Why I think Global Warming is for real
By pliny Comments (235) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Against the flow of recent diaries, this one sets out and defends the basic mechanism and observations of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). I've been chipping in to various discussions, and I wanted to gather the arguments and some basic references here.
I just want to discuss the basics - I don't want to take up space to go into consequences or remedies. So nothing here about glaciers, polar bears, SUV's or Kyoto.
The basic proposition can be summed up in one sentence:
We mine and burn fossil carbon - CO2 in air traps heat - the earth warms
Each of these steps are expanded on below:
We mine and burn fossil carbon
Well, we do. I'll be talking about carbon flows, in terms of gigatons C (billion tons). The question then is - where can the burnt carbon go?
Most stays in the air. The graph below is from here.
In the bottom part, total flux means net gain by the atmosphere. This graph stops at about 2000 - burning has continued to rise, and I believe the provisional figure for 2006 is 8 Gt. That is new carbon in the environment - it had been buried for millions of years.
So not all CO2 stays in the atmosphere, and the losses seem to be mainly to the ocean (2 Gt/yr) and the land biosphere (about 1 Gt/yr). CO2 in the ocean is not harmless, as it is quite acidic.
Here is a diagram (expanded here) of the carbon cycle (1980's data). Key numbers are the amount of C in the atmosphere (750 Gt) and land plant biosphere (~600Gt) which are constantly interchanging.
CO2 in air traps heat
This is well established science, starting with Tyndall in the 1860's. Energy radiated in at frequencies about that of light pass freely through the atmosphere. For heat balance, there has to be about equal energy radiated back, and this is at much lower frequency, where gases like water vapor and CO2 absorb it. Some is then re-radiated back to Earth.
This greenhouse effect is very important to us - without it the earth would be about 30C cooler (an ice age is about 6-8C). It is hard to put an exact figure on what proportion the various gases contribute, because their effects are interdependent. But water vapor is most significant, then CO2, then methane and nitrous oxide. People sometimes say - why pick on CO2 rather than water, if it is a lesser effect? The simpler answer is that we are increasing CO2, and not doing anything overtly to water. The more complex version is that CO2 heating does increase water vapor, augmenting the heating effect. This may be partly countered by cloud formation. Atmospheric models build this in.
The trapping of heat increases with CO2. It is estimated that the extra heat flows that we get from gasses added in the industrial age are: 1.42 W/m2 CO2, 0.48 W/m2 methane, 0.15 W/m2 nitrous oxide. You would expect that to increase temperatures, although it is harder to calculate how much.
The earth warms
Warming was thus predicted in the 70's, but at that stage the record wasn't clear. It is becoming clearer now. Here is a plot of "instrumental" (mainly thermometer) global average temperatures since records began (more here).
You'll see the warming isn't even. There are a lot of other processes going on in the earth, of which El Nino is just one, and they are additional to the steady heat flux from CO2.
There is a suggestion that the sun may be radiating more, which might explain part of the results. This is based on recent observations that there is more solar flux during sunspot maxima. Pre-satellite solar measurements aren't good enough to pick up an increase in radiation, but sunspots have increased in the pre-satellite decades, and some scientists infer that radiation did too. However, the likely fluxes are not as large as the CO2 effect. Rodney Vierek, at NOAA is a protagonist of this solar view, but he puts it in perspective thus:
Many scientists find that these correlations are convincing evidence that the sun has contributed to the global warming of the 20th century. Some say that as much as 1/3 of the global warming may be the result of an increase in solar energy. So, while it is becoming clear that human activity is changing the climate today, solar activity may also be contributing to climate change and probably changed the climate in the past.
There is much other evidence of warming (glaciers etc), which I won't go into; as evidence, it is only important if you don't believe the measured temperature plots. In summary, the temperature rise is in itself notable, but more so as it was strongly predicted as a consequence of CO2 rise from burning fossil fuels, which has happened.
and say it flat out in the title in a form normal people will understand. Don't try and fool people while you try and persuade.
You believe man, not the sun, is responsible for warming the earth.
Do you fear being added as a party defendant (along with Al Gore) to the defamation lawsuit I have brought on behalf of The Sun, Plaintiff, in the Inter-Galactic Milky Way District Court, Earth Division?
Exhibit A
MMGW Church disciple, Bill Clinton's scare line: "We could lose 50 feet of Manhattan Island in 50 years.
FACT: More than half of the eastern seaboard, including half of the State of South Carolina, was under the Atlantic Ocean before Man, much less Chevrolet, occupied Planet Earth.
go figure
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
I don't think anyone believes "man heats the earth" rather than the sun... man complicates things which at this point in time may be causing a natural system to get out of whack. Is that clearer?
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
OK, you posted a bunch of clap-trap. So just what do you suggest we do about it? Please address the impact on the US economy and also address just exacatly how you propose to get China and India (and France and Germany for that matter) do something.
Until you do that, this blog is a meaningless waste of bandwidth.
___________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"...
Senior Writer
If you just want to believe in and live your life in accordance with the tenets of AGW, Buddism, Astrology, or anything else, I have no problem with that. It's not until you try to force your "solutions" on me that I really start to care.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
Someone finally posts something sensible about global warming here and you guys immediately freak out about "The Economy", that's even worse clap-trap.
Whether or not we can or should do *anything* about this is subject to debate, and if we can do anything about it what should that be? This is not a plot to damage the economy, or undermine capitalism. If there is indeed a problem (and I think there is - it's about the planet's systems, not just "global warming") then it's business that will provide the best solutions. Ask yourself why so many companies are "going green" - it's not just PR.
Posting a bunch of statistics that are arguable at best is not "something sensible". It's an attempt to make a perceived "problem" a real one so that the country can be bullied into taking some kind of ill-conceived "action" to save the planet.
The first that is subject to debate is whether there is a problem. That's far from the slam dunk you are trying to pass off.
Second, if there is some sort of problem, there's no realistic estimation of the magnitude of it.
Third, assuming a problem, how should we (as in the world) go about fixing it? And what with the fix alternatives cost?
Fourth, no one has tossed out any mechanism of enforcement for enforcing the fix. The US lives up to its treaty commitments, the same can't be said for the rest of the world. Just look at the backpedaling of every country who signed the Kyoto Accords.
Fifth, with respect to finding "market solutions" I have no qualms or problems with that at all. As long as the "solutions" are not either defined or driven by the government. I do not want the govt deciding where investment dollars should be spent, they are beyond bad at it, and I don't want "incentives" beyond the normal market incentives for new products and technologies.
And I really do believe that a major unwritten agenda point for AGW advocates IS the destruction of the US economy. For starters, refer to Jacques Chirac's recent comments about carbon taxes being used to level the economic playing field between the US and Europe.
___________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"...
Senior Writer
Provide evidence of your own, whether it counters what he brings to the table or has to do with his data more directly (like the timeframe of collection and/or how it was collected).
He specifically stated in his opening paragraph that he wished to discuss AGW, NOT what we can do about it or the effects of doing or not doing anything, but instead whether it exists at all.
So far all you are doing is sounding just like the "scientists" who shout down those of their fellows who don't agree with them on AGW.
Debate his points.
Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you:
Jesus Christ and the American G. I.
One died for your soul; the other for your freedom.
His points are irrelevant. They may even be true, but that doesn't make them any less irrelevant. The comment you point to about his not having "solutions" just reinforces how irrelevant his points are.
My point is this. Let's assume for the moment he's right and we are warming the planet. So what? Making the case for that is beyond pointless unless you can do a number of things. The first is to produce an economic model of the result of doing nothing. Haven't seen that yet. The next would be to offer some possible solutions based on current technology. Haven't seen that yet. Then perhaps a model of how countries like China, India and France are going to be coerced into taking action. Nobody ever wants to talk about that one.
Heck, I will freely grant that the earth is getting warmer. End of story. I am nowhere near ready to agree that people are causing it. And I am certainly not ready to destroy the US economy to fix it.
So I come back to: You're absolutely right pliny. So what?
___________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"...
Senior Writer
Let's ask the MMGW disciples at what precise moment the earth will begin to cool? When this era began?
I will not concede that we are in a global warming trend, man-made or not. The earth has existed for eons, with its warming and cooling eras being eons long.
I wonder if cancer would have been cured by now if these scientists were less political?
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
I don't know enough and the scientists are still arguing about it.
That's why I was glad enough to see a thread debating the evidence for once as opposed to just trashing the people on one side or another.
There is no point coming up with solutions unless you know that there is a problem in the first place.
Let's finish that debate first. And both sides need to be publishing their evidence and figuring out who is right.
Then we can get on to the causes of the problem.
Next comes whether we should do anything about it.
And finally What we do about it.
As of yet, IF there even is a problem hasn't been settled yet.
Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you:
Jesus Christ and the American G. I.
One died for your soul; the other for your freedom.
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
Man made is the problem of speaking....and your chart only shows a 1 degree celsius difference in temps since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850....
...read Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years from Singer.
The CO2 is manmade - see the first graph. The heat flow produced by the CO2 (and other manmade GHG) is about 2 W/m2. That has to have consequences. Now we're seeing the warming.
again...read the book. The heat flow+CO2 connection is not proven, some have inferred it, but have failed to fully link the two....and CO2 would have an effect...it would act as a fertilizer and cause greening when coupled with the higher temps.
You are very likely seeing warming that is the normal result of the global climate cycle.
Global warming probably won't lead to more plant growth. Most plant growth is limited by water rather than CO2, and GW will cause drying in many places that now support vegetation.
I believe the heat flow-CO2 linkage is very strong, and can be rather precisely quantified. It is a consequence of things that can all be measured (gas properties, solar spectra, gas concentrations).
But the linkage is not that strong. CO2 is not anywhere close the most important greenhouse gas. Water vapor and methane are much more important gasses. The sun is the *the* driving force of global warming. No sun = no heat.
Look at the facts:
The claims about the hockey stick are untrue. The claims about the collapse of the Gulf Stream are bs. The claims Antarctica are shrinking are false. The claims that it is hotter than ever are false. The graphs that erased the deieval warming trend are lies.
The legs that AGW stands on keep getting sawn off, yet you believers still believe.
Why?
in sequence. I've said water vapor has the greatest effect, that we don't affect it directly, but may create positive feedback through CO2 warming. Methane is important, but less than CO2 - the radiation absorbed is about 1/3 of the "new" CO2, and much less than total CO2.
I can't dispute "no sun=no heat"
The hockey stick calculations have been repeated many times since Mann's original paper - always with much the same result. I don't know why you think the Gulf stream claims are wrong, but it's rather a side issue. Antarctica is certainly visibly losing large blocks of ice. I haven't seen any quantified results claiming higher temperatures (than now) for the last million years. We could have a debate about medieval warming, but I'd need more details about where you're coming from. There's no doubt there was North Atlantic warming, but it doesn't seem to have bee global. I think GW has a lot of legs left.
For an overview of where it currently stands, there's a recent article in the WSJ by the journalist who originally brought the issue to prominence. He puts it in reasonable perspective, and it's far from completely discredited.
The bottom line is that many other people have done similar modelling to that originally done by Mann, and the curves look much the same. The graph of recent results has been shown below by Joliphant; just two of those ten curves are Mann's results. It's an interesting exercise to try to pick them.
has been thrashed to death, so I won't go on about refereed scientific journals etc. The main thing is that, as I say, many other calculations of the same period have now been published by different authors, so the hockey stick picture is no longer dependent on Mann's results, faulty or not.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
the calculation of the Earth's diameter by Eratosthenes. He was a few hundred kilometers out. Does that make all subsequent calculations "fake but accurate"?
