millennia

How about: computer models can't mimick the climate observed, backwards or forwards Even better

Very interesting and yet incredibly this jumps out of the page: My emphasis - the models call for a much higher degree of warming towards the poles therefore to extrapolate a 3C Antarctic warming to a 2-3C global warming is complete hogwash. A 3C global warming would probably lift temperatures 9C at the poles so by this statement's own admission we are more likely looking at a 1C rise globally. Last century we got a 0.7C rise and so far this century that has all been wiped out again - so a 1C variability could be called background climate noise.... and this is for a doubling of CO2!!! Also below the article in a letter exchange "as manifested in the IPCC's projections of future warming of 3±1.5 C for a doubling of CO2 concentration" 3±1.5 C?? Potentially 1.5C for a doubling of CO2 (ie 600ppm)?? Step away, nothing to see here, no disaster, step away.....

I don't think you can lose as much ice as you lost last year without knock on effects. It has been a remarkable recovery after last year but it leaves a lot of vulnerable 1st year ice plus, as GW points out, multi-year ice that broke free from the pack and drifted to areas where it may now melt off. Even a cold summer this year will not return us to normal and it's probably best to have a forensic examination in the autumn of what happens this summer than to try and second guess now. The next couple of months will be interesting, on a global scale we are now at the point where total ice coverage starts to drop again (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...a.withtrend.jpg) it will be interesting to see if there is a significant break below 0 on the anomaly as we are currently running 1m sq km ahead of last year at this time.

Have I missed something or is this an oxymoron? In the past, natural, warmings CO2 levels TRAIL BEHIND temps by 100 years, but then suddenly our CO2 is FORCING TEMPS TO RISE, and in less than 100 years too! Cake and eat it spring to mind here GW. I don't dispute anthropogenic CO2 increases, although not all the 290-385 rise is fossil fuels I think, ocean exhalation due to increased temperatures, land use change, deforestation all play their roles, but to say we have suddenly changed the planet from one where it warmed and then increased CO2 to one where we increase CO2 and then it warms is ridiculous. In past, natural, warmings when the CO2 went up did it reinforce the warming? No, the natural cycle took the temperature back down again DESPITE the increased CO2, as will -ve PDO,AMO and SC24 this time.

Sorry this is not what what I meant, I meant a combination of LIA temperatures and lower CO2 - an 80% reduction in output combined with greater ocean absorbtion due to lower temperatures - solar cycle 24 scenario. Apologies if I misled on that one. What about it? Do you reckon if that's on the cards we really can stop it? More likely we cause more hurt trying and then watch it happen anyway. I honestly see the arguement about doing absolutely nothing because it looks impossible is not an excuse, but over compensating will compound the problem (the problem of human suffering) not relieve it.

I love the way the populations of rich countries that have had it all for so long they've become bored with it all and look to "alternative" ways of life seem to think the desires of billions of people in developing countries who have experienced no such luxuries count for nothing and they should cast away their dreams. How do you propose to stop this desire of billions of people to emulate our way of life, nuke em? You had better put it in your option kit bag because their demands aren't going away. Genocide is a result of a positive action that leads to mass deaths, not a negative lack of action (which I suppose would be neglect). History is littered with the corpses from the actions of the well meaning.... Out of context, I was talking about the major source of human food - plants - a warmer more CO2 rich environment is far more beneficial than a LIA type climate with "pre-industrial CO2". If we were to return to that grain production would drop so sharply starvation would be a cert even in the developed world at these population levels. http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=569586 ...then we die out....

Oh if only..... fact is the prospect of 4 billion people being lifted out of poverty is entirely due to our fossil fueled industrialisation. We are nowhere near being able to replace this energy source in any meaningful way, and are probably 100 years off doing that. Therefore whatever the bleating, whatever the tax, whatever the actual TRUTH of what is happening to our environment because of us we are stuck with it. Yes, it is very sensible to become more efficient in energy use and look to alternatives but the kind of proposals (80% anybody?) being bandied about in our oil shocked economies are tantamount to genocide in their ultimate effect. Warm + CO2 = world fed Cold - CO2 = world dead So (in support of the above quote) let's stop wasting energy knitting hair shirts of guilt to wear and concentrate on the following: 1. Which direction we are actually going - up, down or sideways 2. The real effects - minus scare and spin, both positive and negative, of that resultant direction 3. Research in to how we ADAPT to what we can't change - which you will find is 99% of whatever the planet throws at us. Did you miss me?

