With people like GeomanNL around, it helps ensure this thread will last the several decades we will need in order to check back in on the topic as the state of affairs changes (or doesn't).

It's been nothing but educational to me though. On a number of levels. I appreciate questions like Frogboy's on CO2. Why do the temperature fluctuations seem less in line with CO2 changes from Antarctica tens of thousands of years ago compared with now? How much is the difference in CO2 concentrations between then and now a factor? Why does CO2, which is really just a tiny % of the gases making up the atmosphere, have such a large warming effect attributed to it? These are all good questions but they should lead to an attitude of "hmmm what am I missing?" rather than dismissal of AGW without further inquiry.

What it leads to though is into topics like Milankovitch cycles of the earth's orbit, solar radiation, and the effect on the Ice Ages. As far as CO2's seeming disproportionate effect on warming of the atmosphere, it leads to discussions on the measurements of the spectrum of greenhouse gas radiation (basically measuring the incoming solar energy and the outgoing radiation and measuring the difference with focus on the wavelength that CO2 traps heat within in order to single its influence out). This seems to be based on this study: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html

So it gets to a point, as a non-scientist, that I cannot judge or analyze whether certain measurements and conclusions were done properly or not. At this point, I have to take it on faith that decades of scientists working in this area know what they are doing - or see published evidence that disagrees with their conclusions. But there are definitely a number of lines of evidence as to why it is CO2 this time when it had less of an effect before. The concentration is higher than most times in the past, the temperature of the ocean and its holding capacity of CO2 is very different than the past, the amount of deforestation, and the amount of concrete laid globally is very different from times in the past, etc.

Because pulling data from ice cores means you're getting it from the coldest 'end' of the planet.  Things might very well be totally different [or more clear] if the 'cores' were from the equator.....the hot bit of the planet.

The sad part is that while people run around like headless chooks trying to get a grip on data that proves whatever point they may have we're still all in that handbasket....and moving.....

Rushing out to by a Prius, or disconnecting oneself from the grid actually will do nothing other than to provide a social feel-good subject.  Some of us have done 'what we can' to make our personal intrinsic harm less....but on a global scale it's like pissing into the wind.  The GW issue is far more fundamental...and likely the ONLY solution is if the entire planet's population goes Amish.

While people continue to deny or refuse to accept there is a problem its solution cannot happen.

Anyone with eyesight can look out of their window and see artifacts of human polution of our environment.  If Mother Nature is a living animal then humanity is its parasite....and we have never ever really been benign.

Humanity is in a race to see 'who' can end the planet first....us or the sun going Nova.

Currently we're a country mile out in front....

It was more a series of rhetorical questions. People get labelled "denialists" and "pseudoskeptics" I think because they do not actually engage in an honest inquiry into searching out the answers but simply stop when they find something that appeals them.

Lol - take heart - most of the antagonism has subsided.

I am much more sympathetic to people who are skeptical about proposed solutions - certain governments are not always known for their good use of tax dollars. But Sweden definitely seems to be a winning example - they actually walked the walk by exceeding their Kyoto protocol targets while still growing their economy by 44% and actually using carbon taxes (since 1991) to invest in alternate fuel technologies that have produced usable results for them.

The ONLY reason I'm still here is to ensure that remains the status quo.

Lively 'debates' can so easily go off the rails...

But only in the Antarctic. We see even today that the Antarctic has a delayed response, the rest of the world warms faster. The delay is already about 100 years.

That goes a long way toward the 200 year delay from the ice cores.

http://www.livescience.com/41909-new-clues-permian-mass-extinction.html

It shows that the onset of large volcanic eruptions preceded this particular extinction by about 250 thousand years, and those eruptions lasted about 1 million years in total.

They emphasize that sulfur-dioxide was an important killer because of the acid rain.

The article says that temperatures rose after the extinction, but I really wonder if the author didn't make a mistake here, or maybe left something out, or maybe just meant that temperature after the extinction were 9 degrees higher than before.

It's interesting to read it together with this earlier article:

http://www.livescience.com/24091-extreme-global-warming-mass-extinction.html

which says that after the extinction, the earth was barren and hot and without life to capture carbon efficiently, the earth stayed too hot for life for millions of year.

That's a rant like no other... and it is completely off as well. That rant starts with discrediting science in general, then talks about some vague history to ridule it more, and then completely ignores the massive amounts of obervations made in the last 20 years.

I would summarize this as: "Politicians made a mess of things in the past, and scientists are not real scientists, so let's just do nothing and let the problem solve itself."

Can't really disagree here, big institutions are, by their very nature, susceptible to corruption. But that article is very suggestive, focusing on a few "bad" things that aren't necessarily " bad and it doesn't mean that the results are all bullshit. I think the article is over the top.

