Stumble it!A Climate Re-Cap
posted in Global Warming by themaiden |A reply to a comment turned into a very nice recap of a number of global warming issues, so I thought I’d promote that reply to a post.
Ivy, a recent and repeat, visitor, made a comment in favor of “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, and summarized some key points made in that film. My reply…
CO2, the troposphere, and 800 years of ice cores.
In short, in the section on CO2, the film’s makers present a misleading picture– “they are lying to us by omission”.
You don’t mention the troposphere but the film does.
… discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human induced global warming… This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected. New data sets have also been developed that do not show such discrepancies.
Cosmic rays…
Even if the evidence for solar forcing were legitimate, any bizarre calculus that takes evidence for solar forcing of climate as evidence against greenhouse gases for current climate change is simply wrong. Whether cosmic rays are correlated with climate or not, they have been regularly measured by the neutron monitor at Climax Station (Colorado) since 1953 and show no long term trend. No trend = no explanation for current changes.
Also…
The fact that the FL98 data doesn’t contain any trend makes this finding seem a bit odd. Several independent indices on solar activity – which are direct modern measurement rather than estimations - indicate that there has been no trend in the level of solar activity since 1950s.
While no one really disputes that water vapor is a greenhouse gas…
Whenever three or more contrarians are gathered together, one will inevitably claim that water vapour is being unjustly neglected by ‘IPCC’ scientists. “Why isn’t water vapour acknowledged as a greenhouse gas?”, “Why does anyone even care about the other greenhouse gases since water vapour is 98% of the effect?”, “Why isn’t water vapour included in climate models?”, “Why isn’t included on the forcings bar charts?” etc. Any mainstream scientist present will trot out the standard response that water vapour is indeed an important greenhouse gas, it is included in all climate models, but it is a feedback and not a forcing. From personal experience, I am aware that these distinctions are not clear to many, and so here is a more in-depth response…
The film’s presentation of the ice core data is likewise misleading.
The way they said this you would have thought that T and CO2 are anti-correlated; but if you overlay the full 400/800 kyr of ice core record, you can’t even see the lag because its so small. The correct interpretation of this is well known: that there is a T-CO2 feedback…
Also…
This is an issue that is often misunderstood in the public sphere and media, so it is worth spending some time to explain it and clarify it. At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so.
Does this prove that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming? The answer is no.
The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.
What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?
If you check the date on this last article, you’ll notice that this is old news. The global warming ’skeptics’ have a habit, like the creationists, of repeating discredited arguments ad nauseum, while presenting them as valid.
You may also be interested in the way that the film’s makers distorted the views of at least one of scientist whose interview they included.
In the part of the “Swindle” film where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous—because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important — diametrically opposite to the point I was making — which is that global warming is both real and threatening in many different ways, some unexpected.
Carl Wunsch would seem to be the ‘oceanographer’, to whom you refer, who will tell you that “the oceans are the largest contributors of carbon dioxide on the planet.”
Then there is the lie about volcanoes…
Objection: One decent-sized volcanic eruption puts more CO2 in the atmosphere than a decade of human emissions. It’s ridiculous to think reducing human CO2 emissions will have any effect.
Answer: Not only is this false, it couldn’t possibly be true given the CO2 record from any of the dozens of sampling stations around the globe. If it were true that individual volcanic eruptions dominated human emissions and were causing the rise in CO2 concentrations, then these CO2 records would be full of spikes — one for each eruption. Instead, such records show a smooth and regular trend.
I guess that covers most of your points. If I missed something, you can do what I did and research the topic. RealClimate is the best place I know to start. I’ve seen the site listed as an ‘alarmist global warming site’ but I won’t apologize for citing people with degrees in, and who work in, the relevant fields. Such is certainly better than getting one’s information from a made-for-TV movie.
I’ve also commented on many of these issues, so feel free to search the site– try climate, global warming, or environment, for example.
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