In that it doesn't help your point if you use false arguments to make it.
But I am glad you brought it up. Eratosthenes is one of my favorite natural philosophers and the contrast between him and Mann is profound. Eratosthenes came up with a method of measuring the world that he checked as best he could against error. He then made plain and public his methods. Mann came up with a way of generating a result he wanted and then did the best he could to hide his data and methods.
Eratosthenes was a scientist before the field had truly begun. Mann is a charlatan in the age of science.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I don't think I agree about Mann, but what about the others who have similar results? Are they all charlatans? What is your basis for thinking so?
So you can have the last reply on this sub subject.
My guess is that the answer lies more in the realm of psychology than atmospheric physics. There are IDEAS that can reshape a field. They may not be correct or productive but once they are in place thats what people talk about and they have power to change the way people do things. The Copenhagen interpretation of QM is a good example. Even today people speak of observers affecting experiments and the universe looking like a big thought. On the evolution side you have gradualists vs the punctuated evolution promoters. On geology and cosmology you have had gradualists arguing with catastrophe promoters for forever.
Manns hockey stick changed the argument in climate change. People knew if they went against it it would not benefit them. The people that supported it won't very well call their own work into question. If this bursts your bubble sorry its the way science works. Its unpleasant but so.
I apologize for not being able to fully flesh out the next part but space and time do not permit. You can take a look at the history of cosmology and physics in the last century for examples of paradigm shifts. Both have undergone several. Unfortunately physics currently looks like its about to take a shift towards religion and thats kind of sad.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
fish, seas, plants, and shrimp
Living on an island beach
mix me a Daiquiri
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
Here's my poetic effort:
The water shines clear
on the earth so dear
too bad I'm dead
Osama got me in bed
Yours is definitely more graceful though.
McIntyre and McKitrick pointed out a normalisation error in the application of principal components analysis in a particular paper by Mann. They were probably right, although I think they exaggerated its effect. The error is in the calculations; it is perfectly correctable, and there is no reason to expect that other authors would have made it.
the error is disregarding enormous amounts of information that point to the 1500 year cycle of climate variation, with higher temperatures at times when no man made CO2 was present.
The problem is that the study was an example of GIGO.
Where do you get that from? It's not said in the link you provided. What was there was this statement from McIntyre and McKitrick:
The particular “hockey stick” shape derived in the MBH98 proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components
Again, I don't endorse that, but it doesn't include anything about 1500 year cycles (in fact Mann was dealing with a 500 year period). And of the things they complain of - poor data handling is something not everyone does, obsolete data can be updated (and there is lots of new data), and the PCA issues I have mentioned.
Read the book
http://www.amazon.com/Unstoppable-Global-Warming-Every-Years/dp/07425511...
My guess is if you read this book, which was written by an actual climatologist...not a former English major turned Government grad, you will have very little to refute his hypothesis.
The point that climate apocalypse scares and scams are ages old entertainment for humans.
The point that climatologists are batting .000 for predicting anything. That this AGW movement is essentially religious in nature, non-falsifiable, and, as you deomnstrate so incredibly well, faith based.
You still believe sincerely and whole heartedly, inspite of every claim being shown to be false.
Sea levels are not rising. Just this summer the IPCC came out and said the Gulf Stream was not going to end.
You have been snookered, if hyou really are someone serious about fact based critical thinking.
the most recent info I saw. (think it was Scientific American which is very pro global warming) showed that in ice core samples CO2 seemed to rise AFTER warming periods began.
Also, as to your assumption that plant growth will not increase after warming, I find that hard to believe. There are dry belts, yes, but most carbon sequestration comes from sea plants which will certainly increase if the seas warm. Now there are problems with dead areas due to an increase in anaerobic plants (red tides etc. ) but green plankton will most certainly increase.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
Yes, there has been much study of the heat/CO2 sequence in the very interesting ice-core data, and I think you are right. All that implies is that past warmings following ice ages don't seem to be CO2 driven. This one is different; the source of CO2 is one that has never operated before.
I don't think that CO2 sequestration in the ocean comes from sea plants. The diagram I showed says something about that. I believe it is mostly just dissolved CO2. I'm not sure that sea plant mass increases with temperature - my understanding is that cool waters carry more - but I could be wrong.
The diagram I showed says only 3 Gt C in marine organisms, althoug I must admit that seemed rather small.
Originally came from the atmosphere. Coal was peat, Oil dinosaurs and plants.
How is what we are doing different than what put it there originally ?
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
for one. It was deposited over many millions of years; where digging it up over centuries.
But more critically, Jurassic Park looked great, but would you want to live there? Or more seriously, could a modern agriculture system that has to sustain five billion people still work in that environment.
I was willing to buy real estate there. Of course the insects are bigger here.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
And I do hope you can do more than cut-n-paste other people's stuff.
1- volcanos have and will continue to be able to put more CO2 higher in the atmosphere more quickly and in larger quantities than humans.
2- Where the CO2 comes from is not really significant, unless you think old carbon based CO2 is somehow magic.
Since the evidence is that CO2 levles rise hundreds of years after warming, if the records are even trust worthy, then it is clear that the CO2 increases do not cause run away heating.
Wake up. Think
On volcanic CO2, Wikipedia says this:
Volcanic activity now releases about 130 to 230 teragrams (145 million to 255 million short tons) of carbon dioxide each year.[6] Volcanic releases are about 1% of the amount which is released by human activities.
although they don't seem too sure, and the figure they quote is 2-3% of human activity. Whatever it is, we had reached some sort of equilibrium.
It's not where CO2 comes from that is significant, but the fact that there is a relatively small amount in circulation between atmosphere and biosphere (with some exchange with the sea) and fossil carbon is added to it, in ways that we can't currently reverse.
The thermal runaway theory actually doesn't incolve CO2 at all, just water. The idea is that you get to a stage where each extra ton of water evaporated traps enough heat to evaporate more than a ton of water - a bit like neutrons multiplying in a nuclear explosion. Where CO2 comes in is that global warming might push us into such a region. It's highly speculative. The positive feedback (without runaway) is also suggested as a mechanism for coming out of an ice age. Again its initiation needn't involve CO2.
I fell for the C/CO2 tonnage trap. Wikipedia is correctly quoting about 1% of human emission of CO2.
When a big volcano goes off, it will inject vastly more CO2 into the atmosphere.
Once again, deal with the issue:
AGW is a perfect example of how often climatologists are wrong. They have a .000 predictive ability. Until the climatolgists claim, accept responsibility and explain their improvement since they declared the ice age of the 1970's the heating crisis of the 1930's or the ice age of the 1890's, they have nothing to offer today.
Additionally, the IPCC report is setting out to edit data to make sure it does not conflict with their conclusion.
They are not doing science.
Wake up.
Think.
Yes, it isn't so much yet. The problem is what it to come. China and India currently produce than 20% of our current per capita output of CO2. So it's quite likely that the global rate will double and double again.
China and India?
___________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"...
Senior Writer
and I don't have wonderful answers. Warming will affect all of us, including the Chinese and Indians (particularly). The difficulty of the problem doesn't mean that it isn't happening, and doesn't have to be faced.
The outcome will limit our economy and theirs, but so will the alternative of unchecked global warming. We'll eventually opt for whatever is the lesser evil.
this debate is nothing more than mental masturbation.
___________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"...
Senior Writer
The total supply of carbon-based fossil fuels in the world is limited. When we've burned it all up, then we'll start using the next more-expensive alternative. At that point, your problem is solved. No more carbon emissions.
If that's not soon enough for you (and you wouldn't mind becoming a billionaire), then just find us an alternative that is cheaper than carbon (without subsidies) and doesn't require a massive transition. But you better hurry. Some incredibly smart people are already hard at work on it.
If global warming is real (whether or not it's manmade), then when the effects start showing up (assuming they're noticeable), people will do what we've always done. We'll adapt.
If that's too hard and short-sighted, then you have yet another alternative: get out of here and hit the campaign trail: you've got about 300 million people who need to be persuaded to stop driving to work and heating their homes.
Sir Nicholas Stern, who is no global warming kook, sought to quantify in his report the economic effects of inaction. He spoke in terms of a twenty percent drop in global GDP as the cost of doing nothing. I think you're right that we'll adapt, and I hope that we can correctly find the point where the cost of action balances the cost of inaction. Given the large number of uncooperative nations and players involved, I'm not overly hopeful though.
So finally someone comes clean about why the whole GW thing requires immediate action- it's all about the money!
Don't worry about a 20% drop in global GDP, pliny. US GDP dumped more than that in the first four years of the Great Depression. It sucked, but we got through it.
The more I hear from the people who honestly believe the science, the more convinced I am that, on a risk-adjusted basis, GW is not worth losing sleep over.
We would have a bigger astronomy budget. We had a 10 megaton atmospheric burst last century. The world was lucky it was in the middle of Siberia.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
A drop of 20% GDP if we do nothing?? How much do we cut back our GDP to keep it from dropping 20%? What if we cut it back by 10%? Would that be enough to keep it from dropping 20% later when it's really too hot to work?
it won't get so hot you can't work.
___________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"...
Senior Writer
If you believe the world will end via climate apocalypse, it will hurt the economy.
It is used toilet paper.
Please put it where it bleongs.
The actual indicators point to an overall improvement to our quality of life if warming occurs, not a diminishing. Plant yeilds will rise, cold weather, which kills far more than heat will lessen. Economies will not be crippled, but rather some areas of the world that are now stunted will gain economies.
I opt for those who believe in man-made global warming to 1) Prove that it exists (they can infer all they want...but proof is the standard here) and 2) Prove that warming will have a negative impact on the U.S.
I have a solution to the global warming problem. We deliver a massive Nuclear attack to India, China, Indonesia, and all of the middle east. That way nuclear winter comes in and counters global warming. also, China and India cannot further pollute the atmosphere, and we get rid of the Islamo fascist threat all in one stroke.
Brilliant!
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
"double and double again"....that would be four degrees.
Your 1 degree is since the Little Ice Age.
Ice Age...think about it.
believe that climate is not cyclical, which the evidence suggests that it is. We will have another global cooling...that is unarguable...it will not continue to get hotter just because it it now.
is the transfer of carbon from deep deposits to the atmosphere. There is about 200Gt more of carbon in circulation than there ever has been for many millions. That's about a third of what the atmosphere held before we started mining. And if we double that and double again, it's a very different world.
yet, to stop mining. And with Chinese and Indian demand coming on stream, an eventual quadrupling of usage rate is easily possible. Even if we kept the rate constant, the amount of CO2 will just go on rising.
a matter of research, it's a matter of what we decide to do. From the carbon cycle diagram I showed, there is about 3000 Gt of coal known. We've mined about a twentieth (these figures are rough). If (as blackhedd suggests above) we dig up the rest and burn it, we'll be putting about twenty times more carbon in the atmosphere than we have so far. Will we do that? No researcher can tell you that.
If we have so much more CO2 in the air because we have been burning things, they why isn't the level of oxygen on the planet dropping? It only stands to reason, if you destroy the rain forests and pollute the seas which both bring oxygen, and at the same time burn so much fossil fuels as to have an impact on the climate, then there has to be a shortage of oxygen imminent.
Oh wait! I might have just given them their new scare tactic!
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
CO2 has risen about 120 ppm. Oxygen should then have dropped by about 120 ppm. But it constitutes about 200000 ppm. The drop wouldn't be noticed.
supposition on your part. Sorry, that is just not good enough. Too many on your side of the debate (a debate I might add they have errantly labeled as ended)are asking for changes to our nation which would hamstring our economy with no promise of any real impact.
