An Inconvenient Truth": Has Polar Bears Survived & Thrived?

[BillJx]

Another comment on the film: for me the timing was good. Only a couple of months previously, I had come across a Woods Hole Oceanographic website, explaining that climate change tends to happen in sudden jumps. "Sudden" being on the scale of a decade or so, which is the blink of an eye geologically. That interested me. No one was predicting any such sudden jump in the immediate future, but it can't be ruled out because the mechanisms are not understood. So I began to learn what I could about global warming and climate change.

I'm very much a skeptic by nature. If I had no idea of the scale of the warming problem before I saw "An Inconvenient Truth", I might very well have written it off as scare-mongering. But because I had already learned a lot of the information that the film presented, I didn't see many surprises. Most of it was just a very vivid summary of what scientists had been saying for the past few years.

 

[Andre]

So if the mechanisms are not understood, why are we so sure that it is CO2?

 

[BillJx]

So if the mechanisms are not understood, why are we so sure that it is CO2?

It's not the mechanisms of warming that are not understood, it's the mechanisms of sudden changes in the rate of cooling / warming following periods of more gradual change.

Search under "abrupt climate change" and "rapid climate change". You will find many entries with conflicting information and ideas, which is to be expected in a new field. Some of the assumptions in posts only a couple of years old are already out of date, and recent posts will soon be out of date as well.
It will be easy to pick and choose quotes to back up any argument you want, but that's hardly the point. If you do enough searching and reading you will be able to get a lay person's overall grasp of where the scientific community is on the issue so far.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

It will be easy to pick and choose quotes to back up any argument you want, but that's hardly the point.

Bingo! That's why we look for a consensus among the experts.

 

[BillJx]

Excellent article.

"When Eric the Red led the Norwegian Vikings to Greenland in the late 900s,
...
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110009693

The writer of this article is identified as the chairman of the Exxon-funded National Center for Policy Analysis.

 

[moe darklight]

Whether I agree with Al Gore as a person or not is another deal... he's a politician and that's all I got to say about that.

But I don't understand how any of you can doubt that what we're doing to this planet will have an effect on it.

I didn't notice any grand errors in Al Gore's movie (obviously there are some)... and so far, any website I've gone to that claims such errors turns out to be sponsored by dubious companies, or filled with pro-oil articles, etc. ... and the legit articles I have read, don't convince me much either...

also, the movie was supposedly reviewed by scientists... yea, I know, this could be the same scientists who voted 9/10 for colgate toothpaste for all I know..

maybe al gore moves around information or presents it in a way that makes the problem seem grander than it is (if sea levels did rise to that level, it probably wouldn't be within our life times, is my understanding) ... but we can't deny that we are changing this planet's natural processes drastically! and the real danger is probably not the predictable consequences, but what we don't see coming until it's too late.

either way... we're hitting our peak of oil extraction soon. so we're going to have to reduce oil consumption whether we want to or not.

 

[Andre]

It's not the mechanisms of warming that are not understood, it's the mechanisms of sudden changes in the rate of cooling / warming following periods of more gradual change.

No we don't as it just so happens that the high resolution ice core CO2-isotope correlation, once the trigger of greenhouse gas global warming now refutes the same:

See here why, two EPICA dome C proxies, the d18O paleothermometer calling the shots and CO2 following in a clear master slave setting:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/epica5.GIF

 

[BillJx]

Who is Bijkerk and whose analysis is this? It looks to me as if you could pick either to be leading, depending on what spikes you choose to look at. That may be just because I don't know what to look for, but all I see is a difference in variability between the two measurments.

In any case, as interesting as the raw data might be, I don't intend to spend 10 years obtaining a phD in every discipline that interests me just so I can interpret various scientists' results. I have to content myself with finding out what conclusions the researchers themselves arrived at. Exactly how they arrived at them is interesting theoretically, but is not of practical significance to the lay person.

Lets look at the picture available to non-specialists like me. We have two possibilities. 1) Global warming is a serious problem caused by human overuse, and threatened corporations are funding a campaign of denial, or 2)the leading climatologists of the world are engaged in a massive hoax that benefits no-one.