Just think about the FIFA. I've read that it's a rotten organization, but it still manages to organize world soccer tournaments...

Anyway you don't have to read the IPCC report, you can find lots of sensible articles on the internet, which are convincing in their own right. You can make up your own mind.

I've linked to Tamsin Edwards' All Models Are Wrong blog before but this is another post worth reading.

"As a climate scientist, I’m under pressure to be a political advocate....I believe advocacy by climate scientists has damaged trust in the science. We risk our credibility, our reputation for objectivity, if we are not absolutely neutral. At the very least, it leaves us open to criticism. I find much climate scepticism is driven by a belief that environmental activism has influenced how scientists gather and interpret evidence."

http://blogs.plos.org/models/climate-scientists-must-not-advocate-particular-policies/

Nooo.... it's a history of politicians and has nothing to do with any hard physics.

Instead it says "don't trust technicians" and "a ph.d without the ph." ... in other words: let's ignore all the observations and all the models that've been made, just throw them out of the window out of some silly belief that science is crooked.

And then the conclusion (out of nowhere) to just let things solve themselves... as if that "crooked" science can ever clean up a world that is completely polluted and as if that won't cost us anything.

You never ever got the impression that sometimes, just sometimes, it's better to prevent than to cure?

If you compare the earth to someone who's smoking too many sigarettes a day, wouldn't you tell the earth to stop smoking before you get cancer? Because if you get cancer, you may get a lung transplant and you can be saved, but you'll never be the same again and you'll have to go though hell before you get better?

Btw I'm not a leftist, not at all. I'm more center-right.

I think there are plenty leftists that don't care about the environment. They just want to reserve lots of money to fight poverty and help people in need, that's true leftism imho. This has little to do with the environment.

On the other hand there's the green movement. They're mainly interested in animals and plants and they want to save the world, one animal at a time. They are not necessarily interested in fighting poverty, they're not truly leftist... but they share some traits in that they want to channel money away from the economy into their numerous pet projects.

I'm neither of those, I'm only interested in the bigger picture and I would very much like to preserve our way of life. But I'm seeing the world going to shit and I don't like that. And even if I won't live to see much of that shit happening, I still don't like it. You don't have to be a leftist for that.

But to be honest a few days ago I ordered some stuff from China and it's going by plane all the way to Europe... I feel evil

I think it's a bit strange that people are still talking about a cooling of the earth... This article shows how even at this very moment, the total heat content of the oceans is increasing. 

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-ocean-heating-reveals-about-global-warming/

This is significant, because the atmosphere and oceanic systems exchange their heat back and forth. Therefore it makes sense to look at the oceans and see what happens to them, and we should not just look at the atmosphere.

A sudden ocean current that takes a lot of heat deeper into the ocean and colder water up, will cool the surface of the ocean and in turn the cooler ocean surface will cool the atmosphere. When people notice that temperatures in the air don't rise anymore (globally), does that mean that the heating of the earth stops?

No... it just means that the process is still valid and is still going on like always, except that the atmosphere will experience a small delay because of the interaction with the ocean. And the next time that cold water will well up? It won't be as cold anymore as it used to be, so every next "plateau" in temperature will be higher than the previous one.

This is also a nice commentary on the subject of oceanic warming:

http://science.time.com/2013/11/01/oceans-warming-faster-than-they-have-over-past-10000-years/

And recently I've read something disturbing about the ozone hole:

http://www.space.com/23937-ozone-hole-wont-heal-until-2070.html

Earlier I've read articles claiming that the ozone hole was closing and that climate agreements had some effect. And now this article shows that this was just a temporary fluctuation and that it'll take half a century before it'll really "close".

Patience is a virtue...

And there's sometimes also some misconception about the influence of CO2 in the atmosphere. The argument is, that there's only a fraction of 0.0004 CO2 in the atmosphere, how can such a low content have any influence on the heat? I've tried to write down the mechanism, based on this nice article and some other stuff I've read in the last few months:

http://www.wag.caltech.edu/home/jang/genchem/infrared.htm

As far as I can understand all of this, the basic mechanism if there is just a single molecule of CO2 around, consists of this:

1. A CO2 molecule captures a photon in infrared.
2. Its energy increases.
3. After a few microseconds it relaxes and releases a photon in infrared.
4. Its energy decreases.

A CO2 molecule can capture multiple photons: if it does, its energy will increase more and more. When the molecule captures a photon and reaches a higher energy state, the molecule will require a shorter-wavelength photon to jump to the next higher state, and it will ignore photons of longer wavelength. It will also add a lesser amount of energy with each transition.

