Global warming? Next decade could be cooler, says study

The significance of this study by pro-IPCC scientists that it acknowledges that there are natural forcing that trumps CO2 emissions. The immediate question is what portion of climate forcing is natural v anthropogenic? The nest question is whether the qualifying nnotations are to avoid being slimed for contradicting the orthodox tenants of AGW.

Anyone else sick of politics yet? Now days not all science is created equal and it's sad.

Let's just have the facts. I could care less "who is right".

The system is so complex....they don't really have a clue IMO.

Certianly not enough to whine about all of us marching back into the stone age over their "best guesses".

OMG... Yesh, now these "scientists" propose another "theory" that just _conveniently_ happens to put any testability of their previous wild claims which demand immediate further taxation out at least 1 decade from now (or two and a half presidential terms, to put it another way). These guys are so smart!

No rise in temperature in the last ten years according to some studies, now, the next 10 years will be cooler according to these global warming scientists.... Temperature goes up...its global warming.... temperature goes down.... its global warming.... Glaciers receed.... its global warming.... glaciers increase... its global warming. Al Gore et al, raking in huge sums of money via carbon credits, Governments increasing its reach to combat global warming. Global warming seems to be a scam by scam artists...

In addition according to one theory, the Sun's cycles impact temperature... and according to that theory.. we will be heading into a cooling period. This scientist was laughed at by global warming scientist.... now his prediction seems to be coming true...

"Global warming could take a break in the next decade"

If a Democratic Congress and President are elected there could well be a sudden break in news coverage just as global warming seemed to be "cured" of most news coverage as soon as Clinton came to power.

Sean_W

Your scarcasm is beyond belief. Everyone knows GW and the republicans cause the 2000 recession, the 2004 recession, and the 2008 recession. He caused Hurrican Katrina, and global warming. If a Democrat gets elected..... of course the economy would improve, global warming would be solved.....yea... so what that people will be starving because of environmentally friendly (ethanol) fuels.

The trouble in the UK is we have a tosser called Brown in charge.If warming continues the "green" taxes are not enough,so he puts them up.If warming slows down the taxes are then working,so,put them up to make it even better.
If I went to the Bank,going steadily into the red and told the manager that I had not understood the variations in my income/outgoings but carry on as normal because It may be back to normal in 10 years,he would say **** *** you stupid ****! IPCC and grovelling suporting "scientists", *************,can't even come up with *s to describe them,or the UN who bail them out financialy.

The working assumption is that the ocean current cooling will occur per historic patterns; the present cooling (cool-phase ENSO) is transient, between-cycle (solar) condition. Warm-phase ENSO will probably re-establish within a year or two. I wouldn't bank on either solar minimum or longterm natural variation in ocean current to offset human-induced climate change effects.

And a minor reduction in anisotropic equatorial heat flux won't matter a hill o' beans in terms of pollution loading and dust transport to North America from China and Africa. The signature of deleterious health effects are abundant...

But the naysayer will dependably latch onto a single report of *possible* slower rise in global temperatures for a decade as gospel evidence that climate change is a myth perpetrated by tens of thousands of scientists.

wfl claims,"The significance of this study by pro-IPCC scientists that it acknowledges that there are natural forcing that trumps CO2 emissions."

No. The absorption of heat by cold oceanic waters is NOT a forcing: it is simply a redistribution of heat. There is nothing in the above article, nor could there be, to imply that the forcing caused by increased amounts of CO2 will decrease.

If the scenario outlined in the article is correct then the amount of heat absorbed by the Earth from the sun will continue to increase (because greenhouse gas levels are continuing to increase) but much of that extra heat will be absorbed by the oceans, whose thermal capacity is much greater than the atmosphere. Thus, we will witness a situation in which annual heat absorption by the Earth continues to increase whilst annual average land/sea SURFACE temperature of the Earth declines. There is nothing remotely contradictory about such a situation: it simply demonstrates the complexity of a large system that is not in thermal equilibrium.

No doubt also, the reaction of climate change deniers to this situation will demonstrate the stupidity of human beings and their inability to accept inconvenient truths. The latter may eventually prove to be a far more intractable problem than anthropogenic climate change.