 

[moe darklight]

2)the leading climatologists of the world are engaged in a massive hoax that benefits no-one.

lol yea.

on the other hand, it's pretty obvious how global warming-denial could benefit "certain" individuals...

and CO2<-->heat do not match EXACTLY at any point, but this is most likely due to other variables... just like the increase of global warming is not a perfectly straight line, it goes up and down... but there is a definite trend. and the odds that the world has become warmer at such a drastic rate right around the time that we started emitting all of these toxins into the atmosphere seem much too unlikely to be a coincidence...

I'm not a specialists in Earth sciences, so I'll have to rely on my common sense for this, and trust those who are specialists with the detailed data.

 

[Andre]

Who is Bijkerk

Me

and whose analysis is this? It looks to me as if you could pick either to be leading, depending on what spikes you choose to look at. That may be just because I don't know what to look for, but all I see is a difference in variability between the two measurments.

In any case, as interesting as the raw data might be, I don't intend to spend 10 years obtaining a phD in every discipline that interests me just so I can interpret various scientists' results. I have to content myself with finding out what conclusions the researchers themselves arrived at. Exactly how they arrived at them is interesting theoretically, but is not of practical significance to the lay person.

I thought you said to be a sceptic, but instead you turn out to be a fallacysist (if that's a word). Just about every fallacy in the book (PhD, who is that layman, all those smart scientists can't be wrong) to avoid looking at the bloody obvious what a sceptic would prefer to do. I thought engineers had some idea about how feedback works. Okay I'll spell it out, What we are looking at is high resolutuon isotope data and CO2 data of the last glacial transition. Data here:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/domec/domec_epica_data.html

Monin et al 2004 and Stenni et al 2001 (Jouzel 2004 is less detailed and on another timescale.)

Now the consensus idea is that basic greenhouse effect of CO2 is limited to about 1 degree per doubling. However climate is supposed to be very sensitive to positive feedbacks. The additional warming of more CO2 is supposed to trigger more evaporation, water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas so this generates more warming and instead of 1 degree the water vapor feedback is supposed to boost the warming to about 2-4 degrees per doubling of CO2.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/epica5.GIF

Now, the strong corrolation between CO2 and isotopes in ice cores used to be the main proof of that effect. At all glacial terminations both spiked simulatenously, as it seemed, but nowadays with much better techniques it is clear that the isotope "temperature" leads the CO2 spike by some 700 years.

Well, no problem, we could still try to go for that positive feedback. Something is triggering the warming (Milankovitch cycles) but those are too weak to sustain big changes, so we assume that the CO2 takes over that function in a feedback effect as soon as it starts to rise. The simple all too obvious point of that graph is that the CO2 react to any change in the isotope trend with a delay of several centuries but that isotopes never react to any change in CO2 neither instanteneous nor with delay.

Now I guess that any engineer proficient signal processing of higher order closed feedback loops could tell you that there is no feedback here. If CO2 was to give feedback is would accelerate warming and would resist cooling tendencies causing gradual changes in trend. But those changes are abrupt, no delay.

Look at it another way. This comparison would be the basis to calculate and proof positive feedback. But why has nobody attempted to do so? With so many clever computer climate modeller, that would be a piece of cake. Why is the latest Summary For Policy Makers not showing this graph? Why don't they talk about ice ages at all? Years ago, these ice age graphs appeared everywhere. Now, the focus is completely different, on the imaginary modelling world. No, you are looking to the plain blunt refutal of the positive feedback idea and hence the dangerous global warming.

We have two possibilities. 1) Global warming is a serious problem caused by human overuse, and threatened corporations are funding a campaign of denial, or 2)the leading climatologists of the world are engaged in a massive hoax that benefits no-one.

1) There are no threatening corporations, there is only a medieval dark ages witch hunt creating that myth. Groupthink does not accept alternative ideas. Heresy must be dispelled as about every other post in this thread clearly demonstrates.

