Sceptics conclude Earth has warmedFollow

Regarding the general practice of scientific methodology, even some of the most important scientific theories have elements which cannot be fully explained. That said, this does not apply specifically to global warming (or Acute Climatic Scaremongering, whatever the catchy acronym is this year).

The real question about global climate change is not whether or not it's occurring, but what is causing it.

Global temp increases coincide remarkably with joph's posting history.

It was two degrees cooler back when I was posting via the tele-wire.

200 years clearly isn't enough, 100 isn't either, 10,000 also is not, 100'000 is a little better but according to historical evidence that covers only a single cycle, the rate of change occurs about every 100,000 years. Long story short going back 100,000 years gives us a look at how this current cycle has developed, going back 200,000 years gives us a cycle to compare it to, so on and so forth.

Looking at this chart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg

variations over 400,000 years the peaks and valleys are more or less similar, the one that is most interesting is that over the last 10 several thousand years our temperatures have more or less remained stable. This shows that if anything all we have done is slowed the cooling cycling, however about 300,000 years ago we were 4 degrees of variance, where as we are currently about .8 degrees of variance (from a previous link).

What was the cause of the sudden spike of 2 degrees 300,000 years ago, it certainly wasn't human influence.

What this chart does show is that over the last several thousand years the cooling has slowed somewhat from previous cycles, this can be attributed to green house gases, but we aren't warming, we are stabilizing if anything and slowing the cycle down.

Like I said the evidence is not enough to conclude on way or another. Have we had an impact, sure, it is evident that we have altered the cycle somewhat, but to what degree of significance is anyones guess, we are not as hot as we were 300,000 years ago, but we are not cooling as fast either. So how can you make an argument that it is an attribution of Warming when we have yet to come anywhere close to the variation seen just 300,000 years ago. If anything we have caused stabilization of the temperature which we have not seen before, and don't have a record of. The only way to know for sure is too keep going through natural records to try and determine if we have indeed caused this issue or perhaps there is yet another over arching cycle that we have not mapped out yet.

We have already determined that every 100K years or so the earth sees a massive shift in temperatures, we have also seen that every 20,000 thousand years or so we have some spike in heating or cooling, what if every 400,000 years we see a cycle that has the earth stabilize for a long period of time, before it begins to vary again.

The point is we have no idea how the climate history is made up, most of these findings are only a few decades old, and it is naive to make an assertions based on such limited historical data. Until we have mapped out several hundered cycles we can not definitively say that we are witnessing something that has never happened. Sure it has never happened in our life time, it hasn't happened since the last major ice age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.svg

The earth has been warming over the last 5 million years, who is to say we are any more responsible then the natural cycle found in sedimentary deposits. The further and further back you go the "human influence" appears less and less significant and likely.

(granted we likely have much more pollutants now, which is more than enough reason to alter our position on environmental policies.)



Edited, Oct 26th 2011 2:30pm by rdmcandie

Edited, Oct 26th 2011 2:31pm by rdmcandie

I forgot about this thread somehow. Um... First off, the argument for a correlation between CO2 and temperature is based on those longer term trends, so using that as a base assumption, but then discounting those trends and focusing on the smaller/shorter cycles within those larger trends would seem to be questionable methodology.


Secondly, I love how you guys went after me for the whole "silent on the consensus" bit, then Joph posts a thread that supports exactly the claim I was making. From that earlier thread:




My argument has always been that a scientific consensus proves nothing. I have been consistent about it all along. There's a whole lot of fail going on when I dismiss the scientific consensus used by the IPCC but then someone accuses me of being "strangely silent" about the consensus in the other direction. Silent in what way? I don't think either proves any position regarding global warming itself. What the second consensus proves is that anyone can generate a consensus.


Which is the point. Thanks for still managing to miss it even three years later. Geez!