Silly Slhoch, the only "climate change deniers" are the global warm-mongerists, who demand we waste trillions of dollars, dismantle the world's economies and starve to death millions of people in an utterly futile attempt to stop climate change.

Why not just come out and say it, Silioch? You think Big Government should regulate the weather. Of course, to do so means they will have to first regulate everything under the sky.

In fact, the term climate change is a tautology. By definition the climate is always changing.

Those who think climate should or can stop changing are as scientifically illiterate as Flat Earth Creationists, but far more dangerous, because the Creationists have no totalitarian plans to seize control of the global economy in order to Save The Planet" by regulating the Earth's Climate.

Now the same High Priests of the IPCC who pronounced "the science is settled:" It's going to get hot, have a new sermon from the mount, which goes: Whoops, but first it will get cooler for awhile. But trust us, the science is settled...

The greatest threat to the environment and humanity is not global warming (or cooling) it's those so ignorant and arrogant to think a UN bureaucracy and big government could mandate command economy methods to force the Earth's climate into stasis or even alter the trajectory of climate change.

Heck, why don't we terraform Mars while we're at it!

I note you do not address the point I made wesgeorge, merely throw a few insults around before starting off on what I assume is your favourite rant.

The main point is that this study (and it is only a study, we will not know for some time if its predictions are at all correct) tells us nothing about anthropogenic global warming caused by increased levels of greenhouse gases, nor in any way contradicts the science behind that understanding. It is concerned only with the redistribution of heat within the atmosphere/ocean/land surface system.

Had this present study concluded that changes in oceanic currents were thought likely to cause warmer conditions than otherwise, which is perfectly possible - that is what happened in 1998 for example - then, of course, you would have been rubbishing it.

Nor does it make any difference to the long term imperative of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That does not require world government, but it does require a substantial proportion of the world population to take their heads out of the sand and realise that the fact that they don't want something to be true is not a good reason for concluding that it is false.

If I had to make a guess, I would put you down as a) American, b) Republican and c) very proud of it, so I guess you've a long way to come. But addressing the science of the issue, rather indulging in a rant might make a reasonable start.

Well Slioch since anthropogenic CO2 is only amounts to 3 gigatons per year (well really 6 but 3 of those six are sequestered naturally) compared to the 150ish the environment puts in itself, and since CO2 contributes to only a very small percentage of the greenhouse effect overall, AND since there is reliable data that shows CO2 concentrations were as high as 400 ppm in the 1800s (it's only in the high 300s now) I'd say there is little to respond to in your argument but to snicker, give you a lollypop and pat your on your head.

If I had to make a guess I'd put you down as a self righteous effete snob who thinks they know the best for the rest of us mere mortals, which probably means you're 1) A European, 2) A socialist with delusions of government riding in on its white horse and saving the day with every conceivable human problem, 3) very proud of it. So I guess YOU'VE a long way to come. However, if YOU'D care to look at the science rather than indulge your political fantasies about the UN and Europe saving the world from flying spaghetti monsters you've invented, rather than breaking your arm patting yourself on the back about your moral/political correctness and bleating along with the rest of the sheep you doubtless flock with then YOU sir might make a reasonable start as well.

My GUESS is however that you will continue to make ad hominem attacks on your opponents and continue to use logical fallicies like argumentum ad populum or argumentum ad verecundiam to reinforce your petty delusions and mystical thinking about the state of the climate.

Cheers.

Modernmystic

Well, let's answer your first paragraph, which contains several irrelevances and errors.

Firstly, the figures you need, when considering the human influence on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, is the pre-industrial level, c. 280ppmv, compared with the current level, c. 385ppmv. Antarctic ice cores, such Vostok and Dome C, show that pre-industrial levels of CO2 did not exceed 300ppmv in all of the 800,000 years for which such records exist. Further, the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere is now about sixty times greater than at any time during those 800,000 years: C02 concentrations are now increasing at a rate of more than 30ppmv in 17 years, whereas in all of those 800,000 year ice core records, CO2 never increased by more than 30ppmv in 1000 years. Don't you think that might have some effect?

