7/15/2007
three questions
1) Why is it getting hotter on Mars without any SUVs and private jets emitting carbon dioxide?
2) How do the alarmists adequately explain past warming and cooling cycles that started long before the introduction of the first internal combustion engine? There was a Medieval Warm Period from 900-1300 and then a Little Ice Age from about 1500-1800. By simply looking at the covers of our most popular periodicals over the past century, these cycles are clearly evident. We worried about a coming Ice Age from 1895 to 1930, then it was the threat of global warming from the 1930s to the 1960s, followed by another imminent Ice Age during the 1970s, and now we’re back to the threat of global warming again. Our great grandkids will likely have to worry about another Ice Age. There’s just no such thing as our planet’s “ideal temperature.” Average surface temperatures are constantly in flux, up or down about a few tenths of a degree every year. These cycles are normal.
3) If man is solely responsible for the increased levels of CO2, then how do you explain the Ordovician Period, 440 million years ago, when the CO2 level was 16 times higher than today? Or, the Cretaceous Period, 140 million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and CO2 was 8 times higher? Or, the CO2 levels from 95 million years ago which were about the same as levels today? How can these levels be changing long before the appearance of man?
Strictly rhetorical. I don’t need trolls popping up in comments with insults, showing me a directory or collection of posts as to why we’re wrong and the global warming nazis are right.
The thought police are coming here deriding not only me, but others for pointing out that there is no consensus. They are just proving what lengths the global warming freaks are willing to go to shut down ‘dissent’.
Huh. I thought ‘dissent was patriotic’. 
Pirate's Cove linked with Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup
July 15th, 2007 at 8:04 am
It depends on whose ox is being gored.
July 15th, 2007 at 9:04 am
LOL
July 15th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup
And a Happy Sunday to all! It is yet another great day to be alive here in America, and that never gets old. This pinup is by Harry Ekman, with a tiny addition by me.
What is happening out on ye olde feedreader?
A Lovely Infidel is one…
July 15th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Do you not know? The Martians are one of the worst polluters around… followed closely by the dinosaurs…
July 15th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
3 good questions which don’t need to be rhetorical - here are the answers:
1. Mars has had 30 years of massive dust storms that have reduced the planet’s albedo (reflectivity), warming the planet.
2. The medieval warm period coincided with a warmer sun - the little ice age coincided with a cooling sun. In fact, global temperatures have correlated closely with solar activity over the past 1000 years. However, the correlation ended in 1975 - solar activity has been steady since the 50’s while global temperatures began steadily rising from 1975.
3. When the earth has gotten hotter in the past due to changes in the Earth’s orbit, the hotter temperatures caused CO2 to be released from the oceans and thawing permafrost. What was observed next was additional warming due to the greenhouse effect of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere.
July 15th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
1. The sun’s influence warms Mars, just as it warms the earth.
2. I’m not sure about what you said in #2. Here’s why:
Moving 11-year average of terrestrial Northern Hemisphere peratures as deviations in ºC from the 1951-1970 mean left axis and darker line (Jones, P. D. et. al. (1986) J. Clim. Appl. Meterol. 25, 161-179.,Grovesman, B. S. and Landsberg, H. E. (1979) Geophys. Res. Let. 6, 767-769.). Solar magnetic cycle lengths right axis and lighter line (Baliunas, S. and Soon, W. (1995) Astrophysical Journal 450, 896-901; Christensen, E. and Lassen, K. (1991) Science 254, 698-700; [sbaliunas, wsoon@cfa.harvard.edu].). The shorter the magnetic cycle length, the more active, and hence brighter, the sun.
Surface temperate in the Sargasso sea (with time resolution of about 50 years) ending in 1975 as determined by isotope ratios of marine organism remains in sediment at the bottom of the sea (Kegwin, L. D. (1996) Science 274, 1504-1508; [lkeigwin@whoi.edu].). The horizontal line is the average temperature for this 3,000 year period. The Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Optimum were naturally occurring, extended intervals of climate departures from the mean.
There is no reason to believe this extremely long trend will discontinue, and if there is, I'd like to hear the explanation.
3. Warming occurs before CO2 is released into the atmosphere, not the other way around. Ice Cores also show that the WARMING occurs BEFORE the CO2 rise, COOLING trends start during high CO2 periods. (Lord Monckton of Brenchley) and I have a chart for that somewhere….