This means that CO2 alone has a very finite capacity to absorb heat that is radiated out from the surface: when the CO2 molecule gets too hot, it will become transparent to the radiation from the surface.

A planet like Mars has a thin atmosphere that consists mainly of CO2. The heat capture of such an atmosphere is very low, because there are not enough molecules to store a significant amount of the heat that was emitted by the surface. So it feels cold, like high on top of a mountain: there are not enough molecules to keep you warm.

The Earth is different. In Earth's atmosphere, a CO2 molecule is surrounded by thousands of nitrogen and oxygen molecules. As soon as the CO2 molecule absorbs radiation, very shortly after the absorption it will hit another molecule and it will transmit its energy to the surrounding molecules: there are so many molecules around, that the CO2 molecule will experience many collisions before it can relax and emit radiation.

In the process, the CO2 molecules stay "cool" in a low excited state and can absorb heat again and again. The other way around, oxygen and nitrogen molecules hit the CO2 molecule repeatedly, and occasionaly such a collision will give a CO2 molecule the energy necessary to radiate heat. Therefore the atmosphere as a whole heats up, and since our atmosphere is pretty dense, it can hold a lot of energy.

Also note that the nitrogen and oxygen molecules are practically unable to radiate their energy out at earth-like temperatures (the chance that they are hit hard enough to reach the required energy is very small): they need water molecules, CO2 or water droplets for that.

What happens higher up in the atmosphere. It is less dense and the atmosphere there has little capacity to store energy. It's also cold, therefore the molecules move slower and it's less likely that a CO2 molecule gets hit hard enough to emit radiation. There are also fewer CO2 molecules around, meaning that not much heat is captured to warm the high atmosphere up (compared to ground level).

For completeness sake I'll also repeat something I've written earlier about so-called "over-saturation". There's no such thing as saturation, and the reason is the presence of "time" also called the "flux".

Imagine a certain volume of the atmosphere. If there are more CO2 molecules in that volume, more photons will be intercepted before they can leave the volume and therefore the number of photons leaving the volume per second will decrease (flux out).

In the meantime, the earth's surface provides a steady amount of energy into the volume (flux in).

The energy content in the volume is a balance between the in/out flux. If the outgoing flux decreases while the ingoing flux remains the same, the energy in the volume will increase and the temperature will rise.

A higher temperature in turn will lead to more CO2 molecules emitting radiation, thus increasing the flux out again and thus creating a new balance between in/outgoing photons, at a higher temperature.

A gradual phasing out of existing coal/ gas/ oil plants over a 30 year timespan. If this turns out to be too optimistic, it could be extended to 50 years... but there has to be a time limit.

1. A moratorium on building new carbon-based plants.

2. Setting a 30 year time limit for use of existing plants, sso that they won't be kept alive and breathing forever by endless patchwork.

In order to ensure continued supply of energy:

3. Expand on solar/ wind/ nuclear/ hydro-electric energy - whichever is appropriate in a particular case. Or switch to a hydrogen- or [clean]gas-based economy. We should start with large-scale pilot projects for 10 years to see which one is most viable and to allow technology to mature.

4. Expand research budgets for alternative fuel sources:

- solar energy

- hydrogen based economy

- super-conducting energy cables

- production of natural gas from the atmosphere, allowing a gas-based economy. This may allow existing energy plants to continue production.

- wind energy

- ocean/wave energy

- nuclear fusion

- thorium (limited to existing nuclear super-powers)

We can re-route funding for climate research into research for actual solutions. If that's not enough money, we could channel money from the military to research.

5. As backup-plan in case things take longer than expected, also spend some money on research for capturing carbon, eg. in freshly exposed rocks, or by stimulating algae growth in the oceans.

6. All of this requires complete commitment from every country in the world. World leaders will have to set aside (partially at least) their domestic self-interests for 50 years and re-make their economy.

7. In case it proves to be too costly for some countries then either some countries could be granted more time to reach the goals. Or they can make claim on a central fund for extra money to reach the goals. To avoid abuse of such funds, such a country will have to go through a thorough budget analysis (like the southern countries in Europe) and give up some of their autonomy before they can get the funding.

Couldn't help myself but ask, what is your problem with his comment?

If it is true that humans have a part in the global warming, and CO2 has a part in it, you cannot save the future by doing nothing..

And when Russia, India, China and Brazil, at a minimum, tell you to take your plan and shove it up your ass what then?  Are you willing to go to war over your plan? Because that's what happens next. Our you let them out of it and your plan solves nothing.

Politicians thrive on red tape, though.  They get to wield their influence to help their friends and business interests get past it.  Without it, all they can do is their actual jobs and sadly, that's not how one gets ahead in politics.

Not using the "C" word anymore?