IF the sea level dropped 30cm around the Maldives and yet on a global basis no such drop has occurred then you have a lower sea level in one part of the Indian ocean than the other - that makes me scratch my head as well. I'd like to see the maths on that myself!

Me too but I was concentrating more on the water sports that the structure of the islands so even being there doesn't help me unfortunately. This was a wave cut platform in the underlying rock lying a clear foot above an identical wave cut platform with today's waves rolling into it. The lack of an intervening platform suggests a pretty rapid drop and the fact that rock was eroded would put it beyond the scope of storm damage I would have thought as otherwise I'd have been surprised there was any vegetation left! Of course I've no data on the age of the higher platform than some local dudes saying that was where the sea was in recent times - again a suggestion that it's not hundreds or thousands of years old. However that's not to say the date of 1970 was an interpretation by the presenter of the vaguer data a local fisherman would give. I cannot remember what the programme was I'm afraid but the image certainly stuck in my mind and I heard about Mörner after seeing this, so wasn't influenced. I'll look up some of those reference you gave me - thanks - although the one you detail looks like an arguement over interpretation of the raw data - where have I heard that before?

At the risk of going OT in a climate change thread you will find that was due to subduction of the Indo-Australian plate under the Eurasian plate, whereas the Maldives sit firmly atop the Indo-Australian plate with India http://www.hockeycosom.net/planet_earth_co...onic_Plates.gif I wouldn't have thought tectonics would move the islands greatly enough to notice sea level changes in 30 years.

I have to admit I don't know whether that area is subject to lift - these atols are weathered mountains but are these mountains volcanic in origin? Is this area tectonically active? Scary if this is the case as they could disappear overnight!

No evidence? I've seen a video on TV where they showed the high tide line that local fishermen confirmed was the case 30 years ago and it was clearly a good way up the beach from the current high tide line. I can't comment on anything beyond the living memory of the locals but either the sea level had dropped or the atol had lifted a foot in 30 years - both seem implausible but physical evidence was there to see. Can you point me to the disputed counters to this work, I'd be interested if any of them have even been to the Maldives to confirm his data or were just remote debunking his idea because it didn't match theirs? It's part of his $300million "indoctrination" budget he is to use to continue his gob smackingly one sided diatribe - which still seems to contain warnings of imminent global sea level rise which is a bit weird as he just spent $20 million on a SEA FRONT apartment in San Francisco! Mind you, it is the penthouse apartment . "Youth" is a great target as without balancing information and in a convincing format like AIT they'll soak it up like a sponge. This isn't debate it's preaching and yes, knowing the views you have put on this site you have definitely been spammed

With pleasure http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/inqu/finalprogra...tract_54486.htm There is sort of a link in that the very cold air means very little water vapour and therefore more loss of heat than you would have if there were as much WV in the air as in the tropics. Hence much bigger diurnal ranges in continental climates rather than tropical marine ones - even when there are no clouds.

I think that the problem might be that the models do not seem to have a shut off point and the +ve forcings reinforce each other in a cycle - maybe that isn't the case. For instance the SST cannot get much above 31C because at that temperature water is evaporating so fast the cooling effect of the evaporation balances the attempts to heat the water. This may account for the sea level dropping 30cm around the Maldives as rapid evaporation forms a bowl in the sea surface because the surrounding ocean can't rush in fast enough to fill it. This measured 30cm drop also shows that sea level around the world (excluding tides) is not a constant, which also makes it even more hard to predict global sea level changes. The effect observed in the Maldives may also save other tropical atols from being inundated in a warmer climate.