The top graph is the temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere for the last 400,000 years from the Vostok ice core. The second is the temperature change from present, degrees centigrade. (Year before present=1950.) If the two graphs were superimposed, as is customary when comparing similar curves, changes in temperature PRECEDE changes in CO2 concentration by about 400-4,000 years. Petit et al (1999) state that during each of the last four interglacial periods, the Earth was warmer than the current warm period. (courtesy, Lord Monckton of Brenchley, 2006)
Even if we totally eliminate our carbon dioxide contribution, and the only way we can do that is to stop breathing–it’s debateable if anything whatsoever will change. Historically, warming happens BEFORE carbon dioxide goes up in the atmosphere, not the other way around. So it’s literally impossible that this ridiculous theory is correct.
Dr. Roy Spencer (according to Wikipedia) is a principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville, has served as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and is the recipient of NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement. He is principally known for his satellite-based temperature monitoring work, for which he was awarded the American Meteorological Society’s Special Award. He is is skeptical of the view that human activity is primarily responsible for global warming.
Veizer and Shaviv use their study results to conclude that a doubling of today’s CO2 levels would result in a change in low-latitude sea temperatures of about 0.5C. This translates into a global temperature rise of only about 0.75C instead of the 1.5-to-5.5C global warming predicted by the IPCC. This new forecast compares favourably with other predictions (e.g. MIT’s Richard Lindzen, 1997) and matches the rate of change observed by weather satellites over the past 22 years.
And there are more charts and graphs, but I think you can see the point with the IPCC hysterical forecast.
July 15th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Cao, the sun (or specifically solar variations) could not be causing the warming on Mars as there hasn’t been a long term trend in solar activity since the 50’s. In fact, over the past 20 years, the sun has been slightly cooling (although the trend is very slight, it’s practically level). Check out this comparison of solar activity and Earth’s temperature which as well as showing the lack of solar warming over the past 50 years also shows how Earth’s temperature diverged in the 70’s.
A common misconception is that either CO2 causes warming or warming causes CO2 but you can’t have both - in actuality, you do have both. You’re right that warming occured before CO2 was released - it’s due to changes in the Earth’s orbit (Milankovitch cycles). But CO2 is also a greenhouse gas meaning it absorbs longwave radiation, retaining heat in the atmosphere. And this is what is observed in past history - a warming followed by a CO2 increase followed by additional amplified warming.
July 15th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Re that graph about solar cycle length versus temperature, you posted a graph by Lassen from 1991 - the last two points in that graph show a sharp upwards trend. The smoothing technique used on the solar cycle length was to take an average of the 2 preceding and 2 following solar cycles in order to smooth out the noise. The last two points are unfiltered - in essence, it’s like plotting two different data sets.
In 1999, Lassen updated his graph with updated data. His conclusion: “It has previously been demonstrated that the mean land air temperature of the Northern hemisphere could adequately be associated with a long-term variation of solar activity as given by the length of the approximately 11- year solar cycle. Adding new temperature data for the 1990’s and expected values for the next sunspot extrema we test whether the solar cycle length model is still adequate. We find that the residuals are now inconsistent with the pure solar model. We conclude that since around 1990 the type of Solar forcing that is described by the solar cycle length model no longer dominates the long-term variation of the Northern hemisphere land air temperature.”
July 16th, 2007 at 4:13 am
So that negates Veizer and Shaviv’s study? And Brenchley’s graph from the Ice Core?
I think you’re grasping for straws here.
A few of those charts are the charts from the white paper at Seitz’s website.
I would like to see you refute the signatures of 17,800 scientists, 95% of which are Ph.D’s., who object to the global warming theory. From the paper:
To be sure, CO2 levels have increased substantially since the Industrial Revolution, and are expected to continue doing so. It is reasonable to believe that humans have been responsible for much of this increase. But the effect on the environment is likely to be benign. Greenhouse gases cause plant life, and the animal life that depends upon it, to thrive. What mankind is doing is liberating carbon from beneath the Earth’s surface and putting it into the atmosphere, where it is available for conversion into living organisms.
I doubt if you can refute that, and it’s the bottom line. The IPCC prediction is way off, and that’s the bottom line.