You keep throwing out ideas like doubling....twenty times more carbon...etc.
PUOSU
If CO2 is the cause of global warming why then do you have consistently increasing CO2 in the top graph. In the temperature graphs you have two thirty year periods of decreasing temperature. Also at no point on the graph is man not putting co2 into the atmosphere.
Sorry thats not demonstrative. All you can show with those is that its hotter than it was 200 years ago. Seeing as we were in a period called the little ice age then thats not surprising.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I used in a previous post was seasonal warming. Like AGW, it is the response of a complex environment to a consistent forcing term (growing sunlight into the atmosphere in spring). It's on a faster time scale. Day to day, week to week, you get irregular temperature rises, but the persistent forcing eventually gets us to summer.
The temperature rise alone is perhaps not demonstrative, although it is notable. It is the temperature rise coupled with the knowledge of the strongly predicted heat flux that clinches the case for me.
Well, I'm not - not by a long shot.
So perhaps you can explain this to me - seeing as how it's reasonably well known that temperatures on earth have fluctuated about some "normal" temperature since, well, forever, what precisely was causing those temperature fluctuations in the past?
And why, other than that you've been able to statistically correlate a physically plausible phenomena to it, do you not suspect the same precise mechanisms are at work today?
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So libs, how's that Congressional Resolution to end The War™ coming along?
of temperature fluctuation was mentioned by Vierek in the quote I gave. Solar radiation does seem to vary, and if it is linked to the sunspot fluctuations that have been seen for 300 years or so, then it seems to be just a fluctuation between limits. We've seen sunspots go down to almost nothing - they can't go lower. True, they could go higher.
Otherwise, we don't know, and there does seem to be an instability in the system, as indicated by the long-term data we now have from Ice-cores which quantifies what was happening during Ice Ages. The instability may well be a result of the role of water vapor in the greenhouse effect, providing positive feedback. This is not so comforting, because it leads to the concern about thermal runaway in a markedly hotter world. Then we all fry.
Your data is based on several discrete points taken at a finite number of places around a very large, moving, and constantly changing principally closed system. Said closed system is in a more-or-less elliptical orbit around an uncontrolled fusion reaction. From this, you are convinced that we're doing barely measurable (as is CO2 atmospheric content) things to this reasonably closed system that are enhancing the effects of the large fusion reaction - while said fusion reaction is more-or-less assumed to be constant - and we claim to know precisely how it works, what it emits, etc and that dangit we need to do something.
OK, good for you.
Here's where I'm coming from: I've not seen a single piece of data that tells me I need to be concerned that "we all fry" any time soon, or that if we are there is anything we can do to stop or slow it, or that (given the alternative of an ice age) we would even wish to.
And I've not seen anything that gives me any comfort that the proposed "solutions" are not worse than the "problem", regardless.
And just so you know, I'm a tree hugger.
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So libs, how's that Congressional Resolution to end The War™ coming along?
The CO2 concentration from man does not explain why we were at similar temperature levels in the 1300's and the first century. Read the roman accounts of Britain's climate.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
having to translate at school Caesar's first unfavorable impressions of Britain, but I would like more specific links or references to roman comments on the climate. You first pointed me to this site, which has temperature reconstructions of the recent past - all show global temperatures less than the present.
The black line is the measured temperature and is the data from the temp graph you use. The other lines are individual reconstructions using proxies.
You can only compare temperatures to each other on the same line not from one line to the other. If you could compare temps on different lines you could say the global temperature was 8 different things at the same time.
So pick any of the lines and trace it back they all tell the same story a thousand years ago and at other points it was just as hot as now.
Here you go its not online but you might try your local library
http://www.winelandsofbritain.co.uk/book.htm
This details the history of viticulture in britain going back to the roman times. Something that is just begining to be marginally possible again thanks to new hybrid grapes (succesfull crops 3 seasons out of 10)
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
The historical record for the Roman era.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
...the Byzantines notwithstanding, you probably need to hear from different people.
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
I missed that he was talking about 800 years ago not the 2000 I was.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
AGW does not explain the past. They are only selling fear about the future.
That is why they have to suppress meteorlogists and climatologists who do not believe as they are supposed to.
The fact that Antarctica is growing. That the CO2 budget this thread author so carefully copies is fundamentally flawed is over looked.
AGW is a religious movement, where the environment is god.
Is how dishonest you are when you have to ignore the past.
Your models don't explain squat about the past. the temps fluctuated about as much as they do now pre-indsutry.
the other point that is so annoying is that in the 1970's we had the same people claiming without doubt that a new ice age had already begun. In the 1930's the climatologists of the day *knew* the world was heating up. And in the 1890's, the ice age.
People have loved talking about scary weather since the time of Noah.
The only difference between then and now is that instead of an angry God destroying mankind, we have Gaia herself destroying us, but is always for the same reasons - our wicked ways.
Only now the wickedness is our technology.
This is so boring, so predictable and so laughable.
I am very happy that AGW tools fools and cons will have their words held for posterity in the internet. This time, when the apocalypse fails to show up, you guys will no place to hide.
We will be able to laugh at you with the derision given to apocalyptic fools since the time of Chaucer.
All these predictions are usually made for post retirement or after they cease contributing to atmospheric carbon.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
The predictions are always far away. They screech really loud to avoid dealing with the lack of facts before them and to keep people distracted from critically thinking.
Danger and intrigue about possible horrors of the future give jobs to fortune tellers and pols alike. I guess everybody needs an occupation, as long as the whole Globaloney thing dosen't raid the pocketbook on behalf of sea ice and polar bears.
Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
--Robert Heinlein.
Every good nurseryman knows two added benefits of Carbon Dioxide now that we are in a time when carbon is on the rise, and yet throughout earth history it has usually been lower than now. Certainly in the Vikings age about 1100 y.a. we saw Co2 estimated at 180 ppm whereas most terrestrial plants can't even functoin at below 100 ppm. Now we have over 300 and going.
Yet that age was warmer than now, with Arctic ice even rarer. Yet the polar bears survived and probably even had to raise cubs on relatively ice-free arid and dry areas.
Co2 boosts the efficiency of water uptake in a plant, thus reducing the needs for H20, and also acts as a fertilizer for photosynthesis.
Not that bad after all--and at some point I think we'll have a "feedback" mechanism in the ecosphere that uptakes much of this surplus carbon anyway.
Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. — Robert Heinlein
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"...
Senior Writer
PUBLIC POLICY is all about trade-offs. Economists understand this better than politicians because voters want to have their cake and eat it too, and politicians think whatever is popular must also be true.
...The Earth got about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the 20th century while it increased its GDP by 1,800%, by one estimate. How much of that 0.7 degrees can be laid at the feet of that 1,800% is unknowable, but let’s stipulate that all of the warming was the result of our prosperity and that this warming is in fact indisputably bad (which is hardly obvious). That’s still an amazing bargain. Life spans in the United States nearly doubled (from 44 to 77 years). Literacy, medicine, leisure and even, in many respects, the environment have improved mightily over the course of the 20th century, at least in the prosperous West. (emphasis mine)
The question for those who believe in AGW, are you prepared to go back to the 1800s? If the answer is yes, please do so yourself before you even think of asking me to do the same.
Two thirds of the world is covered by water, the other third is covered by Champ Bailey
Convert to Islam, live in the 7th Century! AGW goes away. No more worries about terrorism either.
___________________
If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"...
Senior Writer
First off... the press hasn't even reported on THE REPORT yet, b/c it hasn't been released. Policymakers wrote the press release which the press continues to discuss/write about. Scientists DID NOT write the release.
Now onto the science. We came out of an ice age around 1850. A period of heightened global volcanic activity and absence of sunspots (aforementioned Maunder Minimum) from around the 13th century until... guess when...approximately 1850. The volcanic activity spit massive amounts of aerosols which blocked solar radiation from entering the Earth’s atmosphere. The Maunder Minimum was an absence of sunspots to heat the Earth. The nadir for the little ice age (i.e. cold point) occurred early in the 17th century. EVER SINCE THEN the globe has been warming!
Some notes from RLC Chairman Bill Westmiller. Hopefully, he won't mind it's posting:
When the UN released its update on global warming hysteria here was the news lead from the NYT:
''I think the take-home message of the 2007 report for the general public is that global warming is real ...'' said Brian Soden, ... one of numerous lead authors of the report.
Duh! EVERYBODY knows we're coming out of an ice age. That has never been in dispute.
<''We know that ... that the rate of warming is accelerating ...”>
We know that's false. In fact, global temperatures have been falling for the past nine years:
1998 0.526
1999 0.302
2000 0.277
2001 0.406
2002 0.455
2003 0.465
2004 0.444
2005 0.475
2006 0.422
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3vgl.txt
<"... and that human activities are a primary contributor to that warming,'' he said.>
Of course, that would be CO2, which the video games say should be decreasing in advance of these falling temperatures. Wrong. It has been increasing steadily since 1999:
1998 2.95
1999 0.91
2000 1.75
2001 1.61
2002 2.55
2003 2.31
2004 1.54
2005 2.54
2006 2.33
http://www.mlo.noaa.gov/LiveData/FDataccg.htm
All of this is based on the original report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 1998. In 1998, the IPCC issued a press release about global warming that the
international press picked up. Interestingly, the press WORLDWIDE only reported on the information in the press release AND NOT ON THE REPORT ITSELF!
That's why 300 of the 1200 scientists involved in creating the report broke off and founded their own organization to oppose the information that was being reported internationally, their main contention being that what the press was reporting WAS NOT WHAT THE ACTUAL SCIENTIFIC REPORT SAID!
And here we go again. There was a pre-press-release hysteria last week about the new UN-IPCC report coming out and how it would "conclusively prove" that humans caused global warming.
Naturally, the "data" reported by the international press is false again. Humans don't CAUSE global warming, though they might be involved in some factors that contribute to global warming. I.e. the common logical error (purposeful disinformation) from the press, trying to equate correlation to causation roughly equivalent to "if you spank your kid, there is a 50% greater chance they will become a mass murderer" kind of bubble-gum (il)logic.
Scientists use "proxies" (tree rings, ice core samples, etc) for historic data ... and readily admit that it's inaccurate and mitigated by many factors. So, there are fairly good estimates of temperatures back 650,000 years.
The critical factor in the whole controversy is words ... which is why I call it "Eco-Babble".
For example, it's now popular to tag anthropogenic (human generated) CO2 as having started in 1790. Anything earlier is referred to as "pre-industrial", and any subsequent effects are presumed to be a result of human consumption of fossil fuels. But, there's a little problem. There was no significant mining of coal until 1885 and petroleum production was insignificant prior to 1920. Therefore, the "pre-industrial" marker has no relevance to emissions (even if it suggests that the choice is motivated by anti-industrial sentiments).
If you see the word "pre-industrial" in any statement, it is an intentional misrepresentation. The most critical word is "climate", which refers to "average weather". The IPCC (UN International Panel on Climate Change) calls it the mean and
variable measures over a period of time. Here's the problem: scientists study an infinite variety of time ranges, from decades to millennia. Therefore, the meaning of "climate change" (over what period?) is ambiguous. Weather changes from second to second, the primary cycles are daily and yearly, but comparisons of climate can cover time frames
of 5, 10, 100, 1,000 or 100,000 year periods.
So, when you see any statement about "climate change", look carefully for the comparative time frame. If you read an IPCC report, you'll find that they're all different frames. For example, it's popular to refer to "recent climate" as 1992-present, only because 1992 was the bottom of a temperature trough caused by the Mount Pinatubo eruption.