2) Global warming used to be science wih a clear hypothesis, but then the idealogy took over, with as poster child the creation of the hockeystick as noble cause corruption. Now that this hypothesis cannot be proved and the falsifications accumulate (this is only one), it's totally ignored. That removes global warming completely from the realm of science since it cannot be refuted like a religion can't be falsified. (Science must be falsifiable - Karl Popper)

 

[light_bulb]

you can't just say look at global warming and leave it at that, you could say it's the constant relocation of energy that's the problem. when you pull trillions of gallons of oil out of the ground and burn it in a finite sized <img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Ecosphere-samualpedrete.jpg">
globe with something like only 14 miles of air it becomes a problem. you may not see it because most of it hits the ground but that means everything else pays the price. i don't believe people have to give up much convenience but in a way the planet is on loan, you can let the interest accumulate, start paying it off or go bankrupt and die.

 

[BillJx]

Me



I thought you said to be a sceptic, but instead you turn out to be a fallacysist (if that's a word). Just about every fallacy in the book (PhD, who is that layman, all those smart scientists can't be wrong) to avoid looking at the bloody obvious what a sceptic would prefer to do.
QUOTE

I analyze graphs every day, in the operation of a chemical recovery, steam and generating plant. An intelligent untrained person can not sit at my console and run the plant, even though the information is right there on the screens. Similarly, my son in law is an airline pilot. I'm accustomed to reading instruments, but that doesn't mean I can step into the cockpit and tell him how to fly the plane. I'm far more skeptical of self-styled experts than I am of those who actually have training and experience.

Skepticism means the ability to think without being swayed by what we want to think. I would prefer to think that I'm an unappreciated genius who can see where the phDs in the field have it all wrong, but I'm skeptical enough to be able to doubt that.
Of course scientists are sometimes wrong, especially in new areas of research, but internet posters who are at odds with mainstream science are invariably wrong, and usually wildly wrong.

Again Andre, you seem to be trying to baffle us with reams of raw data, in the hopes that we will assume it supports your position. In any case, the research appears to be primarily concerned with the cycles of ice ages. However, I will leave the technical analysis to the researchers and quote from their abstracts:

"our results may imply that without human intervention, a climate similar to the present one would extend well into the future."
The reference is to the length of interglacial periods, and they are disagreeing with the popularly accepted idea that we are close to the end of our interglacial. The reference to human interference is a passing one, and seems to infer that the researchers accept it as a given. They certainly don't seem to be questioning it.

It appears to me that the research you're quoting is more likely to confirm human-caused global warming than to refute it, and that you are merely abusing the data. If I'm wrong, please give this skeptic reason to assign you some credibility.

 

[turbo]

I analyze graphs every day, in the operation of a chemical recovery, steam and generating plant. An intelligent untrained person can not sit at my console and run the plant, even though the information is right there on the screens.

They wouldn't be running it for long, anyway, if you're talking about a black liquor recovery boiler. They have automated fail-safes to keep them from blowing up (low-solids liquor shut-off, rapid-drain systems, etc), but avoiding catastrophe does not equate to stable, efficient, or safe operation. That requires lots of training and experience and some degree of talent in trouble-shooting. Someone who has only theoretical knowledge about these beasts is hardly qualified to disagree with you regarding its operation.

When the specialists (in this case the climatologists) are in general agreement, it might be a good idea to listen to them.

 

[Andre]

...
Skepticism means the ability to think without being swayed by what we want to think...

So why don't you try some thinking excursions?

All I want to show here now is that the EPICA proxies refute a positive feedback mechanism, I have no clue what airline flying or steam graph interpretation and a complete post of red herrings has to do with the reluctance to assess and understand the leading role of the presumed isotope paleo temperature and the passive role of CO2. But indeed you confirm once more that global warming is no longer science, by denying falsification results preemtively.

The research I'm quoting shows that we have no clue what happened but whatever caused the isotope spike also appeared to have caused the CO2 spike.