Edited, Oct 26th 2011 1:21pm by gbaji

What point? You think science works by show of hand at a convention? What's so funny is that whenever I point out how wrong this is, people fall over themselves to insist that they aren't swayed by such things, but inevitably the next time the subject comes up, they mention it as their front and center proof.

No. But many people on this forum apparently do. I've been trying for years to get them to understand that that is *not* how science works.

I see that you *still* failed to get my point. The point of the online petition was not to disprove ACC theory, but to show that a scientific consensus is not how one should determine what is true. How the hell did you fail to grasp this? I've only repeated it over and over and over and over every single time this subject comes up. At some point, you'd think it would sink in.

Edited, Oct 26th 2011 1:43pm by gbaji

Sigh... It's like your brain just isn't engaged.

Let me quote another section from that earlier thread:




The purpose of the online petition was not to prove a position by using a consensus, but to show that attempting to prove a position by using a consensus is wrong. How the hell more clearly can I state this? Are you retarded or something?


Do I need to quote myself making this same exact statement over and over? Will that help you?

You are particularly dense today. My "agenda" is to show that a "scientific consensus" isn't valid proof of whatever the consensus is about. I'm not and have never said that the petition proved that ACC isn't true. I have only said that it debunks the validity of the IPCC consensus.


Hypocrisy is accepting one as true while refusing to accept the other. That's what other people are doing. In my case, I (and the people who conducted the petition btw), aren't using the petition as proof of anything other than that consensus isn't good science. Stop thinking in terms of for or against a "side" of the ACC issue, and look instead at being for or against using "good science" regardless of what the results are.

Can you do that?

Funny, considering I've never once brought up ACC, but you sure as hell haven't had any problem bringing it up. My guess is it's because you have no legitimate argument for the real issue, so if you can hide the embarrassment under a different issue maybe you'll confuse other people? Looks more like I'm not dense enough for you.

I'm not the one dancing around using the wrong argument as my defense, sunshine. But you go ahead and continue, like usual, to claim that it's someone else that was mistaken. Of course not, but you had no problem saying I did. Do you want to dance to this tune as well or do you think you could maybe puzzle it out on your own?Nope, I still haven't started talking about it so it couldn't possibly be the real issue I mentioned. Come on, it's easy to figure out.

Edited, Oct 26th 2011 6:06pm by lolgaxe

What, people aren't allowed to argue with you? Okay, the picture is a little clearer. You have difficulties multitasking. You believe that no matter how much you write, that people can only speak about what you want them to speak about, and it completely confuses you if they find issue with something else that doesn't conform with your comfort zone. That kind of sounds like a personal problem you should work on. Apparently I'm not nearly as dense as people you're used to complaining to and it seems to really get under your skin that you can't confuse me. I know, my brilliance is a hindrance for me as well. When in doubt, insult and accuse! I'm sure that tactic works somewhere.

Not here of course, but with how often you fall back on it it must work somewhere.

And yet, despite several requests to do so, you failed to show that the group of scientists used for the IPCC consensus was any less filled with the scientific equivalent of watch repairmen.



Nope. Got the point. Responded to the point. Still waiting for you to show that there are fewer scientists in directly relevant fields in that petition than there were in the IPCC consensus.


The point you seem to keep missing is that I'm treating both the same. You're the one insisting that one is legit while the other isn't, all while refusing to show any data supporting that claim.



/shrug

To be honest, I didn't even click the links. Because previous threads have taught me that you rarely post links that are actually directly relevant to the question being asked, and often don't in fact even support the assertion you're making.

And honestly, it's not the links I'm talking about. It's your general dismissal of the argument that longer term temperature trends show a much greater variation than we've seen in the near term, yet the earth manages to recover and go through these massive cycles anyway. You argued that this doesn't matter because it's the short term spikes within those larger patterns which are affecting us. And while that's correct, it's also correct to look at the long term patterns, since that's where the famed "correlation between temperature and CO2" comes from.


Rejecting those cycles means rejecting what is largely the basis of the entire ACC theory.