It is intentionally chosen to exaggerate the "current" increase in temperatures, which actually *dropped* during the period 1940-1975 and just prior to the Pinatubo eruption.
Global Warming may be happening, but there is no way to prove that it is a human-caused process.
Which is critical. In the millennial time frame, we are still recovering from the last ice-age. Has there been "global warming" since then? Obviously. Has there been "global warming" in the past decade?
No: annual global mean temperatures have fallen (much to Al Gore's chagrin) in the last ten years.
The only issue is *causation*. It is a scientific fact that certain gases have a "greenhouse effect" (they allow solar radiation to get to earth, but reflect heat radiation from earth).
One of those gases is CO2, even though it has far less effect than methane or simple water vapor. The entire argument for anthropogenic warming is that human consumption of fossil fuels adds CO2 to the atmosphere. No dispute. It's a 100%
certainty that more CO2 increases temperatures. For global warming fanatics, this is the beginning and the end of the story: humans cause warming.
Let me illustrate the logic with an analogy: Westmiller picks up a grain of sand from the beach and throws it into the ocean. Therefore, it is 100% certain that Westmiller causes the global erosion of continental coastlines (shame!). Notice the inherent semantic distortion: I may be *one* of the causes; my act does *cause* that specific erosion; that beach is a part of the total continental coastline; but the way it is phrased is quite preposterous. It's exactly the same case
with fossil fuel consumption *causing* warming. It isn't just a quantitative distinction, even if that's critical to context. Two minutes after I throw the pebble, I wade into the ocean and carry 100 grains of sand on my skin, back to
the beach. Now, Westmiller has retarded the erosion of the continental coastline by a factor 100 times his original contribution.
There are similar effects for global warming. Whenever humans plant a field of grain, that *reduces* the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Yet, that factor - and dozens of others - are totally ignored. On the quantitative side, there are hundreds of natural contributors to atmospheric CO2 that
are many orders of magnitude greater than any human production. The single eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1992 generated more CO2 than all of the cars driven everywhere in the world for the past decade. The effects of CO2 are tiny when compared with the primary factor, which is water
vapor.
However, these are all minor factors in the analysis of overall global climate. Here's the key: ice core studies that go back 650,000 years show one indisputable fact: changes in the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere *always follow* increased temperatures (by about 800 years).
The reason is simple: heat causes desequestration (release) of CO2 dissolved in the oceans.
Global warming *causes* massive increases in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. That increase continues *even after* temperatures have started to drop, due to a higher retention of heat in the oceans.
No scientist knows, nor do any of the computer "scenarios" include, that known scientific fact ... simply because it hasn't yet been quantified. But, *it is used* to generate speculative "cascade effects" from the human contribution of CO2. It's pure fantasy, equivalent to the presumption that the one grain of sand that Westmiller threw into the ocean will have a "butterfly effect" that will trigger an avalanche of
sand erosion around the world.
I hadn't intended to go on quite this long on the topic, but I think it's critical to making a judgment about the IPCC headlines. So, I'll make one final point. The news headlines feature a statement that it is 90% certain that humans are the cause of current global warming. This is NOT what the IPCC report says! Watch the floating commas.
The scientific analysis (hidden, but available) says it's 90% certain that fossil fuel consumption "exerts a net warming influence" on climate. That is debatable within the overall context, but a fairly reasonable statement about greenhouse effects. The next sentence says that ALL sources of CO2,
plus every other greenhouse gas, are a "dominant cause" of increased temperatures. That assertion is a *consensus of UN approved scenarios*, not a scientific statement of fact.
What the "Summary for Policymakers" (written by politicians) did was to take the "dominant cause" phrase and insert it into the middle of the "net influence" phrase, to create one sentence that gives the impression of a 90% certainty that HUMANS are THE dominant cause of global warming. That's the
headline in the New York Times. It's false. The report doesn't say that. It is a rhetorical fabrication, which is obviously intended to distort the scientific facts. Just more politically-correct babble.
Note that the IPCC rules require that all of the scientific portions of the report be modified to conform with the political conclusions. It will take about three months to redact the scientific findings that are not consistent with the phrasing of the political summary.
This is how "science" is done at the UN.
www.fairtax.org
Sick of Government Expansion? libertarian-Minded Republican? Check This Out... Republican Liberty Caucus!!!
www.rlc.org http://www.republicanliberty.org/
Nicely done
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Other than the first two paragraphs, I just cut and paste from the best email I've ever seen to identify the flaws in the reporting, science, etc.
www.fairtax.org
Sick of Government Expansion? libertarian-Minded Republican? Check This Out... Republican Liberty Caucus!!!
www.rlc.org http://www.republicanliberty.org/
of temperatures is best seen in the graph I showed. Yes, 1998 was an exceptionally hot year, but it is just a spike in a rising trend. 1999 and 2000 were much cooler, and it has been mostly rising since. 2005 and 2006 are not far behind 1998.
But you still haven't addressed the thousand year historical issue.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
You compared measured temperature change to reconstructed curves to say we hadn't been as warm as we are now. However the reconstructed temperatures from proxies say we aren't warm as we are now.
So comparing proxies to themselves all the ones that go back the distance show we were as warm in the past as now.
If it is CO2 driving our warming now, what did then ?
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
but I just don't think it is true that the proxy curves say that it is colder recently. Some of the proxy curves peter out at about 1980, which may be a data issue. Until then, they mostly lie above the black curve. I looked at the larger scale version here and thst is still how it looks to me.
"it is true that the proxy curves say that it is colder recently. Some of the proxy curves peter out at about 1980, which may be a data issue."
hmmmm...really convincing me.
Did you look at the even longer term graph, which clearly indicates a 1500 year cycle (+/- 500 years)?
Sorry, but you have cited Mann...then dismissed him. You are admitting to looking at a very limited data set, and then "thinking" that the proxy curves are wrong.
You are just going to have to do better than that.
As I understand, Joliphant's query is about the 1000 year graph that he showed, saying that the proxies say we aren't as warm now as we actually are. I look at the graph, and I have a hard time seeing that the coloured curves lie markedly below the black curve on the plot over the last century. Do you see something different?
two different conversations are taking place.
One has you reading the graph in what can only be labeled a jaundiced manner...since the two graphs (disregarding the 2004 entry, which is suspect because possible problems with that number) show similarity between medieval warming patterns and our current warming patterns.
I, on the other hand am saying that your investigation is not looking at enough data entries. I don't think looking at the last 2000 years is as important as looking at the last 650,000 years....and recognizing a pattern that predates manmade Co2 emissions.
1st Error with measured data
yellow, dark red and blue all say its colder in this century than (measured) black does.
Darblue, brown and turquoise ok in this century but say its warmer in the 1800's than it was.
2nd look over to the left side of the graph years 1000-1200
All the curves have peaks that match their 20th century peaks.
You can argue the 30 year downturns but what were the 100 year upturns ?
If you look at the 2000 year graph and take into account the error already shown with measured temperature they are consistent with it being as warm as it is now 2000 to 1700 years ago. This accords well with the anecdotal evidence.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
better now what you are saying. Yes, there is an indication that the proxies are saying that it was about as warm in 1000 ad as in 1970 (according to the proxies). So the key warming (relative to a 1000 year max) has been since 1970, and the proxies don't follow that all that well, mainly because they mostly drop out. Well, OK, but I don't really see the point. We don't need the proxies to tell us what happened in that last thirty years. The proxies and real temperatures track pretty well during the century of overlap, and the deviations between 1970-1980 are hardly enough to invalidate the proxy models.
We have a warm period about 1000 years ago comparable to now. We have a potential warm period comparable to now 1800-1900 years ago. (the temperature graphs and the record of viticulture)
What caused these warm periods ?
I don't rule out the warming effects of CO2 building a good model is a bit beyond me. Heat transport is frightfully difficult unless you can simplify the problem with constraints. In the actual atmosphere to even begin you need to make assumptions that are at best shaky to even start getting results. (cloud formation, convection effects,ocean effects etc). The devil is as always in the details.
I can say in the two prior periods it was not man made CO2.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
The IPCC report will make those pesky inconvenient facts disappear down the memory hole.
The Orwellian nature of this, with governments and social agitprop intimidating comapnies and other governments into 'accepting' this bs is getting really annoying.
Before making up your mind, you might want to read some critiques that have been made of the methodology and conclusions in the Stern Report.
Please note that both Professors Bjorn Lomborg and Jonathan Adler agree with you that man is probably responsible for at least part of the increase in global temperature that has occurred and that our behavior (releasing CO2 into the atmosphere) will probably lead to increases in the aggregate global temperature.
What if anything should be done about it and whether the costs outweigh the benefits (the point of the Stern Report) are entirely different issues and their point is that (a) Stern grossly exaggerated the “social cost” of carbon emissions (by about a factor of 17), (b) much of the projected “damage” caused by global warming would be the results of demographics rather than effects of increased temperature (e.g. increases in deaths and property damage due to hurricanes would be because more people and property would be located on the coastal areas in the path of hurricanes rather than because of an increase in the number or intensity of hurricanes) and (c) it would be far cheaper to try to mitigate the effects of global warming than to prevent it (assuming its possible).
FTR: I’m an agnostic on the issue. I recommended your diary because you make a thoughtful and well-substantiated argument to a forum where you are definitely in the minority (and you acquit yourself well in the comments section). That is something lways worth supporting and I and look forward to reading your future contributions.
I'm not a South Park Republican, I'm a King of the Hill libertarian.
I did read the link you supplied, thanks. The area is obviously one where figures are rubbery, and I don't have any particular attachment to Stern's estimates. My only point in mentioning them above was to affirm there are real costs of inaction (at some stage) which have to be balanced against the cost of action. Where that balance will be found, I do not know. It is a separate question to that of whether AGW is real.
Thanks for your recommendation and kind remarks.
Everything you offer is *rubber* at best.
Yet you plod forward. Discussing this with you is like debating evolution with a fundie. No matter what facts you are presented with, you stick to your faith.
No matter how many facts counter tot he AGW claims are presented, you believe still. No matter how many deep integral falws in the IPCC are exposed, you still plod forward.
You are a friggin' sheep.
This is the reconstructed graph of solar activity over the last 2000 years. It reads left is current right is the oldest, so the leftmost data is now.
Do you see any correlation to the temperature ?
I won't say I am entirely comfortable with the methodology but it is internally consistent.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Still relevant let me see where I left the link to the other.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I've mentioned in the OP that there is every reason to expect solar fluctuations to affect temperature. This plot is quite consistent with the colorful curves of temperature you have above.
As a general matter, I should say again that I deliberately didn't include any plots of modelled temperatures in my original post. The reason is that while they attract interest they really aren't very relevant to the basic argument, which is in my summary sentence. There are natural processes which cause temperature to vary, and it doesn't really bear heavily on the AGW argument even if temperatures were warmer in 1000 AD or if there is a 1500 year cycle (not that I concede those as matters of fact). The reason is that AGW is superimposed on whatever fluctuations we currently have (by the argument leading to the 2 W/m2 GHG-induced heat flux), and while the fluctuations will come and go, that CO2 heat flux effect is all one way and persists.
You have just cut the maximum amount of human caused warming by half. Seeing as the increase in the solar output since the maunder minimum is about 2 watts. So of the .6 degrees per century we are talking about .3 degrees being human caused and if it goes through 2 more doublings it will be 1.2 degrees
The above assumes the sun doesn't go into a less active period.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
is a phrase I've heard here. I too thought that the 2 watts figure sounded small compared with solar fluctuations. But there is a subtlety. The total contribution solar makes to the earth is equivalent to what would fall on a cross-section disc. But the GHG flux of 2 W/m2 applies to the whole earth surface - 4 times the area. So you need to multiply your figures by 4.