More refuting subjects here are the past existence of a large productive mammoth steppe where a giant ice sheet was supposed to be, the failure of the sea level yoyo to add up with the polar ice sheet size. The 100,000 cycle not concurring with the milakovitch cycles, the ocean floor isotopes being smack on with the ice cores without delay of the massive oceanic inertia, then the CH4 contents leads/follows the Northerm Hemphisphere isotope ratios completely different from the Antarctic proxies. Nontheless, the Northern hemisphere warming was in phase with the southern hemisphere.

In short the "ice age" was something rather different than it looks and the many articles about it are highly selective and speculative. Not because I say so but because you simply can compare studies and see that those from different specialisms are complete at odds.

Perhaps give this a shot.
http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/refuting%20the%20Greenland%20paleo%20thermometer1.pdf

 

[BillJx]

But indeed you confirm once more that global warming is no longer science, by denying falsification results preemtively.


Perhaps give this a shot.
http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/refuting%20the%20Greenland%20paleo%20thermometer1.pdf

What I'm denying is the credibility of filling the screen with raw data and claiming to be able to derive results that support your own ideas, when statements in the researchers' own abstracts seem to confute them.

 

[turbo]

What I'm denying is the credibility of filling the screen with raw data and claiming to be able to derive results that support your own ideas, when statements in the researchers' own abstracts seem to confute them.

It doesn't take too long to unearth a mind-numbing array of scientific papers on paleoclimatology just Googling on "Vostok" and "core". Most of them point to connections between atmospheric levels of methane and carbon dioxide and the onset of interglacial (warming) periods. If you believe climate-change naysayers, these researcher are either all misguided and/or politically motivated to keep coming up with the "wrong" answers. We only have one Earth with one atmosphere, so it is presumptuous and decidedly unscientific to claim that human activity cannot cause climate changes. There is no evidence to support that claim, and there is sufficient evidence to the contrary.

One problem with climate change is that it can accelerate with small changes on the ground. Let's say that it gets warm enough northern climates to melt the permafrost - we could be looking at a rapid increase in atmospheric methane load as these long-sequestered materials become subject to biological decomposition. The fact of the matter is that we don't know for sure what will happen in such a scenario, and it is irresponsible to ignore the matter. Gore and some others may be over-the-top in their presentations, but when the majority of climatologists concur regarding the underlying science, it's prudent to listen to them.

 

[Andre]

What I'm denying is the credibility of filling the screen with raw data and claiming to be able to derive results that support your own ideas, when statements in the researchers' own abstracts seem to confute them.

Most researchers -strange as it may seem- have no clue what is going on in adjacent specialisms. That should have been clear already if you'd managed to struggle through my epistel that I linked to before:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/refuting%20the%20Greenland%20paleo%20thermometer1.pdf

yet the mere classification of bona fide researcher makes them thrustworthy.

Let me back the statement up with a more stunning example, the next publication in press:

http://tinyurl.com/3a3ynw

shows this map for the extent of the Siberian ice sheets during Last Glacial Maximum(22-18,000 years ago) in Siberia:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/lgm1.GIF

based on the refs:

69 Petit-Maire, N. (2002). Maps of the World Environments during the Last Two Climatic Extremes (CLIMEX). Commission de la Carte Geologique du Monde

70 Grosswald, M.G. and Hughes, T.J. (2002) The Russian component of the arctic ice sheet during the Last Glacial Maximum. Quat. Sci. Rev. 21, 121–146

Now do compare that with the now formally recognised Weichselian ice sheet extent here

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/eurasian.jpg

(ref: Hubberten et (21) al 2004 The periglacial climate and environment in northern Eurasia during the Last Glaciation, Quaternary Science Reviews 23 (2004) 1333–1357)

Just about 25% that huge ice sheet existed in reality and only in the North West, the rest was mammoth steppe.

See the quality of research nowadays? The non existence of the Siberian Ice sheet of the Last Glacial Maximum never made it to the textbooks and the ice core community, perhaps only as cognitive dissonance. And the peer review did not catch it either. And the relevance? It totally refutes all models on ice sheet, isotopes and sea level balance. And that relevance? it makes sure that the ice age was a lot different than the current understanding, the base of global warming.