Secondly, global warming denial sites are fond of claiming that the current human annual contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere is a few small percent of the total contribution - you give about 4% - because it sounds impressive. In fact it is irrelevant. What matters is the change from pre-industrial times, the 385 now compared with 280ppmv then, an increase of 37%.

However, you couldn't even get your figures right in reporting this irrelevance: your "6 gigatons per year of CO2", is not CO2 at all, it is C (Carbon equivalent) and it isn't 6, it is more than 7. And that is just from fossil fuel consumption, it doesn't include land use changes which contribute another, less certain, amount. In terms of CO2 the current figures are in excess of 27 gigatons CO2 from fossil fuel consumption alone.

As for your ridiculous claim that CO2 levels in the 1800's were 400ppmv: you will not be able to supply any peer reviewed data to support that claim.

It is true that anthropogenic CO2 contributes only a small percentage of total greenhouse effect (for which we should be grateful): the natural effect increases the average global temperature by about 33degC above what it would otherwise be, and current anthropogenic CO2 will raise temperatures by a bit more than 1degC.

In short, you have demonstrated an impressive lack of understanding of even the basic data on CO2.

As for your other paragraphs: thank you for giving me some insight into the contributors to the Physorg site. This was my first contribution to this site and I wondered if a little poking would let me know a little more about who was writing these remarkably flamboyant posts. I think I can see a bit better now how you're pinned.

"Firstly, the figures you need, when considering the human influence on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, is the pre-industrial level, c. 280ppmv, compared with the current level, c. 385ppmv."

False, according to Ernst-Georg Beck's "180 YEARS OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GAS ANALYSIS BY CHEMICAL METHODS" which was published in a PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL...ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT VOLUME 18 No. 2 2007 There was a peek of up to 480 PPM in 1820, and another peek of 390 PPM in the late 1850s. The 280 ppm figure is patently false.

The study may be found here:

http://www.friend...ents/CO2 Gas Analysis-Ernst-Georg Beck.pdf

"C02 concentrations are now increasing at a rate of more than 30ppmv in 17 years, whereas in all of those 800,000 year ice core records, CO2 never increased by more than 30ppmv in 1000 years. Don't you think that might have some effect?"

No I don't since CO2 contributes only minutely to the overall greenhouse effect. I think that a minute increase in this gas (compared to the total composition of the atmosphere and not just comparing CO2 to itself, as it makes up a very small percentage of the atmosphere) would have little to no effect at all.

"What matters is the change from pre-industrial times, the 385 now compared with 280ppmv then, an increase of 37%."

Actually we both know that's not true now. Moreover a comparison to pre-industrial times is only important if your MISSION is to show anthropogenic responsibility. 600 million years ago CO2 made up about 13% of the total atmosphere prior to the Cambrian explosion which is 350 times the current level. There have been many times in history where the levels of CO2 have been greater than they are now, you're just being selective, ignorant (not your fault) and dishonest in your sample.

"As for your ridiculous claim that CO2 levels in the 1800's were 400ppmv: you will not be able to supply any peer reviewed data to support that claim."

Funny that I was able to do just that.

"In short, you have demonstrated an impressive lack of understanding of even the basic data on CO2."

Your ignorance on the subject is what really impresses me, especially when you post so self righteously about the subject as if you actually had some clue as to what you're talking about.

"I think I can see a bit better now how you're pinned."

You have a nack for labeling and pigeonholing people don't you. That gives me some insight in to your character, thanks for sharing.

Sorry the link to the study is broken let's try again.

http://www.friend...ence.org

go there hit CO2 history then then the link to the study.

*Sigh* the website is www.friendsofscience.org

go there hit climate science, CO2 history then then the link to the study.

Oh dear. Yes, I thought you might be referring to ex schoolteacher Ernst Beck's ridiculous paper in Energy and Environment. You can find a review of it here in Realclimate along with their assessment of Energy and Environment as a "journal [that] always seems happy to ennoble even the strangest idea with the scientific label: "peer reviewed"." E&E is a journal for charlatans, peer reviewed by charlatans.

http://www.realcl...-future/

As for your other statements. or lack of them:

You can't bring yourself to acknowledge confusing CO2 with C.