A one percent fluctuation is 13.6 watts/ meter. even at a conservative .6 percent fluctuation over the time period under question we are talking about 2 watts meter (rounded to 1 significant figure)
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
"proof" for their EVERYTHING IS JUST FINE THEORY
but it does have a natural appeal. We'd all prefer not to worry.
To demand radical action. Let alone to determine what the best action should be.
By way of comparison AGW proponents now claim that sulfur emissions curtailed by the clean air act were depressing the temperature. So the last round of pollution controls made GW worse by their theory.
So even if you grant them all their arguments what will get screwed up this time ?
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
that since the AGW hysteria promoters are the ones screeching the loudest and currently own the public square, is it too much to ask them for a little *proof*?
I mean real proof, that is not consisting of summaries written in advance of the studies.
I mean real proof that is not counter factual.
I mean real proof that actually utilizes history,a nd does not suppress.
And then, if you do identify a solution, can you please figure out if
- it is too late to do anything
- or can we save the planet in 10 years
- or will it go on for centruies no matter what
AGW is more full of poop than a Christmas goose, but you true believers don't care.
But how widespread is that "sulphur emissions theory" amongst the AGW proponents?
Just curious. On the DO NOTHING side, I'm hearing arguments about why we should all drive Hummers.
I'm thinking there's lunatics misrepresenting both arguments.
thThe funny thing about the AGW people is that there are perfectly good arguments for pursuing alternative fuels and power sources. They just have nothing to do with warming. They have everything to do with making our economy independent of dictators and madmen.
P.S. The sulfur theory is incorporated into that U.N. online model I posted in my log. I don't know how widespread that means it is
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I should trouble my beautiful mind about such things as survival of the human race.
As long as my taxes stay low.
...prove that AGW is occuring. Prove that we, the human race are remotely in danger or dying out....prove that there is a real reason to take radical steps, which will no doubt hamstring the U.S. economy...and then maybe, just maybe we can take your snarky comment seriously.
Skpetics also eat babies and kill seals.
You fool.
Last chance.
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Even those who learn from history are surrounded by those doomed to repeat it.
macroeconomic projections, but am I understanding Stern's Report to mean that if we take no remedial action our annual WGDP by the end of the century would be 5-20% less than if there were no AGW effects? Using the last century as a (conservative) model, this means that WGDP would increase merely by a factor of 15 to 18 instead of 19 over the course of the century.
To mitigate this he proposes spending 1% of WGDP each year during the entire century. Inasmuch as much of this expenditure would be directed at "controlling" or reducing the rate of growth of WGDP, is it not likely that the compounding effect by century's end would be greater than 20%?
Robert Mendelsohn of the Yale School of Forestry and James Neumann of IndustrializedEconomics, Inc. Their study, The Impact of Climate Change on the U.S. Economy, assumed a doubling of Co2 levels in the atmoshpere would actually result in a s slight gain in the U.S. GDP, and significant increases in agricultural production. The report includes a look at adaptation strategies and of actual observations on energy expenditures.
First, Even assuming that the earth is warming exponentaly and humanity is to blame, there is a major limiting factor that is rarely considered. It has not yet been mentioned in this entire column. The most generous estimates of our fossil fuel reserves show that they will be entirely exausted in 200 years. Therefore, humanity will stop putting new CO2 into the atmosphere in 200 years. Assuming exponential increases in temp, the average global temperature will rise another Four or so degrees Celcius in that time. After that, no new CO2 goes up and the existing gas is slowly eliminated naturally. If we can handle that, then we are home free.
Second, Why are the only solutions to MMGW to drastically reduce fossil fuel use by substituting corn, french fry oil, or riding the bus. What the heck happend to the inventivness and ingenuity that built human civilization in the first place. Surely we can come up with something more bold and inventive than carpooling and corn. Lets build some way to artifically regulate the Earth's temperature on a global scale. Even if Global warming were proved unequivically to be natural, such an ability would still be useful for controlling such naturally occuring, harmful climate changes.
Finally, does anyone know if any significant study has been devoted to the effect that the hundreds and hundreds of nuclear tests of the last century have had on the recorded global temperature. I would imagine that a 50 Megaton thermonuclear explosion would release more energy (heat) into the atmosphere than a gigaton of CO2 would trap. Is it possible that the measured 1degree increase of the 20th Century is due to the cumulative energy released in all those tests rather than the CO2 increase???
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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of All Who Threaten it!
People sometimes say - why pick on CO2 rather than water, if it is a lesser effect? The simpler answer is that we are increasing CO2, and not doing anything overtly to water. The more complex version is that CO2 heating does increase water vapor, augmenting the heating effect. This may be partly countered by cloud formation. Atmospheric models build this in.
CO2 and friends make up less that 1/2000th of the atmosphere.
Water vapor can be as much as 4% of it, thousands of times more, and has much stronger effects: it can block the sun, it aids in heat convection, and so on.
To say "Amospheric models build this in" glosses an important distinction: humans build the models. The models don't do anything on their own. By dropping the causitive "expert ensure models build this in" in favor of the personification, you hide a major flaw in your argument. We are asked to trust the models because we trust the experts, the logical equivalent of trusting the experts.
The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts
When the wheels do fall off of this scam, people are going to be really ticked off.
The only way the scammers will get away wiith this is to pretend that whatever big tax increase/ carbon rationing they impose saved the day.
The fact that the day was not in trouble will be overlooked, if the goreons of the world have their way.
The concentrations of gases is only part of the story. Nitrogen and oxygen make up 99% of the atmosphere, but have really no GHG behaviour. CO2 molecules are more absorptive than water, and methane more still. I stand by the statement you have highlighted, and have said more about the feedback issue in other comments. There is more here.
You are right that models are no better than the experts who write them. And the feedback issues involving water vapor are much discussed, from the possibility of thermal runaway to the more optimistic possibility that clouds would mitigate the effect. The issues are out there, and fairly well understood now - computer models are still needed to do the actual calculations.
in total, because there is a lot more of it - a reasonable estimate is three times more effective. But CO2 is more effective per kg, and methane even more so. I've tried to deal with the rather complex interaction of water vapor and warming, but the basic thing is that it is CO2 that we're changing directly, not water.
Or if you have a hammer the world is your nail. You have a feedback loop between temperature water vapor and cloud formation. You have a solar loop on water vapor, temperature and cloud formation.
So when you say you look at CO2 because we directly affect it. It ignores the larger things we don't control and the higher order effects from secondary causes.
Anyway even given this you wind up system of differential equations that are highly sensitive to initial conditions and have to be solved iteratively.
If you recall last year there were surprise temperature drops that were attributed to global sweating. (sorry for the lack of a link I'll try to find it later when I have more time but even without a link the principle is still valid). Global dimming is also recently established.
These indicate large holes in the model. A model that is sensitive to minute variations. Especially since a large portion of it deals with coupled convection systems with components undergoing several phase changes.
I can't argue your original point "Why I think Global Warming is for real", after all its a personal opinion on your view of the evidence.
What the evidence does show is
Attributing that entire .6 degrees to man is false. There is no dispute on this.
If you are talking about doublings due to CO2 you have to speak about the amount caused by CO2 not those caused by other factors.
The other factors that are at work have the potential and likelihood to ameliorate GW by themselves.
So .3 degrees doubling how often is just how bad and how much of a concern ?
I have left out all discussion on whether GW is good or bad. Historical evidence shows that it has been positive in the past. So we would need another leap of faith that this time it would be bad.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
"If you are talking about doublings due to CO2 you have to speak about the amount caused by CO2 not those caused by other factors."
i think you're missing the key difference between forcings and feedbacks. water vapor is not a forcing.
from a climatologist friend of mine:
"Water vapor is one of the most important greenhouse gases, but it is a constant-the only way we create more of it is by heating up the atmosphere...
You can think of the hydrological cycle as containing a constant amount of water, just storing it in different places, and that is heavily modulated by the temperature on the earth's surface (because it is stored as water vapor, liquid water, and ice, all depending on the temperature). With regards to the reservoirs of carbon, while temperature is an important factor for the equilibrium between the atmosphere and the ocean, the factors contributing to warming are the changing of the amounts of carbon stored in fossil fuels and carbonate minerals (for cement production). To say that we
should stop releasing water vapor is not analogous to saying we should stop producing carbon. The only way we can have an effect on the net amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is by causing an increase or decrease in the temperature of the atmosphere (i.e. By releasing co2, ch4...)"
he recommends Meehl, G.A., W.M. Washington, T.M.L. wigley, J.M. Arblaster, A. Dai (2003): Solar and Greenhouse Gas Forcing and Climate Response in the Twentieth Century, J. Climate, 6: 426-444 for further reading.
as for the beginning of your post, you lay out not holes in any model, but a good first approximation of just such a model.
as you appear to be, I have a suggestion for you. It's a simple trick that has been around for millenia, but still works.
Try assuming that your major premise is false. Take on the role of skeptic, and really give it your all to see where the new set of assumptions leads you.
You're educated; you know the rest.
The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts
Yes, I'm aware that this approach goes back to, well, Socrates. I am a mathematician by training, and I've even done some symbolic logic. I've tried to lay the argument out tightly so its basis can be tested. Let's check.
1. Burning carbon, which lodges in the atmosphere.
The graph is there - the burning figures are economic data, collected in huge detail, as are the concentrations of CO2. You've argued elsewhere that causality is not certain. Well, if you put sugar in your tea and then find it tastes sweet, it's causality for most people, and it is hard to see how you could ever tighten the proof. The rise in CO2 tracks the rate at which we inject it.
2. Our extra CO2 (and friends) induces a nett heat influx of 2 W/m2.
Well, not to worry about the quantities in detail which are a matter of measurement - but what kind of knowledge do we have? The gas properties are absolutely standard lab measurements. The radiation in is accurately known by satellite. The radiation from the earth comes from physical laws (Planck) and is again measured on exit from the atmosphere by satellite. Again the gas concentrations are very well known. There is a little bit of geometry associated with absorption and re-radiation. But after all that, the flux is very solidly known.
That is really all that we had in the mid 80's, and was enough to get the Kyoto process going. The remaining assumption is that a heat flux will raise temperatures, and in a way it is the weakest, although intuitively attractive. The test would be whether temperatures do rise, and they have. But, as we well know, there are all sorts of possible alternative explanations, even if the speed of temperature rise is now stretching their plausibility.
That is why I tend to resist relying on past temperature plots etc. It doesn't get to the basic cause which is that predictable heat flux. If we go on burning carbon, it will increase, and eventually something has to give.
1. Burning carbon, which lodges in the atmosphere.
The graph is there - the burning figures are economic data, collected in huge detail, as are the concentrations of CO2. You've argued elsewhere that causality is not certain. Well, if you put sugar in your tea and then find it tastes sweet, it's causality for most people, and it is hard to see how you could ever tighten the proof. The rise in CO2 tracks the rate at which we inject it.
If I taste tea, and it is sweet, how do I know that it was the sugar I put in it that made it sweet? If I know that someone else came along with honey, Nutrasweet, and Splenda in varying quantities, it could be that one of those quantities or a combination of them was of vastly greater effect.
Beyond that, you are pretending a much more direct effect of carbon on temperature than is observed. It is not like sugar->sweet, but almost exactly like carbohydrates->waistline. But taking into account the miniscule fraction of the Allegedly Harmful Gases in the atmosphere, the alarmism raises my cynicism.