Also a very good reason to be very sceptic about any conclusion and look at raw data without any prejudice of it's relevance.

 

[turbo]

The ice core data (especially the Vostok core, covering 4 full cycles of glaciation) show that during periods of glaciation, there was a lot of airborne dust, indicating that the sequestration of water in ice sheets during glaciation left much of the land surface very arid. This in no way conflicts with observations that some large land areas in northern climates might have been cold and dry, with insufficient snowfall to offset the sublimation of existing ice and snow.

 

[Andre]

Sorry that's beside the point. The point is that the ice sheet volume of the last glacial maximum does no longer add up to account for the 127 meters sea level rise. Same with d18O isotope balance, as the sediment cores on the ocean floors echoed the isotopes of the ice cores exactly. This made Rutherford assume to make calculations about total ice sheet volume as well. He came to slightly higher values. These two independent methods gave a certain ice sheet volume which was projected on Siberia, since it was a closed area in that time of the cold war, it could not be verified. So a completely wrong virtual Siberian Ice sheet came into existence and exists still today. According to insect remains, BTW, Siberia was up to 3 degrees warmer than today during the last glacial maximum. You find that back in the earlier refs of my PDF (Kuzmina, 2001, Sher et al 2002, Schirrmeister et
al 2002).

This example shows the sloppiness of quartenary research and the falsifying of the resultant hypothesis, especially the warm Siberia (+3C) during the cold Last Glacial Maximum (-10??)C

 

[turbo]

Don't be sorry. If you think that each period of glaciation must have had similar local results each and every time without temporal variation, you should provide support for that view. It is a pretty goofy view, IMO. When you have 100Ky glacial cycles, you cannot dismiss even small climatic forces. As I mentioned earlier, sequestration of water during periods of glaciation will allow areas with light snowfall to lose snow/ice coverage due to sublimation with a concurrent rise in local temperatures as underlying soils are exposed, and the Vostok ice core samples support this idea, since ice samples during heavily glaciated periods are also heavily contaminated with dust.

 

[Andre]

Again that's not the message. The message is that things did not add up at all within the timeframe 20,000 - 6,000 years ago. Obviously, the termination with an abundance of high resolution data, compared to other glacial teminations, data are much more coarse. And, sequences are wrong, numbers don't add up meaning that many hypotheses are just wrong.

Remember the black swan hypothesis of Karl Popper. if your hypothesis is that all swans are white, it is fasified the moment that you see a black swan, no matter how many millions of white swans you have observed earlier. If we cannot add up the high resolution known ice volumes of the last glacial maximum with the high resolution sea level changes, we have found a black swan. It's as simple as that and then it's time to drop fixed ideas and start hypothesing again like this here:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=153634

 

[Hcxc1runner]

Just asking a few innocent questions...

Is there data that points to a statistically significant increase in carbon dioxide levels, and temperature increase?

Is there data that shows a relationship between the two variables (CO2 levels and temperature increase)?

How are temperature levels measured, and what exactly are they measuring?
How precise and accurate are these methods?

How are sea levels measured?

Are carbon dioxide levels constant in the atmosphere?

I have a hard time believing that we have the ability to accurately detect a temperature increase of 0.? C over the past 30 or so years worldwide (can't remember the data that Al Gore refers to). The method with which data is collected over the last several years have changed, as technology has changed.


Thanks for your time
Hcxc1runner

 

[Andre]

Welcome, Hcxc1runner

You sure know to ask the right questions. I assume that you have only recently been confronted with the global warming hype for the first time. A few hundred specialists are working on those subject and of course forums answers are biased with the opinion of the answerer.

Let me give you a few tips. Do an advanced search on this forum, with search words "carbon" for any date in Earth science and you'll have some stuff to read. I hope you don't mind that I'm brief on your questions:

Is there data that points to a statistically significant increase in carbon dioxide levels, and temperature increase? Is there data that shows a relationship between the two variables (CO2 levels and temperature increase)?