You say that like I sanction every point made in articles I post, to which I object. In order to make points that I am not alone in believing I have to post articles which unfortunately contain dubious facts within the framework of the points they are trying to make. This occurs on both sides of the arguement and things are emphasised because the author believes that the raw truth isn't compelling enough to convince people who don't share their views. This is a shame but I don't see it ever changing, which is what makes the whole discussion really frustrating. Or are you saying pro-AGW articles are never biased? I've posted threads that just ask questions based on data I have been able to get hold of, but these days it is getting harder and harder to determine the accuracy of that data once it has gone through one agency or another - I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that. The real problem with this whole thing is that so much is not known and new research is continually coming forward but "policy makers" have already made up their mind based on early theories and are now hell bent on their path regardless of any future research to the contrary - usually because it benefits them financially like Gordon's "green" taxes. We've just had Polar Bears listed as an endangered species based on future ice projections despite their population being 5 TIMES what it was 60 years ago. On the other hand without the benefit of satellites in the 1940s we don't know anywhere near as accurately the extent of ice loss caused during that warm period - which could well have combined with a +ve AMO/PDO to push warmer water into the Arctic: So maybe Polar Bear populations will drop back to 1940 levels again after all - we don't KNOW, it's speculation based on extrapolation. So I counter the assumption made about my views when I've tried very hard to press the point that we need more research before knee jerking into another disaster - like biofuels - and to be really careful AGW doesn't end up on a list like this in 30 years time: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterE...ild_predictions

Surely you are just stating the difference in interception of solar energy as a function of apparent disc size as a function of actual disc size and distance without including the reduction of the actual intensity of the radiation as a function of the square of it's distance? The difference between Venus and Mars in terms of energy received at the surface is vast, particularly as the infra-red is not reflected from the clouds of Venus as was originally assumed because of it's high albedo.

Exactly, and that is the real bear in the woods for Venus. It has 90 times the atmospheric pressure on its surface than Earth, which makes for a warming effect some 300,000 TIMES that of the CO2 on earth today. Added to that the clouds of sulphuric acid (that would ruin your barbie ) which have been shown to be black at the infra-red end of the spectrum (so the high albedo of Venus is just in the visible range), so they let the heat in from the Sun and the massive concentration of CO2 traps it there. Add that to a 70% smaller orbit and you get a surface temperature of 500C - which isn't really a surprise! So you might call CO2 a dangerous gas when it's dense enough to crush you flat, in a concentration that would asphyxiate you, and the Earth 30% closer to the Sun. That would be enough to make anything pretty dangerous I reckon! Personally I think anybody who describes CO2 as a pollutant should be made to wear a space suit with 100% oxygen in it and see how quickly they drop to bits as all their cells oxidize - then I suppose we'd all be calling oxygen a pollutant too

Of course all the models that the IPCC uses to try and get us to make swingeing economic changes are able to hindcast perfectly with the observed past - not! At the end of the day ENSO and PDO are theories and important as they show how diverse the effects on climate can be, not linear relationships with a single low concentration gas, but I don't trust computer models based on partial information to give any more than a rough idea on what we might expect. You only have to look at the recent model output for the Atlantic oscillation and how wildly it diverged from reality in only a few years to seen that we are years - if not decades - from modelling anything with forecast and hindcast abilites that are truly useful.

Ah, I was taking the sulphates effect on them being more reflective - leading to less transfer of energy to the surface - similarly with volcanic particles. If I have therefore totally misrepresented the graph I apologise and will duly head for the nearest window

You would think massively increasing from China/India.... will this increase the potential cooling effect and combine with the current La Nina and PDO to give us another 60s style cooling? A lot of the big pollution clean up campaigns of the 70s concentrated on visible pollution (particulates) and sulphur. I can remember the "report black smoke" campaigns against heavy industry when I was a nipper. I also remember them being tangibly successful and the air cleaning up a lot - after which the 4th quarter warming got underway. Coincidence? Where is UHI, Land Use? The global trend is from the NASA surface measurements, with a strong bias to population centres (see my other thread, I don't want to side track this discussion on that point I'm just suggesting that there seems to be a forcing missing for surface temperature data).