2. Our extra CO2 (and friends) induces a nett heat influx of 2 W/m2.
Well, not to worry about the quantities in detail which are a matter of measurement - but what kind of knowledge do we have? The gas properties are absolutely standard lab measurements. The radiation in is accurately known by satellite. The radiation from the earth comes from physical laws (Planck) and is again measured on exit from the atmosphere by satellite. Again the gas concentrations are very well known. There is a little bit of geometry associated with absorption and re-radiation. But after all that, the flux is very solidly known.
Solar variation is also well-understood:
That appears to be correlate well with the temperature increase. But correlation is not causation. Probably the Sun's activity is greater because we're putting more carbon into the atmosphere.
The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts
Thats hilarious
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
...by all nations has been done underground, but you are correct that hundreds of nukes were tested above ground, especially before about 1960. However, my intuition tells me that heat output from nuke tests pales in comparison to heat output from volcanic activity during the same period. My guess is that if you combine heat from both sources, nuke testing heat would register as a small fraction of 1 percent of that total. I could be waaaay, wrong though. Wouldn't be the first time.
In the case of the hurricane, it came from the sun, through "normal" weather events. As much entering our "closed system" as leaving.
In the case of the nuclear explosion, the energy came from a very efficient transformation of mass into energy. That energy made for a net increase in the global "closed system" total energy. As well as a very small decrease in total mass.
Or did I get E=mc^2 wrong?
in the amount of energy the earth receives from the sun on a daily basis. Second we aren't a closed system.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
It is a relatively small amount of energy.
And, yes, "closed system" is not accurate, hence the quotes. Perhaps "zero sum" system would be more accurate. As much energy must be bled off as comes in.
That seems to me a huge problem with this issue -- proponents of the AGW theory work like the devil to avoid the details of what they'd do to combat the problem. And I don't find that to be accidental.
I've said elsewhere that I'm basically agnostic on the matter. I have no particular expertise on which to rely and, so, the best I can do is look to those who do. Most who have that expertise say they agree with you. Some others do not.
But that's beside my point. Because, like it or not, this is a hugely political issue. You can't enter into it while avoiding the politics of it. And that's not because of the science, but because of the economics of a potential remedy.
I found it fascinating when, last year, Dr. Paul Crutzen proferred the idea of a geo-engineered solution to global warming. Crutzen won the Nobel prize some years ago for his work on the depletion of the ozone layer -- and he is a card-carrying member of the AGW brigade.
Crutzen basically said that the best remedies for AGW (GG emission reductions along the lines of Kyoto) were politically unrealistic and that, as a last-resort we'd have to rely on a different pathway. He put forth the idea of releasing sulphur particles into the atmosphere to act as a heat-shield of sorts.
The merits of his idea notwithstanding, what I found so fascinating was some of the response to his idea from within the AGW brigade itself. It wasn't good -- at least, not unanimously. A column in the Guardian said that Crutzen's idea would only open the door for AGW skeptics to avoid the hard choices, and would allow Big Oil to keep putting their filth in the atmosphere and reaping huge rewards, etc. etc.
Hmmm. So, what exactly is the aim here? Is it really to stop global warming? Or is it to hobble Big Oil? Because we've been led to believe that it was the former. I would think that a solution that promised lower economic cost and still eradicated the warming would be a better one.
But not to some people, apparently. To some, getting rid of the warming that they say man is causing is secondary, at best.
The Clinton Administration estimated that adhering to Kyoto would cost the US economy anywhere from 3% to 5% of GDP -- which is roughly the range of expenditure we make on the Pentagon annually. This estimate was no doubt instrumental to the Senate's unanimous rejection of the accord.
And this is why the advocates of the AGW theory like to avoid talking about remedies. Because there is where the rubber meets the road. And they wouldn't like the skid marks left on their carcasses when they tell the American people that we need to forgo $500 billion annually to beat back a theoretical problem.
is that there is a real problem for all of us, and I've said I dont have a good solution. Let me list two statements:
Proponents of AGW theory should not take up our time unless they have a solution that won't ruin our economy
AGW sounds expensive so it can't be true.
I've heard quite a few statements here like the first; none like the second, but I think they are rather close.
A practical issue here for Redstate folk is that for now it is broadly the left that accepts the theory and is thinking about solutions. If that doesn't change, it is their solutions that we'll get. One idea around is nuclear power. AGW acceptors generally don't like it; those who would favour it, tend to reject AGW. So nuclear power doesn't get much support as a remedy.
Various ideas have been proposed that limit incoming solar radiation. They are messy in various ways. But one thing to remember is this. If you try to compensate for blocked outgoing radiation by blocking incoming radiation, you may get thermal balance. But we needed that incoming radiation for photosynthesis, agriculture etc (not to mention the general joy of sunlight).
Your "skid marks on their carcasses" sounds like shooting the messenger.
In 100 years we will be using the same power technologies we do now ?
This is one of the great failures of the AGW idea complex. People want to solve the next centuries problems with todays technologies. Its like trying to solve the spam problem using an Aiken relay calculator. Or from a more environmental view its like trying to solve the problem of horse dung on city streets by coming up with an improved street sweeping cart. (this was an earlier air and water pollution problem). Or perhaps we should have dealt with mid century projected copper shortages by increasing the cost of telecommunications ?
The best way to deal with technological problems is to make certain that technology advances as fast as possible. The best way to make certain technology advances is to make certain that the world's economies have the wealth to afford them.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I really do believe that AGW will limit us. Unlike blackhedd above, I believe that we just won't be able to burn all the carbon resources that we have, because of AGW, although as a world political matter I'm not sure how we'll stop ourselves.
So it sounds like it is some enhanced solar or nuclear. Personally I hope something can be done with solar; there are some new ideas that may make progress.
Blackhedd may be wrong about us burning all the carbon. After all nobody is hunting whales for lighting oil anymore. But it won't be because of GW, AGW or otherwise.
Not to be antagonistic (Of course this is what people say before they are ) But you seem to place a remarkable amount of faith in whats best a murky prediction. A prediction of a particular class that has never been born out. A class of predictions where the people who make them will no longer be accountable if they don't pan out.
By your own statements and I will use your numbers here. 30% GW solar that gives us .4 degrees C / century (1 significant digit if that) and a doubling rate of what ? 50 years ? With one of the predicted effects warmer nights cooler summers and warmer winters. How is this a problem for anyone ?
I will toss out a prediction that is as likely as the AGW doom and gloom scenarios. Given that the 21st century is shaping up (too early to tell but looking good) to be the Biotech century. I would expect by mid century there may be calls to set coal mines on fire to keep CO2 levels up.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Let me roll together my response to this and your question above that I excused myself from. I don't think there is any reason to expect a cooling problem; the CO2 rise to date won't go away. I said I wouldn't get into the bad effects - plenty of other people have. But drought is a biggie.
Can I leave it there? I'm sure we'll catch up in another thread.
You don't accept my point that that the world will continue to burn carbon-based fossil fuels until a cheaper alternative is found, or until all of the fossil fuels are gone (at which point the next more-expensive alternative will automatically become the cheapest available). And the reason you give is "because of AGW." But in the next sentence you say that you're not sure how we'll stop ourselves.
How will AGW force us to stop short of using up our carbon-based fuels? Since you can't envision a political mechanism for that to happen, AGW will need to stay our hands through some other agency. Do you believe, like flyerhawk, that manmade warming may kill millions or billions of people and bring us all to our senses the hard way?
If we should cut our own testicles off and stop using carbon fuels, their global price would fall like a rock because of the reduced demand. At that point, one of two things will happen (or a mixture of both): the rest of the world will start consuming coal and oil at far higher rates than they do now, because they will be so much cheaper. Or, our economy will be so wrecked that the Asian economies that depend on our export markets will die right along with us. (And that will probably result in at least as much suffering and death as in Al Gore's wettest dreams.)
I don't have an estimate of world coal reserves to hand, but the carbon cycle diagram posted suggested 3000 Gt Carbon. That is about 4 times what is presently in the atmosphere, and 15-20 times what we've added to date. It is far beyond what models have currently worked on. No one (least of all me) knows absolutely what that would do to the planet, but I just don't believe it is possible. It's true that some might go into the ocean, but its effects there would be bad, if maybe survivable. But on current performance, most would stay in the air.
You're not looking at the fact that a massive amount of additional carbon burning will happen, simply because it's cheap. You're making statements that come tantalizingly close to "it can't possibly happen," but you don't spell out what can stop it. From both this response, your statement immediately upthread (that I responded to), and other statements, I infer that you believe some natural catastrophe will ensue from this incremental carbon emission. That will cause everyone to wake up and smell the coffee and stop burning carbon. Since this would happen suddenly and without necessarily preparing any kind of transition to alternate fuels, it would be catastrophic to the world economy.
But I'm putting words in your mouth because you hesitate to draw the conclusions yourself. Am I understanding your thinking correctly here or not?
By the way, in rural China, they intend to stand up more than a dozen new coal-burning electric plants every year for the next several decades. I've heard that they ultimately want to construct more than a thousand such plants. Unless you can think of a way to stop them, you and others had better start running your climate models with a lot more CO2 than they have now.
It comes back to where we were a few days ago. I agree with you that there are plenty of people who will want to burn the carbon, and it will be very hard to stop them. I also believe that the earth can't manage 4-5 times the carbon it has now, mostly in the atmosphere. I don't know whether there will be some specific natural catastrophe; it may be just an accumulation of difficulty. India for example is an already hot country with many parts at risk of drought, and with water resources that will be stretched by industrialisation. They may feel the crunch first. But they may also by then be a significant world power, so it tends to be everyone's problem.
My tendency to duck questions about remedies may seem like a cop-out. But there is a bit of thinking behind it. I believe that there is a real problem, and that many Conservative minds could help to work out better solutions. At present that is being (partly) blocked by a disagreement about whether the problem is real. I think that if I can help get past that, I will contribute more than if I simply exert my own limited abilities to solve the problems.
There are two avenues.
First, you or someone else finds alternative fuel(s) that are both cheaper than carbon and have negligible transition costs. No additional scaremongering is required since the pot has already been stirred in the public mind, and the willingness to try an alternative is clearly there. It just has to be cheaper than what we have now. This path is already being pursued assiduously by a great many very smart people.
Second, improve the predictive power of the science. I can understand a rigorous scientific mind refusing to make specific predictions (like x million people will be killed by y coastal storms in year 20zz), because they don't want to say things they can't back up. (Al Gore is of course unburdened by intellectual rigor so he has no such problem, which damages your case greatly since he's obviously being mendacious.) But this also means people can't take the science seriously. People naturally adjust risks for probability, it's an almost intuitive process. Unless you can do something more or less equivalent to showing people an approaching asteroid in a telescope on a collision course with Earth, they won't take action.
There is a third avenue, of course: remove the power to make this decision from the people of planet Earth and give it to a council of NGOs and transnational authorities. Hmm. Isn't it funny that this is the preferred approach of many GW advocates? You and others have framed the GW debate as a life-or-death issue. For me and many others, the world-government solution is not acceptable because for us, freedom is also a life-or-death issue.
Gravity pulls the mirrored face of the particle toward the earth, and sunlight bouncing off of the earth reflects off of the mirror, while allowing OEM sunlight to pass through the side facing the sun. Or something else, maybe, like Ozone moxification.
I'll I see from "Global Warming Pushers" is charts.... graphs... mathematical equations... long winded explanations and equally complicated solutions...
Answer me this:
"If mankind, and not the sun, is the primary cause of climate change… why are the polar ice caps on Mars melting as well?”
You say man is responsible.
I say the sun.
Occam’s Razor…
“…when you have two competing theories which make exactly the same predictions, the one that is simpler is the better.”