There used to be a "hockeystick" with a r2 of 99+% between the two, however it has been demonstrated that is was a very ..errm.. *unscientific* graph here:.

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/005.htm (fig 1 b)

There are several discussions about "noble cause corruption". Was it cheating or just bad science?

Glacial ice cores show a clear correlation between CO2 and isotopes, erroneousle believed to be depicting temperature, however the *temperature* is leading by 600 +/- 400 years during the last deglaciation. Global warmers assume a positive feedback, boosting the temperatures but obviously those have not studied the physics of positive feedback loops.

Finally, we have chemical CO2 measurement as of about 1816 AD up to about 1961 AD with wild oscillations which are not accepted by the IPCC and warmers, however with indeed some correlation. For the last 60 years we have anti correlation between ~1950-~1975AD, cooling temperatures with rising CO2 when the return to the ice age hype was at the top and then a positive correlation between ~1980 and 1998

How are temperature levels measured, and what exactly are they measuring?

There are three independent research facilities working on the compilation of all the world meterological stations and ship meteo data. Average daily and monthly temperatures are calculated per grid of some 5 degrees lattitude and longitude, I think.

See for instance Hansens lab:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/

Then there is the monthly satellite measurements for the lower troposphere:

http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2

How precise and accurate are these methods?

That's a can of worms with big discussions everywhere. Two hot topics are correction for the Urban Heat Island effect and the reducing number of rural stations.

How are sea levels measured?

In the old days with the yardsticks in the harbours, corrected for geologic movements. Nowadays we have the satellites.

Are carbon dioxide levels constant in the atmosphere?

Definitely not, there is an annual wobble due to seasonal changes in sources and sinks, according to the ice cores, CO2 levels have been fluctuated between some 180 and 280 parts per million in the ice ages. However, it is aknowlegded that there are plenty of complications with the CO2 in the ice cores. Anther "proxy" are fossile leave stomata of certain species which are know to show variation in stomata density depending on CO2 levels and those show much more variation and higher levels.


According to the IPCC the CO2 levels started to rise gradually from around 1850 at 280 ppmv to nowadays 380 ppmv on the average. The earlier mentioned chemical measurements showed values between 1000 ppmv and 270 ppmv.

I hope it helps.

 

[Sehrish]

Global warming

I didn't knew about this movie until my science teacher told me. I got the movie last night and I am going to watch it now. I read the threads it seems like this movie is interesting. I usually don't watch Earth related movies not that I don't care about the planet I am just simply scared like what have we done to our planet. What makes me sad is that mostly people don't know about it. Maybe they do in Canada but third world countries have no clue because of high ration of uneducated people.
Anyways I will watch the movie and reply again and tell if this movie affected me or not.

 

[Mk]

Congratulations guys, this thread is getting hit number six for "An Inconvient Truth" on Google! However I don't know where it stand for "An Inconvenient Truth"

 

[Evo]

Congratulations guys, this thread is getting hit number six for "An Inconvient Truth" on Google! However I don't know where it stand for "An Inconvenient Truth"

Oh well.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=us&sid=afIESX3LdgnQ

 

[Andre]

A critiique from our Kristen here

http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunder/index.html

 

[Mk]

A critiique from our Kristen here

http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunder/index.html

Actually it would be this There's a little g in there.
http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunderg/index.html

 

[edward]

There have been several new pieces added to the global warming puzzle in the past few weeks.

It appears that there were large releases of CO2 from the oceans as the ice was melting and temperatures were rising after the last ice age.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070510164044.htm

And:

The decline of Antarctica's Southern Ocean carbon "sink" - or reservoir - means that atmospheric CO2 levels may be higher in future than predicted.

These carbon sinks are vital as they mop up excess CO2 from the atmosphere, slowing down global warming.

The study, by an international team, is published in the journal Science.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6665147.stm

This effect had been predicted by climate scientists, and is taken into account - to some extent - by climate models. But it appears to be happening 40 years ahead of schedule.