You consider that a 37% increase in CO2 is insignificant because the absolute concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is small. Yet every medicine you ever take warns you "Not to exceed the stated dose" Why? Because even though the absolute concentration of the drug in your system is tiny, increasing it by a significant percentage, like 37%, will have significant effects. According to your illogic, increasing the dose by such an amount, or even doubling it, would have no effect because the absolute amount is small. Can you not see the absurdity of your position?

You can't answer about the effect of the increase in CO2, so you waffle on irrelevantly about the Cambrian.

I'm sorry if I come across as arrogant or self-righteous: when responding to the sorts of comments I find here from a position of knowledge and scientific understanding it is difficult not to, and frankly I've lost patience with the idiotic, illogical, uninformed garbage that you folk churn out in a desperate attempt to prevent yourselves from facing reality. I looked into this site because I thought, with such a name, it might have some informed and interesting contributions in it. As far as I can see so far, it doesn't. Just the usual deluded nonsense from those determined to keep inconvenient truths at bay.

Slioch Of course one can understand that anyone who challenges your view of the world and why you'd lash out irrationally against them. Calling them fakes, or frauds when they not only challenge your delusions but from what I've read probably your lively hood as well (anyone who uses realclimate as a source is no doubt sucking from the government teat of grant money to continue to tell us all how the world is ending or worse yet a weak minded fool blinded by such transparent scam artists masquerading as scientists).

The fact is your no different from a corporate shill, except for the fact that your much more pretentious. At least they admit they're in it for the money, or don't try to hide so hard behind a facade of legitimacy.

All you can seem to do is hurl insults, ad hom attacks and bleat along with the rest of the sheep about how the sky is falling.

No matter, we will have the last laugh in 50 years when the world doesn't come to an end and you and your ilk will be the laughing stocks of the world, and worse will be reviled for trying to turn the noble pursuit of science into a political slime game. However sadly in the process degraded yourselves and your profession for decades to come.

Silioch,

It is you who are in denial. Calling those who disagree with you "deniers" poisons and derails the debate. And you chose this route of defamation in your very first post here.

For you "the science is settled." As you say, you come from, "A Position of Knowledge and Scientific Understanding." That must be the seat at the right hand of The Holy Father (or Earth Mother, for you), right?

No amount of evidence can open your mind to alternative probabilities. You are the Believer of Truth, beholden to Knowledge and Understanding and all others are evil Deniers of Truth.

But this isn't a religious debate, Silioch. Nor are you a super-hero in a computer game. Science is never settled.

You are projecting your own ontological cognitive dissonance on to those who don't share your One True Faith in AGW in order to insulate your fragile psychology and even weaker logical position from the light of open inquiry. We are simply heretics to be condemned for not accepting your faith as dogma.

As I said before, you have engaged the very same logical fallacies as the Creationists. I do not try to convince you of anything. You have your faith, however shallow and transient, and I respect that. I don't try to convert fundamentalists to Darwinianism either.

However, I do wish to expose that what you parade as science is, in fact, a fraudulent type of Faith posing as and subverting enlightened, transparent scientific process in order to prematurely demand rash political action.

In fact, you may well have no faith at all, but are a cynic, attempting to hijack the fear inherent in false prophecies of apocalypse in order to impose a very anti-rational and undemocratic political agenda over the world's economies. Who knows. I'll guess you are simply living the life unexamined and are sincere in concern for the health of Earth's biosphere.

I hail from the growing camp of academics who call for the full course of empirical scientific method, transparently audited by independent panels to first conclusively confirm that AGW is occurring at a dangerous pace before committing trillions of dollars and altering the economic foundations of global civilization around a strange attractor of what may well be as specious a theory as eugenics. To proceed now with radical policy implementation would be absolute folly and in the end could become a real life Global Apocalypse rather than AGW.

Silioch, you are in denial if you imagine that AGW theory has jumped through all the proper scientific methodological hoops necessary to guide the next 100 years of Global economic policy decisions which will dramatic determine how the lives of billions of individual human beings play out.

