[karajorma]

Does anyone actually really think anymore that we are UNCAPABLE of affecting the climate?

Anyone who seriously thinks that is ignorant. Not only are we capable of affecting the climate, we already have!

[Bobboau]

I have no idea what you are trying to tell me.
Or to be more precise, what any of that has to do with my initial argument.

Maybe to help me understand you, answer the following questions:
1.What would be your suggestion for an averaging period? Why?
2.If there is not enough data with the current averaging period, how will your intervall be more helpfull?
3.How does the fact, that million of years ago the temperature depending on a certain averaging period had a certain value affect the fact that the averaged temperature currently increases? (I'm not talking about the implications, I'm asking how it is supposed to make that fact somehow wrong)

the issue is we do not in my opinion have a very good volume of data, averaging period is not really the issue so much as the width of the raw data, we only have 300 years of reliably recoded temperature readings, we are looking at changes on an extremely small scale and trying to extrapolate from them, I think we need to have a much better understanding of temperatures on the planet over at least the last few million years before we can start making any judgments over what's happening now. we do not have enough data to establish a strong 'control' temperature, we don't have enough data to establish what the temperature would be if we were not here.

what data I have seen operating in these scales indicates to me that we are in an unusually cool and erratic period dominated by repeated ice ages, and are currently in the warming phase of one of these ice ages. however I am sticking to my position that we don't have a solid enough historical framework to be making conclusions.

[Uchuujinsan]

Op said 11 years ago was the hottest year, later implying that this means climate doesn't change.
I said, a single year doesn't mean anything for climate models, because climate is about averaging over multiple years.
How has your statement anything to do with this? How are you arguing that averaging over 30 years in itself is "ridiculous"?
I just got the feeling you are trying to make a completely different point, that has nothing to do with my original statement. That you didn't answer my questions is another indication..

[jdjtcagle]

Your going around in circles because one is arguing apples and the other oranges 

[Bobboau]

well the 30 year average is not it's self my issue. though I would say 100 or 1000 years would give a better idea of global temperature change (including calculating std deviation).
my initial response was directed at using one 30 year average and extrapolating everything from that.

[Uchuujinsan]

my initial response was directed at using one 30 year average and extrapolating everything from that.

Well, I didn't say something about extrapolating, and didn't intend to. Also I never said anything about using one 30 year average, that seems to be your idea. On the other hand how can you extrapolate from a single data point?
Probably "Our value never changed, so we are extrapolating it to be constant".

well the 30 year average is not it's self my issue. though I would say 100 or 1000 years would give a better idea of global temperature change (including calculating std deviation).

Ok, we apparently agree that a single year alone is not describing climate. That's what I was initially trying to say. As a result a single year is no indication for the existence or inexistence of climate change.

Your going around in circles because one is arguing apples and the other oranges

Well, we were arguing different things, but I hope we are no longer.

[General Battuta]

Did nobody read the paper Janos posted? It uses evidence from many thousands of years to attempt to examine the issue of climate change.

[Liberator]

Kara, the concept of geoengineering  from your linked article troubles me.  We don't have anywhere else to go, so if we were to make a mistake on a project that large it would take to long to correct and we'd be done.  Frankly, it strikes me a bit like the people who build houses in California and then are aghast and shocked when there are wildfires during the dry season and landslides during the wet season.  There are certain things you don't **** with.

[Bobboau]

Did nobody read the paper Janos posted? It uses evidence from many thousands of years to attempt to examine the issue of climate change.

the one that said the previous interglacial period was as warm or warmer and said that species were dieing off in the north without considering anything other than rising temperatures (for example pollutants, humans are putting more than CO2 into the environment)? or that failed to explain what it meant by unique (all I saw was it talking about cold tolerant species dieing off or maybe that was the only criteria they used)?

granted it was only a snipet and there these issues could have been addressed elsewhere in the paper

[General Battuta]

I'm calling attention to it not because it Proves Global Warming, but because it provides an interesting example of one piece of convergent evidence.

