The Penguin
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I think that it highlights the short-term variance as opposed to long-term trend. Again, I think that it eliminates the long-term trend altogether??? B)
It's not the sort of graph I'm used to reading, but I do think it's useful...My only idea about the triplets, is that they could be a reflection of negative-feedback mechanisms' natural tendencies to 'overshoot'...Homeodynamism as opposed to homeostasis??
Other than that, Wilson - my brain hurts!
Oh, Peter.
Peter, Peter, Peter, Peter.
It’s just a graph. An interesting expression of an idea, but still only a visual representation of statistics. The content, duration, frequency, amplitude, scale and notation, (or lack of,) are chosen to prove a point – right or wrong doesn’t matter, as it’ll never truly be either.
What matters is that it’s pretty. Just enjoy it and absolve yourself from the responsibility of critical analysis. And the headache will go away.
For instance, below is an extended version that includes the same data, which might suggest a different interpretation.
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Your last comment may be interpreted as sacralege.
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Precisely, JC.
The great thing about Ikea furniture is that it’s simple and fashionable. Of course, the problem with Ikea furniture is also that it’s simple and fashionable.
The same can be said for the ‘I Know Everything Always’ type of argument, as it tends to pick up on the simple (purportedly incontrovertible) elements of a fashionable point of view and present them as absolute facts. Some climate change proponents’ offerings are very often reminiscent of that ultimately unsatisfying product.
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I’m wearing my sceptical hat and am wondering whether the use of David Attenborough gives this, admittedly very interesting, series more gravitas than it deserves. Mr. A. is after all well known for his global travels and longstanding association with educational programmes relating to the planet, its environment and wildlife, and human influence on both. I’m sorry to have missed the end of last nights episode and therefore don’t know whether he only presented the piece or was involved in the writing, direction or production. I’d be interested to know though, as it would colour my opinion.
Taking off the hat, I was impressed by a couple of figures he quoted; the variation in temperature figures up and down from the recent historical norm which in turn brought about either extended ice age conditions or replaced these with inter ice age periods. If I remember correctly he stated that the last ice age was predicated on global temperatures only two degrees centigrade lower than ‘normal’ while the opposite condition is fed on global temps around four degrees higher than ‘normal’. I suppose the worry is, as we don’t really know how wide the margin is within which the planet can self regulate, that there could at some point be a compendium of events that takes us beyond remediation capacity.
My other slightly more cynical worry is that a programme like this can only re-tell what we think we already know, and is probably edited to an extent that much is lost – whether with bias or not. By definition, we are unlikely to be presented with a similar programme telling us what we don’t know and what other dynamics may be ongoing to influence climate change. Sure, there are pieces of the jigsaw on the table but I am one of those who doesn’t pretend to know what fraction of the total picture is there, and I am therefore not quite cocky enough to guess what the picture is yet.
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. . . . you can clearly see that the NA is divided in 2 parts: an eastern side which is a little bit colder then normal and a western side being far hotter then normal. . . . .
Interestingly, the U.S. Met have warned of another very active hurricane season on the way, with possibly half a dozen of these expected to be significant storms. I’m not any kind of expert on this but I would assume that a warmer western Atlantic would provide suitable conditions for energising storm activity.
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Hey, all I need is a 200 feet rise in sea level and I'll be living at the sea-side, with a lovely view over Glasgow Bay!
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Geeeeeee-Zeus! Biggest thunder and lightning storm in Glasgow that I can ever remember. North, south, east and west of here, and directly overhead, huge glaringly bright flashes of both fork and sheet lightning and thunder that rattled the windows – from up to fifteen miles away, I guess. Astounding!
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Ah ha!!!
You've hit on the answer!
Let's move London up to the highlands of Scotland!
Speaking seriously - how long is "long term"?
Surely the SE of UK with their 20 million people, all doing without water (or being unable to use their dishwashers
) for more than a few weeks/months, etc, can't be considered as a "long term" problem?Or can it?
I suppose it depends where you are. Hereabouts, a long-term water shortage is defined as getting to the shops and back without getting soaked.