I think the GHG forcings are overstated. On a Beer's Law basis maximum effect of the increase in observed CO2 since 1950 would be about 0.15C. Most of the arguement for GHG caused warming centres around feedback, and mainly feedback through water vapour. I would have thought, therefore, that feedback would be greater in the tropics (where there is plenty of water vapour) and less at the poles (where there is very little), but the opposite is being observed. The lack of a tropical hotspot in the upper troposhere due to GHG and as predicted by the IPCC 2007 report is also something I've alluded to in other posts. With regard to solar forcing I always think that to state there is no greater output from the sun in the last 50 years is missing the point somewhat as it's not the amount of energy emitted from the sun but that which is received at the Earth's surface that really matters. The reduction of sulphate levels have a very strong influence on this and therefore the amount of energy received from the sun increases. This has been shown with evaporation experiments and was also a postulation by the Horizon program Global Dimming which said that the fight against particulate and sulphate pollution by the developed world could actually enhance warming through increased receptions of solar energy at the surface.

Just add it to the mix of confusing data - their "observed temperatures" seem to be similar to the NASA data, but their models diverge wildly at 1995 - therefore just because their predicted flat spot from 2005 to 2010 matches the observed line from 2005 to date it doesn't give you much confidence on their prediction after 2010.

The debate in the thread The Great Global Warming Debate (continued) appears to be constantly sucked into a circular argument as to whether the planet is actually warming since 1998 or not. This stifles any other discussion that attempts to start up and it seems strange to me that this basic point should turn out to be such a point of contention when you consider that the temperature trend graphs should simply be a representation of the surface station data present in graph form for us all to see. Simple huh? Unfortunately as with everything else with climate change this is never the case. It appears that the RAW data is far too dirty to be let out in public and needs a wash and brush up before being presented to its expectant public. To demonstrate this a series of graphs appears below that shows only too clearly what a dilemma we are in trying to resolve the basics of climate change, or whether it is actually changing at all: This graph is from the UK Meteorological Office's Hadley Center for Climate Studies Had-Crut data as of April 13th 2008. Although a clear warming trend from the start of the Industrial Revolution can be seen, and I think is not disputed by any side in the debate, you can see from this where the argument comes from for no warming since 1998 and the appearance of a rolling over similar to the 1940s prior to the 3rd quarter cooling event of the 20th Century. This graph is of the NASA data as of April 13th 2008, and shows significant warming in the last quarter of the 20th Century and beyond and even puts 2005 as warmer than 1998 (which is actually the first time I've seen this so appears to have changed again from a previous position of stating it was the second warmest since 1998). So you can see why those who state the warming strend has not stopped get so frustrated when it is stated it has. To add to this we can also insert the UAH and RSS satellite anomaly records from 1998: So there is a good basis for confusion here, but why? Well it appears NASA are continually reworking their data and the result of this is that graphs based on the same station data look significantly different over the years. Here are the temperatures for the United States, as produced in 1999: and 2007: Pretty different, yes? But why would they be making changes like this? Well if you have a look at the NASA site then there are some clues, NASA staff have done some recent bookkeeping and "refined" the data from 1930-1999. NASA and Had-Crut data are largely based on surface measurements, using thermometers. They both face a lot of difficulties due to contaminated data caused by urban heating effects, disproportionate concentration of thermometers in urban areas, changes in thermometer types over time, changes in station locations, loss of stations, changes in the time of day when thermometers are read, and yet more factors. NASA has a very small number of long-term stations in the Arctic, and even fewer in Africa and South America. The data has been systematically adjusted upwards in recent years - as can be seen in this graph, reproduced below. Temperatures from the years 1990 to present have more than one-half degree Fahrenheit artificially added on to them - which may account for most of the upwards trend in the NASA temperature set. This shows how what you would consider to be solid data from surface stations is modified and remodified before it is presented, meaning the layman can never have any real idea where the truth lies anymore than sticking a finger in the air and guessing. If we can't even agree how to present the data, how will we EVER agree how to act upon it?

As they say, be careful what you wish for.... http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...t.365.south.jpg A rather large ice formation stall in the Antarctic leading to a drop of 1m sq km on the anomaly. Weirdly there has also been a shorter stall of ice melt in the Arctic at the same time. May will be interesting....

Hear Hear! The science is not settled, we must keep doing the research. Having the Govt leap on the bandwagon and try and tax us out of existence is going to create a jaded public and if at the end of a 10 year stall the temperature does start to rise again nobody is going to be interested due to GW fatigue. By going in so hard before really knowing what was going on it could well do far more damage than it averts - especially when you take into consideration the economic impacts at this point in the economic cycle.