If you are wrong about AGW, the policies that you surely advocate to "SAVE THE PLANET" from an "APOCALYPSE" will result in the deaths of tens to hundreds of millions of people. Perhaps, not so much directly as by unintended consequences from destructive and wasteful policy decisions driven by fear and based on an utterly false premise.

Through your eager self-righteousness to implement radical socioeconomic solutions to something that has yet to be proven more than a vaguely tautological mythology, you may end up on the side of history with Stalin, Mao, and Hitler, at least in terms of the amount of blood that you will have on your hands.

Silioch. You're in denial that the climate is always in a state of change. And that it would be worse than oxymoronic science fiction to imagine that a human institution could contain Earth's climate at some optimum stasis. For civilization to attempt as much would be for humankind to go collectively insane, surely a recipe for a global apocalypse.

You're in denial that recent history (past 100,000 year) is littered with proxy records of climate change rates often and repeatedly more rapid than is occurring today and we are all here as living proof that such complex cyclical behavior is within normal parameters for Sol's third planet and requires no special extra-natural explanation. All Faith is fundamentally based on the outright rejection of Occam's Razor.

You're in denial that Mann's hockey stick has been discredited and dropped as the main visual propaganda tool of the IPCC.

You're in denial that only an Gun-totting Bushitlerite, Redneck Yank could not have yet imbibed from the same Al Gorian Kool-aid batch as you. In fact, I'm no yank nor even of the same continent.

You're in denial that the only real evidence you have is not evidence at all, but virtual GCMs that don't run from first principles but whose massively tweaked codes can NOT replicate the last 50 years of known temp record much less give honest probabilities for future climates scenarios.

You're in denial that GCMs were never intended to deliver climate forecasts for governments in order to compile global economy policy upon, but rather as a kind of limited virtual laboratory for testing climatologically narrow and specific hypothesis with merely academic outcomes.

That said, now that the GCM magic naval gazing mirror has escaped the confines of the lab and has entered the real world, how's it been going for the computer model forecast thing?? What, not so accurate, eh? Or do you want to deny that factoid too?

You are in complete denial that the climate sensitivity to CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is by no means "settled science," with estimates ranging from almost no effect beyond 250ppm to your preferred, and completely unsubstantiated by any evidence, position that we are... ALL GOING TO DIEEEEE!!!!!!

And that's just a sample of all the things you are in denial about, Silioch. I could go on.

Let review: Defaming those who don't share your ideological Faith as "deniers" is a psychological symptom called projection and well explained in the works of George Orwell and in the book "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" by Eric Hoffer. You fit the bill to a T.

http://www.amazon...60916125

I highly recommend you do some research on your own cognitive processes before proceeded with your ill-advised attempt to save the world from phantoms that may well exist only in the collective unconsciousness.

Modernmystic

All you have demonstrated is your willingness to uncritically believe anything that tells you what you want to believe. You have failed to answer or understand any of the points about CO2 put to you and, most tellingly, cling to a belief in the Ernst Beck article, which is one of the more ridiculous pieces published in recent times.

Let's just have a look at some of the Beck nonsense. (This is the sort of thing that would have been picked up by any half decent peer review and is why this article only saw the light of day in scam publications like Energy and Environment)

Beck's fig. 13 purportedly shows shows CO2 concentrations from 1920 to 1961. In 1935, CO2 concentration is given as 320ppmv, and about eighteen months later about 430ppmv. That is an increase of over 100ppmv in little over a year.
The present CO2 concentration is 385ppmv, which represents 3000gigatonnes of CO2, so an increase of 100ppmv would require the addition of about 780gigatonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere. (all of the above figures are easily verifiable - you can check those figures yourself)

780gts is a huge amount of CO2. Where did it come from? What caused it? Where is the C12/C13 isotope ratio spike that would have to accompany such a dramatic change (there isn't one). Beck doesn't address ANY of those obvious questions, for which there is no conceivable answer (no it isn't a volcano, their annual contribution is minute, even biggies like Pinatuvo). Beck just presents the graph and knows that gullible, scientifically illiterate individuals like yourself will drink it down like wine, because that is what you want to believe.