Nuff said.
"Even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."
I've been reading this thread and all of its longwinded rebuttals and I'm going to take a relatively rash step here and call for Pliny to identify himself personally. He seems like someone who is either a scientifically trained individual or someone who is posing as a person with a postdoc. And in this blog entry he has attempted to show why his theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming is compelling.
It's the most powerful and important political issue of our time and before anyone takes another step talking with him or debating him I would like to request that he identify himself publicly, or at the very least identify the group of people with whom he works.
I do only because the issue of anthropogenic global warming is something that as a matter of policy is going to impact every single human being on this planet both economically and politically. I want to know who he is.
He sounds quite a bit like a couple of scientists from the University of Chicago, or one of their students:
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences and The College
Ph.D., MIT, 1980
John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, 1996/1997
Fellow, American Geophysical Union
-or-
Dr. David Archer
David Archer
Professor, Department of the Geophysical Sciences and the College
Ph.D., University of Washington, 1990
Even if neither of those people are you, Pliny, I think that if you are going to make the attempt to talk authoritatively and change minds about AGW here on the premiere Republican/Conservative blog in the U.S., you should take off the glasses and simply state who you are. It won't impact the quality of your argument in any way and I am absolutely positive that the editors and Directors of RedState will have no truck with any sort of abuse you might fear because of your candor.
Golly, I'm honored to be mentioned. I'm too busy - believe it or not, writing a scientific paper - to get into this one. And besides, I think pliny is holding his/her own - oh, and we've never met, but keep up the good work.
I don't think who I am really matters or that the ID of pliny matters either. I've already stated that I'm a scientist working in the field of fluid mechanics related to airplane design. So, I'm not going to cite any of my own work in this debate, just what I've read in the scientific literature of climatologists.
I wish more people here had access to the literature (another pet project of mine is open access journals) and/or took the time to read it. Many (if not most) of the ideas spewed by skeptics are not argued anymore by the scientists - even the more skeptical ones.
Is accessible to any non-scientist, and that's part of the reason why it's being so widely adopted as the truth. If the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is rising and CO2 traps heat then the correlation between rising temperatures and CO2 production seems clear.
On the level that most people are ever going to understand it, that's all they'll need to grasp in order to buy into climate change hysteria.
I understand "concerned scientists" who want to err on the side of caution -- even though the models are arbitrarily flawed and the history is only now being written -- they don't want to be sitting around in 2100 and saying: "We didn't predict this catastrophe."
But the real scam to me is that people aren't looking at the true alternatives in terms of power generation. Today Richard Branson offered $25 million dollars to anyone who could come up with a real method for carbon sequestration. The fundamental research on carbon sequestration has already been done, as I've noted here at RedState in the past. In fact, people have held academic conferences dedicated to it.
In the meantime the Greenies are trying to demonize the coal industry, who provide some of the most reliable and least expensive power on earth to billions of people. That's not nice, nor is it fair.
I think the climate-change hysteria is manufactured in the sense that policymakers like Gore realize that the window to tax these carbon sources is already closing. I think that within the next three decades we are going to see a drastic reduction of C02 emissions happen simply because technologies like fission, fusion, exoatmospheric solar and geothermal are going to be developed. They are the only real answers to this problem. But in the meantime, Al Gore wants to tax people, and he will raise the costs of doing business and living life here in the United States and elsewhere simply because he wants to see that tax money come to fruition. I wholeheartedly reject that idea.
The internal formatting error of that post. I hate not being able to edit my comments here on RedState, and I apologize for the long link.
kowalski, I don't have time right now to properly respond to everything you've said. But, I agree with most everything.
There are alarmists on both sides of the political argument and scientific too. I think the IPCC does a pretty good job of sticking to the solid science, so I usually go with it and definitely don't listen to people like Gore or Inhofe.
I'm all for renewables - part of my research is in this area as well. I'm all for sequestration too, as long as it doesn't raise the cost of coal too much above nuclear - it's still early in development, which should continue. Wind can be 25% of the mix - already is in Denmark. Every dollar spent on conservation equals two spent on production. Solar is up and coming - not sure about exoatmospheric or fusion($). In the end it will be a wide mix of technologies.
If solutions are implemented over something like 50 years, little economic damage will be done. There's a figure in the latest IPCC (can't find the link for some reason) that shows the cost of stabilization somewhere between $1-8 trillion to stop at around 500 ppmv C. I'd trust this more than the Stern report. This is definitely doable over the long term.
If you don't know who Pliny is, how do you know you haven't met?
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
imply that they are not the same person? I've never met any of my sock puppets, either.
The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts
...has been a tradition of Western society since at least the 18th Century, you know. :)
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
But I'll be completely frank:
I think it would help his credibility if he did. He's talking about the most important political issue of our time, and it's not just the Western world that he's trying to change.
is that credibility comes from what you say, not from who you are.
Would it make any difference to the quality of his arguments if he is a professor at Chicago U rather than a waiter? Or if he is Al Gore? (Ok, bad example there.)
The act of peer review is not an anonymous process. The institution of science itself in this country is not anonymous. And nobody who is purporting to speak and be authoritative about a subject of this magnitude should try to hide behind the cloak of anonymity. Period.
Our Own Academic Elephant hid her name
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
But the trend among academic bloggers recently has been to drop the mask. It started in many other places such as at Volokh. And AE went on television. Even Juan Cole uses his real name to argue his controversial views. I'm getting sick and tired of people who want to be professors and talk about the most important issues of our times in the freest society on Earth who feel they have to hide behind a set of dark sunglasses.
Everybody knows who I am. And they also know that I don't have a degree in atmospheric science, or even a complete Undergraduate education for that matter. I freely admit those facts into the public discourse, however. I don't try to pretend that I've got a Ph.D. and even more importantly I don't try to influence policy without putting my name on things that I do.
I've grown very tired of people in academia and elsewhere who think they have something constructive to contribute to this country who aren't willing to stand up and be counted as who they are and let everyone know where they work.
That's just my feeling. Pliny can take it or leave it. I suspect he'll leave it.
Who Pliny cites by name in the replies that he's posted here to defend his views. All of those people are on public record and their names can be looked up and the institutions they work for can be visited. I don't accept anonymity as being equivalent to credibility in this case. Al Gore put his name on the movie. James Lovelock has made dozens of speeches in his own name. And thousands of scientists around the world, many of whom have been invited by the Union of Concerned Scientists to place their signatures and professional reputations on the line have willingly done so.
I'm not listening to another anonymous person who purports to speak on this subject. Not when "our entire civilization" is at stake.
Because Al Gore (the inventor of the internet) put his name on a movie, this gives the film "credibility"?
"Even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."
Talk about missing the point. The point is that Al Gore is falsifiable because he put his name on the movie. Or, alternatively, he could be proven correct and be nominated for The Most Incredible Visionary Politician Nobel Peace Prize because of that. But either way, his name is on the movie as Al Gore, not Al Schmendrick or Alphonse D'goreato.
So, your point then is, it's WHO they are (not what they say), which gives (or does not give) credibility to their opinion?
Huh... Bet Copernicus heard that a lot.
"Even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."
If you were Watson and Crick and decided to publish a paper talking about the structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid as "Jackson and Schwick" you'd get laughed out of the Academy. Honest people who have an interest in truly advancing science in the public interest (and even for their own interests) put their names behind what they do for a large number of reasons:
1) To get published in respected academic journals where they will be peer-reviewed.
2) To sit on important boards and panels where their past accomplishments and mistakes are verifiable and a matter of public record.
3) To ensure that the historical record of scientific progress and discovery is as complete and accurate as possible.
4) So that their students can trust that when their professor says: "I wrote the book" they actually wrote the book.
5) To guarantee that people who are truly brilliant will get the proper credit for it, instead of someone named Schmendrick or D'Goreato
6) To give references to people who need to contact them and debate one of the finer points of their analysis.
7) To allow other researchers to attempt to reproduce their findings and if not, be able to say: "These people were wrong."
8) To allow institutions like the Nobel Committee to ensure that when they award a prize for a real advancement, the actual people who achieved it are the ones being recognized.
And on and on and on.
But the WHO has as much to do with it in the real world as the WHAT. This is so that other people can't claim "Al Schmendrick's" results as their own.
Get it?
The eludidation of the molecular structure of DNA was in its time every bit as momentous and propitious as the current debate over global warming. Except that now we have an Internet full of charlatans who like to talk about work that isn't theirs.
Why is it that this list of scientists...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_global_warming_...
...(who fit your above described criteria yet oppose the socially fashionable consesus that man,and CO2, is the primary cause for global warming) are not considered "credible"?
Instead, they are bashed by global warming bandwagon "peers" and slaughtered in the press with such terms as "global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers", as described by Ellen Goodman in today's Boston Globe?
The one point I DO agree with in all of the back and forth on this page is this...
This Global Warming Frenzy IS purely "political" and has about as much truth to it as the global cooling/pending ice age scare pushed by "scientists" and the media 30 years ago.
"Even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."
Anything I've written about global warming and the debate surrounding global warming you'd know that I think it's of the utmost importance that skeptics have a much wider audience. In their own names. I don't want any of them to be persecuted as "deniers" however.
I am totally perplexed as to why you wanted to question my thinking on that. Astonishing.
MY point was that knowing WHO pliny is doesn't give or take away credibility to his opinion.
Be they Al Gore, Al Schmendrick OR Alphonse D'goreato…. One is either right... or they are not.
... and PLEASE... DO NOT call me Patty...
Good God, It makes me think of that androgynous creature from Saturday Night Live...
(ew... find a happy place, find a happy place)
"Even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."
And I've said that I completely disagree with you (and others). I think knowing who Pliny is in the context of this debate is of the utmost importance, and I believe that to this moment. And besides, why would knowing who Pliny is take anything away from his or her arguments? What it *could* do, however, is give all of us a little more information about where those arguments are coming from in the political spectrum, or at least tell us where we can actually contact Pliny if we change our minds. It's only the most important issue in the history of civilization, after all.
Pliny hasn't responded, and I didn't think he would.
"It's only the most important issue in the history of civilization, after all."
Climate change is cyclical... It is a natural occurance...
Ice age, warming... ice age, warming.
It was going on long before man showed up on the planet and it will go on long after we are gone.
How arrogant to think we can have a significant impact on normal cycles of the earth. We can no more stop the warming or cooling of earth than we can stop a hurricane or a tornado... or even a gentle spring shower.
You want a REAL "most important issue in the history of civilization"?
The fact there are fanatics out there who fly planes into buildings and instead of facing THAT reality there are those who spend their time trying to make it illegal to use anything but environmentally friendly freakin' light bulbs!
"Even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."
I hope you realize that I'm one of the people who is trying to argue for your side here.
In the meantime, I'm out for today. It's exhausting. It's very hard to argue with you, Patricia, because you don't understand what I am trying to say.
Anyone except the most sheltered person who has deliberately ignored all of the news media for the past few years realizes that global warming, especially Anthropogenic Global Warming, isn't just a scientific issue -- it's also a political issue.
It's not like people are sitting here talking about whether or not information is actually lost or just "smeared out" at the event horizon of a Black Hole. It's not as though we're debating whether or not a precambrian fossil actually represents a branch in the evolutionary tree or just an outlying discovery. And it's not even comparable to arguments about the level of secondhand cigarette smoke that can be tolerated by bystanders before their risk of lung cancer increases. It's an almost purely political issue, and everyone from Ted Turner to Tony Blair to Al Gore to Prince Charles to Vladimir Putin to King Fahd has a political interest in the debate. It's not separable from science, it's intrinsic with science.