I also suppose that if an extended dry spell occurred in the southeast, to the extent that drinking water became in short supply, then that would be in the long term. I don’t know whether that would take months or years of relative dry weather but I further suppose it would be quicker resolved by people dispersing from London than have them wait for local or national politicians do anything about providing adequate water supplies.
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I suspect that the current lack of rain in some parts of the UK is due to temporary synoptical rather than permanent global irregularities, and therefore will not lead to long-term problems.
On the other hand, it happens that the most populated area of the UK is also one of the driest, and it may be that population increase, rather than precipitation decrease, could well lead to substantial water shortages until infrastructure strategy catches up.
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I’m sorry to digress but this reminds me of a ‘wildlife diary’ that a past captain at my golf club initiated a few years ago. It started well with rabbits, squirrels, foxes, deer, herons, woodpeckers etc being diligently entered. However, then a potbellied pig, a panther, herds of wildebeest, and . . .em. . . a penguin found their way onto the hallowed pages. The diary was withdrawn.
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. . . . What we are seeing now is scotland rising (now that the huge weight of ice sheets have gone) and therefore southern england is going back down, . . .
Hoorah!
On the subject of temperature records, it's worth keeping in mind that although what we take to be accurate records are multi-sourced, the published figures are manipulated to iron out anomalies. Without prejudice, this introduces personal views of what constitutes an anomaly. And as we're only talking about a fraction of One Degree Cee this could be a material concern.
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These days, we are more aware of our own influence on things...
Are we though? That seems to be the single most disputed proposition throughout these discussions – in fact this entire forum, ‘Environment change’, is kept going almost purely around that debate. (Excluding obviously the lobbyists who either believe “yesterday was chilly so global warming is balderdash” or “last winter was remarkably mild so we’re all going to hell”.) Most people recognise that weather in the recent past has been different from previously, I grant you, but how and why and (possibly, just possibly,) by whom this was initiated is still open to debate. Or at least I hope it is.
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. . . . . . . . .
If it is talking about milk, there is a simple and logical explanation. Milk is produced at certain points of the year, which actually varies from country to country (due to climate etc?). Now when milk is low in france, they import. When milk is low in the UK, they import. Who do they import from? Each other.
Not every food is produced 24/7, 365 days a year. Therefore, many imports and exports are due to seasonal variances.
Anyway, another boring explanation by me
I worked on a farm for a year after leaving school and, as SF points out, I have to tell you that diary cows actually produce milk 2x24/7, whether they want to or not, poor dears. This is what makes being a dairy farmer such a pain in the udders.
They do come off production when they've got a calf, and I can only be sure about cows in our latitudes, but in general they're milked twice a day, every day.
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BFTP,
Too early to say for sure that the trend has flattened out permanently, and in any case it depends what period average you use: using a short cycle (say 5 years) there is a case, but short cycles prove little: as kold says, lack of a key warming element over these years accounts for that much, and possibly more.
The attached diagram suggests that your contention regarding rate of change might be open to debate, but one has to accept the science used to create the data first. There might have been occasions when CO2 has risen more rapidly, but I would content NOT without some forcing e.g. the metorite that caused the KT layer, and periods of intense vulcanism. At these points, and hence some of PT's comments, it is possible that not only was there high CO2, but also higher (and more than counterbalancing amounts) of other aerosols that served to more than damp any warming effect. This would explain why high levels of CO2 have sometimes correlated with the onset of ice ages. Before Daniel starts getting excited, note that at present there is no overriding damping at present!
Nice graph. Interestingly, (apologies if this has been noted before and explained, but I must have missed it,) at the same time as a pretty consistent correlation is illustrated between temperature and CO2 levels there is also a similarly consistent regime of time lag from temperature change to apparent adjustment in CO2. For most of the period described CO2 content is affected by temperature change rather than the other way round.
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Zero emissions is an unrealistic aim if we are to sustain humankind- there were emissions even when humans lived very primitive lifestyles. However, it is entirely feasible to think in terms of significantly reducing emissions. Any significant reduction emissions is likely to help, regardless of the extent of human contribution to climate change, from sustainability and air quality points of view.
