Runaway Global Warming

billvon said:
From your link: "Between 1998 and 2012, climate scientists observed a slowdown in the rate at which the Earth's surface air temperature was rising. " Not a pause, a slowdown.

Actually it has been rising, but at about a third of the previous rate.
Don't you hate when the very facts you try to use prove you wrong?
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Well, skipper, I'm sure you think you're quite the man, eh? You have not said one thing that I don't already know, except of course when you lie.
At least you can't run to that troll Dywyddyr to save you here.

Again, citing the latest data from NOAA and NASA, Dr. David Whitehouse, an astrophysicist and academic advisor to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said that the 2013 global surface-temperature records from both entities show the (quote) “pause” (not slowdown) in warming continues. Yet, that is in the fact of rising CO2 Levels in a chart from NASA can be found at http://climate.nasa.gov/system/resources/detail_files/24_g-co2-l.jpg So even as so-called CO2 levels rise according to NASA, the same NASA scientists say that the temperature rises have actually "paused". Which means according to NASA, there is no problem. So I guess you are saying NASA is wrong?
 
spidergoat said:
Ah yes, facts. I don't think they mean what you think they mean. Actually, the atmosphere doesn't hold heat as well as the oceans, which have been absorbing most of it. This means that global warming is actually much worse than initially estimated.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.ph...t-ocean-heating-reveals-about-global-warming/
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So don't think you are clever for pointing that out to me. From my point of view you've been duped. I propose endless patience. You are quite the literalist and not given to flights of the imagination. If I have ever been unscientific or failed to give citations that's all the same to me. No, it doesn't, but if you look at the statement based on NASA data and the chart from NASA, an intelligent person could figure it out. Not that I'm accusing you of that.
 
iceaura said:
You seemed to be objecting to the use of such evidence as supporting a conclusion of rapid environmental change due to higher yearly average temperatures and related circumstances.
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Re-read the article.

Low tundra shrubs, many of which are willow and alder species, have rapidly grown into small trees over the last 50 years, according to the study, led by scientists from the Biodiversity Institute at the University of Oxford and the Arctic Center of the University of Lapland...

“The speed and magnitude of the observed change is far greater than we expected,” said Prof. Bruce Forbes of the Arctic Center, University of Lapland, corresponding author of the paper. Adds Dr. Marc Macias-Fauria from Oxford University, lead author, “Previously people had thought that the tundra would be colonized by trees from the boreal forest to the south as the Arctic climate warms, a process that could potentially take centuries. But what we’ve found is that the shrubs that are already there are transforming into trees in just a few decades.”
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Whats wrong with the above? Alder and willow are VERY fast growing. And yet they are still, after 50 years, small trees. Additionally, he misleads by saying people thought.... potentially take centuries...

My point is there hasnt been enough time for the coniferious trees to move into that area so one cannot conclude the colonization wont still occur in potentially centuries.

You live in MN. Spend some time (as I have) wandering logged areas to watch what responds quickly and what takes more time. There are fire/blowdown areas in the BWCA where you can observe the same thing going on. Willow/alder/popular/birch always rapidly colonize cleared areas while the slower growing coniferous re-establish. Because their roots can lay dormant for many years below a canopy and below frozen ground. His article is misleading, leaving readers under the impression this is unprecedented when its not. Its normal.

Of course. And he knows how they have been growing for the past few thousand years, and what's new now, and the implications of that rapid and noticeable alteration of the Arctic tundra ecology. What exactly is your problem with his observations and contentions?
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Then he most surely know about this too:

http://www.livescience.com/39819-ancient-forest-thaws.html

They are finding (not so old) forests all over the northern hemisphere; forests from this current interglacial. And it is well known previous interglacials (pre suv driving men) established forests far north of the current treeline. And as we can see, this current interglacial isnt over... yet...
 
甘肃人 said:
Well, skipper, I'm sure you think you're quite the man, eh? You have not said one thing that I don't already know, except of course when you lie.
At least you can't run to that troll Dywyddyr to save you here. Again, citing the latest data from NOAA and NASA, Dr. David Whitehouse, an astrophysicist and academic advisor to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said that the 2013 global surface-temperature records from both entities show the (quote) “pause” (not slowdown) in warming continues.
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Let's see how you do with facts.

What was the warmest year on record?
 
milkweed said:
Whats wrong with the above? Alder and willow are VERY fast growing. And yet they are still, after 50 years, small trees.
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They aren't fast growing in those places. They haven't reached tree height there in several thousand years, living and dying as ground cover. Now they are reaching it, in 50 or less, and the landscape is transformed. That means the climate has changed, significantly, recently.
milkweed said:
You live in MN. Spend some time (as I have) wandering logged areas to watch what responds quickly and what takes more time. There are fire/blowdown areas in the BWCA where you can observe the same thing going on. Willow/alder/popular/birch always rapidly colonize cleared areas while the slower growing coniferous re-establish. Because their roots can lay dormant for many years below a canopy and below frozen ground. His article is misleading, leaving readers under the impression this is unprecedented when its not. Its normal.
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No, it hasn't been normal to have tree size willows in those places since the hypsithermal. That isn't a "cleared area", that's tundra that hasn't supported a tree since a very long time ago.
milkweed said:
My point is there hasnt been enough time for the coniferious trees to move into that area so one cannot conclude the colonization wont still occur in potentially centuries.
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So? His point is still meaningful: it looks like we are going to lose some tundra to tree cover a lot faster than anticipated, and the warming is changing the landscape rapidly. Furthermore, instead of the old pattern few thousand year wait for spruce migration, we are looking at a few decades for willow and alder growth - there is a certainty that the Arctic is rapidly warming, and a possibility that the boreal forest succession has been disrupted altogether.