Contrast that with the Mauna Loa curve for CO2, which starts in 1958. It is one of the most beautiful curves in the whole of natural science. Look at it now - you can find it, I don't need to do that for you - see how it wriggles, each year, but on a graph that is otherwise smooth? The wriggles are there because much of the land on Earth is in the northern hemisphere, and the the vegetation in those northern climes absorbs CO2 each northern summer, and therefore the atmospheric concentration drops just a little - but enough to be detected by the graph. Those wriggles on an otherwise smooth graph tell us two important things. Firstly that CO2 in the atmosphere mixes rapidly around the world - otherwise the wriggles wouldn't show up, and secondly, that the graph is true, since if the CO2 concentrations were being contaminated by other sources, then such fine detail would be lost. The graph is self-truthing, it doesn't need to be defended, it speaks for itself to those who have the ears to hear. The curve does pick up such events as the 1991 Pinatuvo eruption as a slight change, but otherwise it shows the relentless rise in CO2 caused by human actions.

More, that it is, more than most such streams of data, the work, the life-work, of one man, Charles Keeling who argued for Mauna Loa and dedicated his life to recording every four hours starting in 1958, day in day out, this data. He even missed the birth of his first-born so as not to miss a recording.

And now, scientific illiterates like yourself, spouting insults and garbage, think to question such information. Rather you threaten to herald the beginnings of an age of darkness, led by self-interested pressure groups and junk science, of which Ernst Beck's contribution is an exemplar. For goodness sake, wise up!

wesgeorge

Why not actually address some of the points of science and evidence that I have introduced, rather than indulging yourself in another flamboyant rant about what you imagine I believe, wesgeorge.

I, along with many others, call people deniers if they refuse to look at evidence or uncritically accept proposals that are manifestly false, simply because the latter tell them what they want to believe. Examples abound of such behaviour and they are encouraged and misled by groups and individuals many of which are funded and supported by fossil fuel companies deliberately to obfuscate the science and confuse the public and thus delay action to tackle the problem. The misinformation they produce falls on the fertile ground of a largely scientifically illiterate society determined not to have its relatively luxurious lifestyle challenged.

Beck shows a peak in the early 1940s (WW2).Many scientists have commented in the past at the lack of this expected peak in the ice core/Mauna Loa graph.Also the Mauna Loa station is on the flanks of an active volcano,giving out CO2.

mikiwud

"the Mauna Loa station is on the flanks of an active volcano,giving out CO2."

If any nearby source of CO2 was contaminating the Mauno Loa CO2 station then the fine detail of the Mauna Loa curve would be lost, but that does not happen.

And after all, what the Mauna Loa curve is showing is the steady increase (and annual wriggle) of CO2 in the atmosphere consistent with about half of annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions remaining in the atmosphere. It is not as though it is showing anything remotely unexpected or strange. Yet even that basic information is, and I use the would advisedly, denied (by some).

I have to go now for a while.

Silioch,

You say, "why not address the points of science and evidence I have introduced..."

Because your so-called points of science are simply the data-chit-chat window-dressing to pretty up your political agenda, which is far more to the point.. It's the 500 lb gorilla in the room, not what the CO2 level might have been in the 1890's.

Why not address the points of "science" and "evidence" that I posited before yours and that you avoided?

You don't want a debate, you want to pretend to debate.

In your very first comment you began by defaming those whom you would so willingly debate as "Deniers." To slander those who don't cotton to your POV as deniers, a term borrowed from the famous phrase, "Holocaust Deniers" is to shut down debate before the first word.

Now you submit that anyone who disagrees with you is a pawn of the petrochemical propaganda machine which apparently has a vested interesting in implementing the AGW prophecies of Global Apocalypse to ensure higher quarterly profits going forward for shareholders. Those fossil fuel billionaires sure are clever, who would have thought that the destruction of civilization and most of the higher life on the planet would be so good for corporate profits?

Thanks for the "hot" investment tip, Silioch.

If you really want a debate, Silioch, why don't you address the long list of REAL grievances I outlined above on the sophistic inconsistencies in your own thought processes about climate change. I know you're more comfortable parsing details rather than confront what might well be the tragic real world human and ecological costs of your specious sociopolitical agenda.

