able to ignore this. They're able to ignore such obvious destruction of the planet's beauty. :cry:

 

[Unwardil]

Yes, Cars and Coal plants create other bi-product of thier combustion other than CO2 and it's those gases, not CO2 at all which contribute to smog.

But we can make cars burn cleaner and we can supercharge coal plants so that they actually reconstitute all the smog creating gasses into solid waste instead of gaseous waste and that waste has many other industrial uses, and that whole process actually makes the coal plants more efficient.

Now then, as for the mechanism that contributes to the amplified effects of warming.

I get it.

Heat radiation from the surface is reflected back into the atmophere which excites certain molecules in the atmosphere. Same way as a blanket keeps you warm really.

Here's what I also know.

Water vapour is one of the most powerful and effective greenhouse gases on the planet. It's also got the fastest and most erratic cycle of any gas on the planet. It's so much more powerful than CO2 as to make it seem almost irrelevant. So yes, there clearly is a feedback heating effect happening in that graph, but it's consistent with how water works, not how CO2 works.

 

[Aught3]

Water vapour is one of the most powerful and effective greenhouse gases on the planet. It's also got the fastest and most erratic cycle of any gas on the planet. It's so much more powerful than CO2 as to make it seem almost irrelevant. So yes, there clearly is a feedback heating effect happening in that graph, but it's consistent with how water works, not how CO2 works.

The correlated measurement is for CO2, if you have a correlation for water vapour I'd be interested in seeing it.

Climate myths: CO2 isn't the most important greenhouse gas

 

[Unwardil]

So... Your video proves my point actually. Water has a feedback heating effect... A very powerful one at that and have a much greater effect on climate much faster than any other gas. It's already been shown by the core samples that CO2 isn't the forcing event in historical heating events either, otherwise the increased CO2 would have to preceed the increase in temperature.


Obviously, there's no way to measure atmospheric water vapour from core ice samples for, hopefully obvious reasons, so unfortunatly it's all speculation unless someone can tie in local climate effects now with a computer model that would demonstrate the effects in the past as well to a much more accurate degree than the current models which cannot account for the climate in the very very far past, such as the cambrian and, well all the other dinosaury time periods who's names I can't recall off hand, where the concentration of CO2 varried far more than it does in more recent pre-history and the temperature was even more eratic. It's only geologically recently that the earth has settled down into this heating and cooling pattern, or, such is my understanding, again, please correct me if that's a misaprehension.


I get the dangers of gasses which permeate to the higher atmospheric levels, but, the further they get from the earth's surface, the less effect they're going to have. Not for the same reasons as water, which freezes and becomes a reflector instead of an insulator, but simply because the further you get from something, the less heat radiation reaches that far.


The only way I can explain the way I see it is that During an Ice age, there's very little moisture in the atmosphere because it's all locked up in Ice. This means there'd be no precipitation and the glaciers would basically reach a point at which they just couldn't grow any more from lack of water to freeze. Obviously, there's still water in the oceans, but it's at a much lower level and the whole thing just reaches a point of relative stability.

Then, the earth's orbit swings around and puts more heat on the glaciated part of the globe, causing lots of melting and runoff and more importantly lots of water vapour. This trend continues because of the way glaciers work. They always push down towards the equator and so as they do, the sun fights back and melts them and you'd see lots of increase in the water vapour levels around the equatorial regions, pushing this warming trend even further through greenhouse effect.

So that goes on seasonally for a while and the glaciers retreat back towards the polls, but, meanwhile, new life is moving in to fill the gaps left by the retreating glaciers. You'd get loads of it because it would be a barren landscape that was absolutely perfect for new plant life. Now, new trees and vegetation are initially carbon neutral entities. They breath Carbon, but they also use it to build thier structures, so the end result is a neutral equation. Animal life however, isn't like this at all however, it always produces more carbon than it sequesters, because it gets it's carbon from eating plants.

Now, animal life can grow and reproduce at a very abundant rate, much more so than plant life and with the new habitats being created from the glacial retreat, you'd get loads of it moving in to fill the new niches. All this animal life creates abundant amounts of CO2 and methane and all that Jazz, far more so than the new plant life can sequester through respiration. (This is also going on in the oceans too, as with the glacial melt, the ocean levels are rising and creating new ocean habitats in the process.)

So this trend continues while the solar heating continues to be high at the equator, but as it returns to a more normal angle, life keeps on filling in all the gaps left by the glaciers. This continues for 800 years which is about how long it takes for complex ecosystems to mature and reach equilibriumat which point, the environment begins to sequester carbon dioxide once again.

So why then doesn't the earth imediatly become an Iceball again? Well, because now, more of the water is in liquid form and can easilly become gas and liquid on and off on and off all it likes. This effect slows the cooling of the planet, but eventually, it all starts to get locked up in Ice again and when the earth hits the other side of it's orbit and the pols start to recieve next to no sun at all, the cycle starts again. Animal life starts to die off or be displaced by the encroaching glaciers and the Ice forming aids in sequestering the gases out of the atmosphere once again but by traping the gas in Ice and by crushing the vegetation and turning it into coal.

But at no point in there is the CO2 having any effect on the climate.

Unfortunatly, because of the rate of the water vapour cycle and because it self evidently doesn't get locked in Ice formation, it's imposible to substantiate that model without simply observing modern atmospheric trends and extrapolating it backwards and seeing if it works or not making the entire theory totally unscientific which is why if an acredited climate scientist told me exactly why they know my model is wrong, then I'd believe him, because I'm not a scientist and I know this theory is nothing but almost pure speculation and because I trust the scientific method to produce tangible results.

Anyways, basically, I'd just like to know why my model is wrong.