Sun’s Direct Role in Global Warming May Be Underestimated, Duke Physicists Report
The sun’s influence should be adjusted in the global warming data and models. They should stop overdramatizing CO2’s influence, particularly man’s contribution, which is minimal.
July 16th, 2007 at 4:35 am
So what about the built-in mechanism of climate cooling? We should be baking by now if what you said is correct…! LOL
Warming, warming, we’re warming! OMG!
July 17th, 2007 at 5:25 am
OK, this guy has three questions - I won’t take issue with his extravagant “millions of years” comments - -
1) Why is it getting hotter on Mars without any SUVs and private jets emitting carbon dioxide?
Average temperatures of planets fluctuate over time much the way daily temperatures do. A number of factors are involved, but one of the more prominent is sunspot activity, which influences the amount of heat the sun radiates. I think you find the same kind of fluctuations on planets and moons (such as ours) that have no atmosphere. This is yet another indication that the “global warming” baloney is just that. That campaign is designed to get its proponents enormous power over much of the earth, more than to “save the planet.”
2) How do the alarmists adequately explain past warming and cooling cycles that started long before the introduction of the first internal combustion engine?
There was a Medieval Warm Period from 900-1300 and then a Little Ice Age from about 1500-1800. By simply looking at the covers of our most popular periodicals over the past century, these cycles are clearly evident. We worried about a coming Ice Age from 1895 to 1930, then it was the threat of global warming from the 1930s to the 1960s, followed by another imminent Ice Age during the 1970s, and now we’re back to the threat of global warming again. Our great grandkids will likely have to worry about another Ice Age. There’s just no such thing as our planet’s “ideal temperature.” Average surface temperatures are constantly in flux, up or down about a few tenths of a degree every year. These cycles are normal.
Insofar as I know, they simply change the subject or ignore those prior warmer periods, including the one from about 900 to 1300 A.D., when Vikings farmed Greenland. The warmth caused more land to be arable, without flooding sea level cities (e.g., London, Tokyo, Venice, etc.). Generally, when FORCED to address such information, they try to ridicule it. They do the same with Prof. Seitz’s Petition Project opposing “global warming.”
Rather than actually contacting any of the 19,000 scientists and engineers who signed the petition, whose names and affiliations are given on the webpage, at least 2000 of whom are climatologists or scientists in related fields, they would rather point to the 60 “political scientists” involved in the U.N. publicity stunt promoting the concept.
Assuming the earth’s average temperature bottomed out in the 20th century (it’s really a bit early to tell), it took a good 700 years for the temperature to decline to that point. If we spend the next 700 years getting back to what was arguably a pretty good average temperature, that will NOT be a problem. Roughly speaking, the period of this temperature swing cycle is about 1500 years. The earth has gone through a number of those cycles and life has flourished throughout. It is silly and ignorant to assume that recent average temperatures have been the absolute OPTIMUM and should be preserved at all costs.
3) If man is solely responsible for the increased levels of CO2, then how do you explain the Ordovician Period, 440 million years ago, when the CO2 level was 16 times higher than today?
Or, the Cretaceous Period, 140 million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and CO2 was 8 times higher? Or, the CO2 levels from 95 million years ago which were about the same as levels today? How can these levels be changing long before the appearance of man?
You can TRY to get them to answer these questions, but I doubt that they will. Their position is that “global warming” has been “proven” and doesn’t need to be defended. (That’s very convenient for them, isn’t it?) All kinds of evidence indicates that CO2 levels fluctuate independent of man and his activities. Aside from that, they TOTALLY ignore the fact that CO2 levels and vegetation growth are inherently self-balancing. Higher CO2 levels cause more abundant vegetation, resulting in the absorption of more CO2, and vice-versa.
Most atmospheric CO2 is the result of natural decay of vegetation. The percentage that is a result of man’s activities is in the single digits, and the majority of THAT is produced by countries that aren’t even signatories to the Kyoto Protocol. They intend to continue growing their economies, and increasing the amount of CO2 they emit.
While those countries are increasing their CO2 output, many industrialized countries are striving to curtail their increase in CO2 output. But if the industrialized countries STOPPED all industrial activity, within a couple of years the growth in CO2 emissions from third world countries would have more than overcome that reduction. Obeying the Kyoto Protocol is an exercise in self-flagellaltion.
“Them’s my sentiments….”
July 17th, 2007 at 5:48 am
John…get your own blog and get off mine.