Perhaps, my list was too long-winded, so, Silioch just consider a few points:

What argument can you make that it is wise or even possible for governmental bureaucracies to attempt to adjust the planet's biosphere in a way that results in an optimum global temperature stasis?

And how do you answer the charge that attempting to halt climate change is absolute sophism, since by definition the climate/biosphere is a complex nonlinear system incapable of stasis or reaching a permanent, optimum equilibrium.

In fact, what would you say to James Lovelock who noted over 30 years ago--a biosphere in equilibrium is in fact, not a biosphere at all, but an absolutely stone dead planet.

Note that I support environmentalism. To work to reduce the destruction of habitat, stop whaling, reduce the load on fisheries, return water to rivers to restore flows, clean the air and a thousand other good practical life-reinforcing causes are one thing indeed.

I wish merely to call attention to the strikingly irrational and illogical position that we seem to adopt as the largely unspoken assumption in climate change debates--That it is wise and possible for human institutions to attempt to control the thermostat on the Earth's biosphere.

And further that the concept of some mythological optimum global temperature from which we ought not to allow the planet to deviate actually exists. Such an assumption is an irrational anthropocentric projection, rather than anything resembling sound science.

What do you say to the fact that complex nonlinear systems are always changing and that the climate according to the relevant evidence (temperature proxies from the last 100,000 years) seems to be cyclic within normal parameters of time and T amplitude? What do you say to the charge that your main evidence that the above is not true was the work of Mann, et al (the notorious hockey stick graph) that has now been quietly dropped by the IPCC?

What do you say to the notion that spending trillions of dollars and profoundly altering the socioeconomic systems of the world, in effect, to terraform the Earth is absolute folly, given the science of climatology is in its infancy and any such mega-planetary project would divert scarce resources from other really pressing environmental and human issues, and thus ultimately kill and displace far more people and degrade more eco-systems than it saves?

So will the real (holocaust?) denier in the room please stand up?

Silioch,
what IS the optimum Global Temperature and WHY?
If this is not known then any change is irrelevant,except,of course,downwards would be the real disaster.But,if the trend WAS down,the politicians and Goricles of this world could not even pretend to be doing anything to stop it.

wesgeorge

So, let's address some of your points.

First, you berate me: "In your very first comment you began by defaming those whom you would so willingly debate as "Deniers."

Let's look back at your very first comment, wesgeorge, indeed your first two words, "Silly Slhoch" The first an insulting adjective, the second a puerile misspelling of my online name, which you have continued to do throughout. The most basic courtesy one can give to any person is to address them by whichever name they have chosen. If you can't manage to do that, don't expect any response from me. As for my generalised aspersion concerning denial: well, I've explained why I continue to consider it to be appropriate, but I accept that adding it to my first post may not have been the most diplomatic way to start off.

Secondly. You state, "you submit that anyone who disagrees with you is a pawn of the petrochemical propaganda machine". You exaggerate. But if you want to read a well documented and authoritative account of how that campaign developed out of the big tobacco campaign see the US Union of Concerned Scientists report, Jan. 2007, here:

www.ucsusa.org/as...port.pdf -
Thirdly, "What argument can you make that it is wise or even possible for governmental bureaucracies to attempt to adjust the planet's biosphere in a way that results in an optimum global temperature stasis?"

Stasis? Whoever suggests temperature stasis? Nobody, as far as I am aware. The objective is to reduce the anthropogenic forcing, primarily of CO2, but also of methane, NO and CFCs. I rather incline to oceanographer Wally Broeker's (I think that is how he spells his name - haven't checked) analogy that "Climate is a wild beast and we are poking it with sticks."
So, in that respect, that objective becomes to stop poking this wild beast with sticks.
As you referred to in your previous post, (about the last 100,000 years, though I would go back further), there is ample evidence of climatic convulsions which if they occurred today would be truly catastrophic: huge changes in sea-level and massive glaciations (where I sit at present was once under a kilometre of ice), and desertifications. But the last ten thousand years, during which human agriculture civilisation and population has grown has been relatively benign with a reasonably stable climate. In the absence of human intervention orbital calculations (Milankovitch) suggest that it would remain so for perhaps another ten or twenty thousand years. It is that benign future that we are putting at risk.