The problem with reducing emissions is that we risk destabilising economies and forcing a return to primitive lifestyles. That's why I favour the route of focusing on alternative technology, while progressively limiting/taxing greenhouse gas emissions- that way, there is hope that we may be able to achieve a situation where standards of living, economies etc. are limited only by availability of clean technology, rather than that plus additional draconian legislation. Alternatively, the more draconian approaches that are popular with environmental groups could well force far more extreme cutbacks than is necessary. But doing nothing isn't likely to have pretty consequences either.
I do find that there are a lot of extremists and hypocrites and "spin-doctors" in the environmental campaigning community, which tends to put people off and make them sceptical. Politics is an even larger barrier with politicians copying environmental agendas as an excuse to fulfil other political agendas. Maybe if they presented relatively unbiased and "as is" views, like the findings of the IPCC reports for example, the public might start to take notice, though the current lack of trust in the environmental movement would remain a problem.
Absolutely correct. Beginning to end. Totally agree TWS. People should also think about the efffect on marginal, subsistence style populations if the more technologically advanced community regresses.
Nice link, Scribbler.
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Not here yet. Some trees have the beginnings of buds and some early bulbs have flowered, but apart from that - zilch.
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On the other hand, the last time this happened it created a very picturesque geographical feature called the Gulf of Mexico. You know, where the Stream comes from.
And if it were to make another Stream . . . . . . . . . .
Oh God, I’m at it now. I’m sorry.
Really sorry.
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Isn't it quiet now? Too quiet. We haven't had a drift to the North Atlantic for ages.
Which brings me to a thought. Or two.
If a great big mega-ton asteroid landed in the Atlantic, would it A cut of the Gulf Stream and B make a big splash?
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That the Earths ecology, atmospheric composition and climate are all complex and intricately linked is, I hope, beyond question. All are in critical balance but highly responsive to (albeit on a timescale far exceeding mere human lifetimes) the incident energy received from the Sun.
This incident energy changes with factors such as Milankovitch cycles, solar fluctuations, rotational precession etc. There are many more variables but these are probably the main influences.
Humans are an adaptive species. Our perception of ‘change’ is based on comparison to the present and within our own time reference. i.e. human lifetimes. Over a longer period, our ability and adaptation to change is almost imperceptible, with the Earth appearing to be in a state of constant equilibrium.
The interesting factor with the hockey stick is therefore not limited to the size of the blade, but the rate at which the blade is growing. (rate of change). Equilibrium will be reached – it always does – the resultant instability while it does so may exceed the ability of humans, and far more, other species to adapt and survive.
ffO.
FfO, I see what you mean but I’m still interested in the temperature records over the past thousand or so years because a) there are significant changes and
human influence was far less.There are a couple of graphs in Wikipedia that illustrate what I mean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Ye..._Comparison.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Ye..._Comparison.png
As I said in a previous post, the analogy of a hockey stick is misleading as that description alludes to a long period of temperature stability, a straight line on the graph, with a sudden, unprecedented, and dramatic upturn towards the end of the measured period. Looking at the graphs in the above links we see that this is not the case.
There were sustained warm and cool periods, ‘medieval warm’ and ‘little ice age’, together with a regime of constantly fluctuating temperatures where hot to cold and vice versa happened as repetitively as they happened suddenly. My understanding is that human activity was imperceptible in the causes of these changes.
It’s also notable that, looking at the last thousand years, if the latest period of temperature increases had not occurred the downwards temperature trend would by now have us in an alarmingly cold period. So we could simply be in a period of balancing out.
With reference to survivability, we know that, today, people inhabit vastly different environments the world over. From equatorial regions of high temperatures and high humidity to sub-tropical deserts with high temperatures and zero humidity, to polar areas with freezing temperatures and large seasonal changes in humidity. We also know that, as a species, humans have dispersed from one point to all points on the globe, adapting physiologically and technically as they went. In that evolutionary period the climates humans were faced with were more extreme than that referred to in the links.
In response then, ffO, I don’t see that we are necessarily faced with imminent extinction, based on the facts currently to hand. I’m not saying there’s no point in looking into the future, but if we do, the assessment should be analytical rather than simply prophetic in it’s primary objective.