[Janos]

Did nobody read the paper Janos posted? It uses evidence from many thousands of years to attempt to examine the issue of climate change.

the one that said the previous interglacial period was as warm or warmer and said that species were dieing off in the north without considering anything other than rising temperatures (for example pollutants, humans are putting more than CO2 into the environment)? or that failed to explain what it meant by unique (all I saw was it talking about cold tolerant species dieing off or maybe that was the only criteria they used)?

granted it was only a snipet and there these issues could have been addressed elsewhere in the paper

"Snippet", bfaff - the paper is readily available if you are willing and the abstract+discussion readily explain what the study had to do with. You are trying to criticize the paper you haven't read for not answering the questions you just made up. How about you read the paper and try to think what questions it is trying to answer to and then regard those, not the questions you come up and the paper is not even trying to answer to? Huh?

Speaking of temperature, by the way, are the sedimental approximations only available just 300 years into the past? How about oxygen isotopes? They too? What about this entire glacial air bubble thingamungie.  How about the timespan of the change? Could that effect something too? Hey, how about we cross-check athmospheric CO2 to measured global temperature?

[karajorma]

Kara, the concept of geoengineering  from your linked article troubles me.  We don't have anywhere else to go, so if we were to make a mistake on a project that large it would take to long to correct and we'd be done.  Frankly, it strikes me a bit like the people who build houses in California and then are aghast and shocked when there are wildfires during the dry season and landslides during the wet season.  There are certain things you don't **** with.

Like the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere?

The whole geoengineering point was that it was suggested as a possible solution when the "There's no such thing as global warming/We aren't doing it" crowd finally pull their heads out of their collective asses and realise how badly we've ****ed ourselves over.

It's a much worse solution than cutting CO2 emissions in the first place and may be worse than simply putting up with the consequences of the changes caused by global warming. But that's why it's only mentioned as a possible solution.

[WeatherOp]

Just do a little research into the total energy output of the human race. And energy is pretty much heat.

Our energy output is nothing compared to the power of weather.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html

   Subject: D7) How much energy does a hurricane release?


* Method 1) - Total energy released through cloud/rain formation:

      An average hurricane produces 1.5 cm/day (0.6 inches/day) of rain inside a circle of radius 665 km (360 n.mi) (Gray 1981). (More rain falls in the inner portion of hurricane around the eyewall, less in the outer rainbands.) Converting this to a volume of rain gives 2.1 x 1016 cm3/day. A cubic cm of rain weighs 1 gm. Using the latent heat of condensation, this amount of rain produced gives
      5.2 x 1019 Joules/day or
      6.0 x 1014 Watts.

      This is equivalent to 200 times the world-wide electrical generating capacity - an incredible amount of energy produced!

    * Method 2) - Total kinetic energy (wind energy) generated:

      For a mature hurricane, the amount of kinetic energy generated is equal to that being dissipated due to friction. The dissipation rate per unit area is air density times the drag coefficient times the windspeed cubed (See Emanuel 1999 for details). One could either integrate a typical wind profile over a range of radii from the hurricane's center to the outer radius encompassing the storm, or assume an average windspeed for the inner core of the hurricane. Doing the latter and using 40 m/s (90 mph) winds on a scale of radius 60 km (40 n.mi.), one gets a wind dissipation rate (wind generation rate) of
      1.3 x 1017 Joules/day or
      1.5 x 1012Watts.

      This is equivalent to about half the world-wide electrical generating capacity - also an amazing amount of energy being produced!

[watsisname]

True, but I'm not sure I understand your point.  Our activities influence the heat transfer between the Earth and space.  Weather is a result of heat transfer throughout the atmosphere.

[WeatherOp]

True, but I'm not sure I understand your point.  Our activities influence the heat transfer between the Earth and space.  Weather is a result of heat transfer throughout the atmosphere.

I really had no point. It's just totally amazing that a normal sized hurricane totally whips our output by a few hundred times in just one day of it's existence.

[watsisname]

Ah, yes.  Kind of makes one feel small, doesn't it? 

[Mongoose]

Kind of makes one feel like coming up with some way to wrap a metaphorical lasso around a hurricane and solve all of our energy needs in one fell swoop.