The United Nations is not a scientific body. They are not the IEEE. They are not the American Mathematical Society. They are a global policymaking organization.
I really can't believe some of the willful ignorance being expressed by a few people in this thread when they try to claim that global warming isn't a political issue being driven by a scientific debate. It's absolutely ludicrous to claim otherwise, and yet -- there they are.
"The one point I DO agree with in all of the back and forth on this page is this...
This Global Warming Frenzy IS purely "political" and has about as much truth to it as the global cooling/pending ice age scare pushed by "scientists" and the media 30 years ago."
"Even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."
That was PAT on Saturday Night Live...
Whew...
Was having anxiety attacks there for a second.
"Even when you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."
Trying to demand that he shed anonymity could only chill debate.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I'm requesting that he do it. I have no power to "demand" anything of him, or enforce any such "demand." I have simply stated that I'm not listening to any more anonymous actors on this issue, and if he wants to have any credibility with me before I engage him in a substantive debate about the issues he raises here, speaking personally he's going to have to tell me who he is.
To nominate "Pliny" as his new Vice-Presidential candidate? Would you demand to know who he was, then?
With a little gentle self-criticism to throw us off?
"I read the text of Gore's speech earlier today, and just finished listening to it via mp3 download. I thought the content was right on: a thoughtful and thorough elaboration of the biggest problem facing the country right now. But the audio--I don't know. Gore definitely catches fire a few times, but to my ear he generally sounds more or less like a goofball. And he has this habit of pausing and breaking momentum in the middle of a sentence and then, coming to the end of the sentence, rushing right over it like he's afraid of periods.
I was pleased to hear him reaching out to Republicans and trying to focus on goals that (nearly) all Americans share. I would be much less afraid these days if I felt that people all over the political spectrum, however vehemently they might disagree, still respected each other's ideas.
Posted by pliny | January 16, 2006 08:23 PM"
http://www.thestranger.com/cgi-bin/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=3660
Juuust throwin' it out there;)
I think our Pliny bears an uncanny verisimiltude to the Pliny over at The Stranger. Of course, nobody knows who he is there, either. Maybe he's Dan Savage's beau?
is fake but accurate. Or whatever. Not me.
If you want to know where the name comes from, I first registered with Tacitus, way back when Josh wrote there regularly. Pliny was a Roman naturalist who was a friend and correspondent of Tacitus.
Pliny cares about science. (He cares a lot about science, God bless him.) This whole thread is ultimately boring unless one is a climatologist. He has stated several times, including in the OP, that he's not here to discuss public policy.
The science (as good or as bad as it is) is not predictive in any convincing way, so it has no ultimate bearing on the formulation of policy. That's nothing but Al Gore's wet dream.
At the end of the day, every nation is going to balance its interests in light of all the available information. And nothing will be done about GW except some tinkering around the edges.
Correct? Either way, I've spoken my peace in this thread, and I'm tired of the mindgames on both sides. Enough of this. People who post anonymously to talk about the most important political and economic issue of our times aren't doing their fellow human beings any favors. They're just selfish people who don't want to have their views attributed to them if they turn out to be incorrect.
Pliny convinced me that GW is nothing to worry about when the best doom'n'gloom scenario he could come up with is a 20% drop in global GDP, someday.
It may be an important political issue because of demagogues like Al Gore and Ellen Goodman, but that belongs on another thread. It's not an important economic issue at all because no one, but no one, is going to sit still for higher gasoline and heating oil prices because of something they saw in a movie.
If you want to participate in an attributed discussion about climatology, there are probably plenty of places to go where people will use their real names.
As for the question of what a discussion about climatology is doing on a political blog: darned if I know.
You're telling us that the policy ramifications of global warming are going to be negligible because Al Gore is a demagogue and so on and so forth. But I think you're really underestimating the gravity of this movement and how deeply it has affected people worldwide.
You're absolutely wrong that Al Gore and his ilk won't "sit still" for higher gasoline prices. Last year Scientific American was calling in a lead editorial for a preemptive tax on gasoline prices to *prevent* them from falling back to the levels they had been hovering around in 2003.
The policy ramifications are going to be profound, and extremely pricey, and most of the money is going to be paid by the United States. The only reason that this issue has sat "on the back burner" so to speak until this moment is that last year's hurricane season was underwhelming. But Al Gore is betting very heavily that this year's won't be. That's precisely why Gore has orchestrated his upcoming "Climate Change" concert series for this coming July -- smackdab in the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season.
I can't predict the weather or the climate but I can predict this much: if by the time those concerts get off the ground in July the hurricane season is anything other than tepid, Al Gore is going to be the front running candidate for President in this country. So we'd all better pray that the hurricanes don't show up.
Al Gore's presidential ambitions hinge completely on the strength of the 2007 Atlantic Hurricane season. Lots of storms by mid-July, he's a shoo-in. He'll win like nothing you ever saw.
Don't give me that stuff. The science is what is supposed to drive the policy, am I right? If you prove the science you dictate the policy: think polio vaccines. Think lead and asbestos abatement. Think OSHA. You can sit and tell me that science doesn't drive policy in this country but it absolutely does.
Visit a nuclear plant in the post-Carter years and ask anyone on the premises why there hasn't been a new nuclear reactor built in this country for more than three decades? It's because Jimmy Carter and his nuclear science team decided to throw the noose around the nuclear industry in this country.
For God's sake the Manhattan Project was the single biggest example of science driving policy in the history of humankind. What are you TALKING about?
Firstly I'm glad you think that AGW is a critically important issue. I agree.
I'm happy to tell you something about myself. The first thing I should say is that I currently live in Melbourne, Australia, which is why I slept through this latest discussion.
Your speculations made me wish I could say that I am Hungarian, and of royal blood. But I am no-one famous. I wish I could pose as a post-doc, but my hair is getting gray. I am a mathematician by training, and have been in scientific research institutions most of my working life. I worked with atmospheric scientists, but over twenty years ago. I have never had climatology-linked research funding. I have written many scientific papers, but recently mostly about computation and fluid mechanics, with industrial applications. I am not writing about AGW by appeal to authority.
there's a chance, I might know you. Any chance that you've worked with Brian Cantwell in the past? Just curious.
small world - although I don't remember a Nick in Melbourne, I definitely remember Tony, who used to work with Brian quite a bit. I was in Brian's group in the 90's, and Tony taught me a thing or two about hot-wires - great man. You must have worked with him as well. Sorry to hear of his passing.
nice diary...
Pat
There are few people more concerned with the impact of climate change on our political system, our economic environment, and our global ecosystem than I am.
That's why I think people who wish to be credible and have a view to defend (and can do so as ably as you do) should not be afraid of standing up and being counted. Nobody is going to be killed and eaten for being incorrect, as long as they are honest about it. That, to me, represents the best of the scientific tradition in Western society. I think it's absolutely critical that both the "early adopters" and the "skeptics" be transparent in this, so that the best possible policy decisions can be made.
Since you're from Australia and say in another comment that you're interested in solar power development, I take it for granted that you know about this project:
I ask because in a (much earlier) debate on AWG here at RedState another person mentioned Enviromission. And in terms of the problems of "remedies" and also in terms of the economics, Enviromission relies on the assumption that a carbon cap and trade model will be adopted in order to be competitive.
But knowing who someone is just lets you make personal attacks.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
But I would like to know about people's motivations. For example, if Pliny (or anyone else talking about AWG) revealed himself to be a principle investor in Enviromission, it's germane to the discussion. I can state right now that I'm not employed by an oil company to have my doubts.
And thanks for the compliment but I don't feel right on the facts. I feel overwhelmed, I feel overmatched by the scientific expertise of people who have more advanced degrees than I do, I feel absolutely powerless to confront billionaires like Ted Turner and Richard Branson, and I feel genuinely frightened that people are writing editorials in the Boston Globe likening me to a Holocaust Denier or a war criminal. It's claustrophobic and terrifying, and I think they mean it to be that way. That's why I'm not debating any more "shadow people" on this issue.
The Alarmists have used and continue to use unconscionable tactics to press their agenda. They operate from a basis that theirs is the only judgement that counts and if they have to snow people to get their point made they will. PJShifty did just this when he tried to discredit solar warming by showing mercury was cooling. In the end he had to acknowledge it.
Maybe I am naive but I firmly believe the arguments make themselves. When you start to say what is causing global warming and just how effective will attempts to control it be. You get not so much man, and not very effective.
Look at the Kyoto treaty. It would have reduced the projected rise in temperature .05 degrees over 50 years and cost trillions of dollars. Thank god we weren't going to buy a whole degree.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I know about it. I have no inside knowledge (and no investment in it or any other eco power). I have been curious about its progress - it's been talked about for about five years. It is unprecedented engineering - a large lightweight tower about a kilometre high. Some cynics think the plans are a catalyst to draw in various kinds of grant money. I don't know.
Technically, I find more interesting a recent international project to use parabolic mirrors to create a very high temperature solar furnace in which zinc oxide would break down into its elements, and the zinc would be separated and used to regenerate energy, probably in electric cells. The trick, so far unsolved, is to separate the zinc and oxygen without them recombining. I'll add a link if I can find one.
One of the first traps junior scientists fall into.
The Earth has been warming since the last ice age, or for about the last 18,000 years. The temperature has been gradually rising and about 10,000 years ago, it became warm enough for agriculture to be feasible. The seas have also risen, about 400 feet in 18,000 years. All of these trends continue today, until the next ice age. The projected temperature increases and the sea height rise fall neatly into the category, margin of measurement error. It's only been in the last 20 years that satellites have been able to somewhat accurately measure the Earth's overall temperature.
I don't get the idea that CO2 is warming the planet when water vapor accounts for far more of the atmospheric elements which cause warming trends, that would be plain old clouds. The 0.2% total that man adds does not make a driving function of climate, it would very likely have to be much greater.
So what do we have, the earth is getting warmer, the seas are getting higher and CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing. So what.
Over the eons the Earth has spent far more of it's history as a snowball than as a temperate place like today. Like the vikings of a thousand years ago, deal with it, it's normal and natural. There are plenty of books and theories to explain natural warming, sun, Earth's orbit, cosmic radiation and on and on.
But lets assume it is true, man is emitting CO2 and warming the planet. OK, so the only technology known to man that does not increase CO2 emissions is nuclear. All the alternative fuels that stand a remote chance of reducing emissions are a net add to CO2 total emissions. Embrace that nuclear solution, or fess up to an agenda that has nothing to do with the convenient bogey man of global warming.
The last go at this, the coming ice age put out in the 1970s by the same people, is more feasible than this global warming claptrap. A quick look at any long term temperature chart will show that easily.
Lastly, who says warm is bad? And BTW, who ended the last ice age 18,000 years ago?
And that is the inconvenient truth.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Mentioned in the original diary there does seem to be some correlation between temperature and CO2 concentrations. I have seen isotopic data that seems to suggest it very strongly from glacier ice cores. In my opinion though causation has been far from proven and if does become proven your nuclear statement is very apropos. One slight correction though is some biofuels end up with a Net CO2 wash. Of course these are biofuels that are not developed as well as they might such as biodiesel, switch grass, ect.
A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. -John Adams
Bill Clinton's scare line: "We could lose 50 feet of Manhattan Island in 50 years.
FACT: More than half of the eastern seaboard, including half of the State of South Carolina, was under the Atlantic Ocean before Man, much less Chevrolet, occupied Planet Earth.
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
The HinzSight Report
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I may well have met you in Stanford in '91 or '97? Anyway, let's switch to email.
The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008
The Minority Report