Sculptor, by now you have posted what, half a dozen meaningless little graphs you can't argue anything from except that things seem to be warmer now than they were a couple of hundred years ago. Statistics is confusing, sure, but there's eleven years in your picture there, and all you have to do draw the trend line from the last ten instead of the first and it's not dropping any more. Or you could draw a steep drop for the first six and a sharp continuing rise for the last five, which actually might be informative if the ninos and other known ocean patterns are considered. How hard is that to see?
 
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Oh you mean the temperature record that started near the end of "the little ice age" and ran right up to and through a grand solar maximum.
Oh
OK
(that record)

Personally:
I choose the paleoclimate record.
And,
the warmest year on record
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ain't in the holocene.
And,
the warmest year on record
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for the holocene ain't been recently.
 
甘肃人 said:
Well, skipper, I'm sure you think you're quite the man, eh? You have not said one thing that I don't already know, except of course when you lie.
At least you can't run to that troll Dywyddyr to save you here.

Again, citing the latest data from NOAA and NASA, Dr. David Whitehouse, an astrophysicist and academic advisor to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said that the 2013 global surface-temperature records from both entities show the (quote) “pause” (not slowdown) in warming continues. Yet, that is in the fact of rising CO2 Levels in a chart from NASA can be found at http://climate.nasa.gov/system/resources/detail_files/24_g-co2-l.jpg So even as so-called CO2 levels rise according to NASA, the same NASA scientists say that the temperature rises have actually "paused". Which means according to NASA, there is no problem. So I guess you are saying NASA is wrong?
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I've asked several people who have raised this the same question and have yet to get a coherrent answer.

Let's assume you're right and there actually is a pause. Why is it any more significant than the previous two in the temperature record?

Equally to the point - why do you think it contradicts the hypothesis that increasing ppCO2 causes an trend in increasing temps to be superimposed on natural cycles?
 
How can any rational sighted person not see that the lines for global temperature and for carbon enrichment of the atmosphere have diverged?

If you cannot call it "a pause", could we just call it "fred" and move on?
 
sculptor said:
How can any rational sighted person not see that the lines for global temperature and for carbon enrichment of the atmosphere have diverged?

If you cannot call it "a pause", could we just call it "fred" and move on?
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On the one hand this doesn't answer the question I asked, it avoids it - this pause is the third in the temperature record in the last 150 years (or the second, depending on how you count them I guess). Each time the pause has ended and the warming has resumed at what some might call an exaggerated rate. What makes you think this pause is going to behave any differently to the pauses already on the record?

On the other hand, based on the temperature record for the last 150 years, and based on the understanding the anthropogenic global warming predicts a warming trend superimposed on top of the natural cycles, what rational sighted person doesn't expect that the temperatur record and the history of ppCO2 are going to diverge from time to time?

Remember, although ppCO2 is increasing exponentially (or has done since we started measuring it) the prediction is that the forcing increases as $$ ln( \frac{[CO_2]}{[CO_2_{ref}]} )$$ so an exponential increase in ppCO2 gives rise to a linear increase in the amount of forcing.
 
sculptor said:
Oh you mean the temperature record that started near the end of "the little ice age" and ran right up to and through a grand solar maximum.
Oh
OK
(that record)

Personally:
I choose the paleoclimate record.
And, ain't in the holocene.
And, for the holocene ain't been recently.
Click to expand...
Choose the Hadean period! Then you can claim that it is hundreds of degrees cooler today, and thus four degrees is no big deal. If you're going to be a denier, don't be timid - go big!
 
sculptor said:
the warmest year on record
for the holocene ain't been recently.
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Hmmm.

Actually, that might be false. It's based on times of quite warm summers in the Arctic, during the time of maximum astronomical heating (the break in the glaciation), such that permafrost could not form in some places now covered etc. But the matter of global year 'round average is sort of estimated, and we may have surpassed the hottest years of that time recently - despite being in an astronomical cooling phase and the anthropogenic warming only beginning to kick in.

In any case, the rate and magnitude of the anthro warming is plain and on the table. The possible consequences - including whatever the probability is of temporary but catastrophic runaways of some significant duration (ten years, say) - will not go away based on the occurrence of warmer times in the past.

sculptor said:
How can any rational sighted person not see that the lines for global temperature and for carbon enrichment of the atmosphere have diverged?
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They were never convergent - why would a continuation of the pattern of divergence and restoration be newly significant to you?
 
Cherry picking the time since the little ice age ain't cherry picking though?

"on record" derived from a couple hundred years is extreemly short sighted, and most likely misses most of what drives earth's climate.
 
sculptor said:
"on record" derived from a couple hundred years is extreemly short sighted, and most likely misses most of what drives earth's climate.
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We have recorded data from the past 150 years. That's a fact that is not amenable to clever cherrypicking. And based on the recorded data, we have been, on average, steadily warming as CO2 increases. The hottest year on record is, in fact, 2010.
 
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