It is curious that you pose the problem as the reverse of reality: All that persons such as myself are saying is "reduce to a safe level the anthropogenic forcing that is being applied to the climate" ie. stop poking the beast with sticks. It is bizarre, and wholly misguided, to suggest that that means "terraforming" or "attempting to halt climate change".

Fourthly, what would I say "to James Lovelock who noted over 30 years ago--a biosphere in equilibrium is in fact, not a biosphere at all, but an absolutely stone dead planet."

I would say, "Absolutely spot on, James, but excuse me old chap, have you actually ever heard ANYBODY ever suggest that any biosphere is in equilibrium?" The whole point of living systems (and climates for that matter) is that they are not in equilibrium. Energy throughput follows complex paths through strange attractors, creating all manner of unexpected and wonderful things in the process. But that is not to say that such systems cannot be flipped into chaotic behaviour, or even a new metastable position, if sufficiently perturbed. It happens in politics and economics as well. Remember Tony Blair's "the kaleidoscope has been shaken" after 911, and the subsequent disastrous results of applying the wrong forcing to that particular wild beast? And the chaos in the financial markets caused by the sub-prime damage?
That's what happens when you poke things with sticks.

Lastly, (I have to go) as far as the Mann Hockey Stick is concerned. It's basic conclusions were confirmed by the US National Academy of Sciences report, which pointed out that a number of studies have since confirmed the broad conclusion of Mann et al's original study. There is a page of hockey sticks in the current IPCC report.

mikiwud

You are asking the wrong question. Hopefully, my previous post should explain why.

And a further brief mention of hockey sticks.
The most obvious, most extreme (in terms of straightness of the shaft and upward curve of the blade) is that of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere in the last 800,000 years. There are several independent ice cores from different places that concur that CO2 levels did not exceed 300ppmv for all of those 800,000 years, whereas they are now at 385ppmv. and increasing more rapidly then ever in that 800,000. That is a forcing hockey stick and it is poking our climate and we have to do something about it.

The most radical proposal for changes in CO2 emissions calls for an 80% reduction in 1990 levels by 2050.

1990 global CO2 emissions were 6196 gigatonnes of carbon equivalent ( = 22,720 gtns CO2). That is equal to the global emissions for the year 1946.
See:
http://cdiac.ornl...2004.ems

No-one pretends that is an easy target - it will require far better levels of insulation, more efficient machines, re-using waste heat for example, as well as low carbon methods of energy generation, along with, probably, incentives for reducing human population.

But what it most definitely NOT is "terraforming".
It is NOT halting climate change.
It does NOT require any concept of a "mythological optimum global temperature".
It does NOT require a "biosphere in equilibrium".

We just need to return to the same level of CO2 emissions that were being produced in 1946. That's all.

I've just noticed that the second paragraph in the above post should have read:

"1990 global CO2 emissions were 6196 gigatonnes of carbon equivalent ( = 22,720 gtns CO2). 20% of that (1239 gts) is equal to the global emissions for the year 1946."

Sorry about that. Hopefully the context would have made that clear.

Oh, and whilst I'm here, to respond to Modernmystic's tirade some time ago (05/03/08 10.48), in which he suggested that my real concerns were that my "lively hood" might be challenged by global warming deniers, or that I was "sucking from the government teat of grant money" and that I was "no different from a corporate shill", except that "at least they admit they're in it for the money" and "don't try to hide so hard behind a facade of legitimacy." (whilst simultaneously, curiously, accusing me of "hurl[ing] insults [and] ad hom attacks". (Oh the mote, oh the plank!)

Just to put your suspicious mind at rest, Modermystic:

I live in one of the the coldest inhabited parts of the Scottish Highlands, far above sea level - a bit a global warming would actually suit my personal habitation quite nicely. I have far more than enough money to last the rest of my life and don't need to curry favour with any government grant giving body, or anyone else for that matter.