Quote, Devonian, 2 April 2006 - "No, the change we make is small, but it will have a big impact. Look at it this way:
The sun raises temps from close to absolute zero to about -18C. Pre humanity GHG's topped this up to a average world temp of 14C (or so, ball park figures these off the top of my head). People like me are talking of perhaps 2-4C on top of that thanks to anthropogenic ghg's, not much compared to the sun's 270C or so warming is it!!! But 5C cooling is an ice age and 2-4C warming on heck of a lot in climate terms...."
Devonian, your point is possibly quite correct – in general terms. My worry, when we’re talking up the high significance of temperature increases slightly over half a degree in a thousand years, is that an argument which relies on terms like ‘14C or so’ and ‘2 – 4C on top of that’ is insufficiently accurate to engender real concern in accurately defined and very small global temperature increases.
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ffO, wonderful to see you back, drawn like a moth no doubt to this emotionally charged but factually imperfect debate. Rather than going round in circles gain, we may all now actually learn something.
Scribbler. I don't wish to lower the tone of the neighbourhood, (any more than necessary,) but really! We have more influence than the sun?
I think not.
But that's the point really. I find myself in regular agreement with BFTP, for instance, in the belief that the Earth is a big thing, like massive, and we are wee, very very wee, so although the human race may make tiny adjustments to the climate these are insignificant compared to the ebbs and flows of the natural cycles.
As for the hockey stick blade, might this not be just another spike in the handle rather than the defining event in climatic evolution?
Chill man, everything's cool. (It certainly bl**dy is today!)
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lol
Lots of brownie points for us from the Mods, eh?!!
Ha! Fat chance.
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. . . . .
They also say:
"Keep in mind that in the last 10,000 years, the earth's average temperature hasn't varied by more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit."
It's sobering to think that we're only raising the temperature of the earth by tenths of degrees and yet that is enough to cause the equivalent of global panic
. As you also said trevw – a super discussion – lots of biased comments but no bad language! Thanks fellas!
That’s why this is so interesting. The dreaded ‘Hockey Stick’ is often waved at us as proof of impending doom. But the ‘ski jump’ end, in terms of actual fluctuation, is not exactly impressive.
Further, the handle bit (the previous 900 years) is less like a hockey stick and more like Harry Lauder’s walking stick. (Harry Lauder, for the younger amongst you, was an erstwhile Music Hall performer of the early 20th century whose trademarks were a kilt and a walking stick shaped like a car spring. He was also a school pal of Peter T’s apparently.) In other words, the situation before the latest upturn in global temps has never been stable.
So why the panic now? Especially when we wont know the true implications of the current warming in our lifetimes.
At least, not mine.
And I completely agree about the manners exhibited in this debate.
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Didn't Devonian's link yesterday to Wikipedia provide a suitable graph? :huh:
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Thanks, Scribbler, for that pointer – I’d missed the link previously.
Having looked at the article now, and although it doesn’t show the correlation of CO2 to temperature I was after it’s still certainly interesting, I am struck by how open the interpretation of the data contained there could be.
There is plenty of scope in these graphs for both sides in the GW debate to reference elements of proof in support of their argument.
The problem, as it says somewhere in the text, is that we will not be able to truly interpret the data for at least 150 years.
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Is it as simple as that though, Scribbler?
Leaving aside that you’ve doubled up on your list of examples through repetition, I don’t remember ever seeing a graph of historical organically based energy production plotted against the rise in CO2 levels and global temperature increase.
I suppose, as many have pointed out, this would be too simple an analysis anyway due to the many other factors that may influence the climatic system. But it would be interesting to see whether the rather overused mantra “We’ve created an artificial level of CO2 in the atmosphere, so we must be to blame for global warming”, really holds water.
But if the model is too simple, then how much more complicated could it be? Do we know? And if we don’t, how can anyone be so certain that there isn’t something else going on; something we can’t yet understand that may have a bigger impact on the climate than human activity?
) for more than a few weeks/months, etc, can't be considered as a "long term" problem?
Global Warming
in Space, Science & nature
Posted · Edited by The Penguin
As far as I can tell, it is degrees C (edit: as a variation). But it kind of illustrates the point – why for instance is the Zero line where it is?