[Bobboau]

"Snippet", bfaff - the paper is readily available if you are willing and the abstract+discussion readily explain what the study had to do with. You are trying to criticize the paper you haven't read for not answering the questions you just made up. How about you read the paper and try to think what questions it is trying to answer to and then regard those, not the questions you come up and the paper is not even trying to answer to? Huh?

hard to understand exactly what you are getting at, but  I was asked if I read the article you posted, that was all I could find, maybe you should post a link and better explain what it's trying to prove, I was under the assumption that it was going to provide evidence for humanity's causeing global warming

Speaking of temperature, by the way, are the sedimental approximations only available just 300 years into the past? How about oxygen isotopes? They too? What about this entire glacial air bubble thingamungie.  How about the timespan of the change? Could that effect something too? Hey, how about we cross-check athmospheric CO2 to measured global temperature?

made mention of the fact that we have some data, and that it did not support your position, and that I wasn't going to close my mind to the possibility that there will be new samples made that refute my position.

here is one of my favorite graphs, it shows that, at these two antarctic sites, it seems as though the last 4 interglacial periods were 3 to 6 degrees warmer than currently (was made in 2004).

oh, I just noticed, I've been saying 300 years for directly measured temperatures, I was mistaken it was only 100 years that we have been doing that, it's been a while since I've been involved in this discussion.

[watsisname]

Kind of makes one feel like coming up with some way to wrap a metaphorical lasso around a hurricane and solve all of our energy needs in one fell swoop.

Bah, they're too pesky to control for our own use.  Them and tornadoes.  I'd rather just kill 'em all.
http://www.xkcd.com/640/

[Janos]

"Snippet", bfaff - the paper is readily available if you are willing and the abstract+discussion readily explain what the study had to do with. You are trying to criticize the paper you haven't read for not answering the questions you just made up. How about you read the paper and try to think what questions it is trying to answer to and then regard those, not the questions you come up and the paper is not even trying to answer to? Huh?

hard to understand exactly what you are getting at, but  I was asked if I read the article you posted, that was all I could find, maybe you should post a link and better explain what it's trying to prove, I was under the assumption that it was going to provide evidence for humanity's causeing global warming

It says that the current changes in global climate are unique. They are not similar to previous glacial periods. There are two periods that in summer temperatures compare to this. To measure the changes the group uses changes in fauna, estimated pH and sedimental biochemistry during the last 200 000 years. Species extinctions are a commonly used tool in sediment studies. Species often exist in certain type of communities. Aquatic insects are heavily dependant on temperature. So are diatoms. They are a standardized method for measuring temperature change and have been used in that role for decades, if even not for a century. Pollutants themselves do not cause entire faunal combinations to die off because that is not how they work. If we are to trust the glacial period theory - the one you espoused here - then the estimated trend of global temperature should be downwards. It is not. This is but one recent study.

I gave the citation but yeah, it was kinda hidden in that post. Axford et al. 2009: Recent changes in a remote Arctic lake are unique within the past 200,000 years. - PNAS 42(106). There you are, go hog wild.

Speaking of temperature, by the way, are the sedimental approximations only available just 300 years into the past? How about oxygen isotopes? They too? What about this entire glacial air bubble thingamungie.  How about the timespan of the change? Could that effect something too? Hey, how about we cross-check athmospheric CO2 to measured global temperature?

made mention of the fact that we have some data, and that it did not support your position, and that I wasn't going to close my mind to the possibility that there will be new samples made that refute my position.

here is one of my favorite graphs, it shows that, at these two antarctic sites, it seems as though the last 4 interglacial periods were 3 to 6 degrees warmer than currently (was made in 2004).[/quote]

Indeed they have been. There's no one disputing that. There's only that little problem that you are
A) looking at millions of years
B) the changes have taken at least thousands of years
C) the current one is not doing so, but proceeding extremely rapidly.
I don't see how this is such a difficult concept to grasp. The fact that there have been warmer periods in history has nothing to do with whether a very rapid and ongoing change is bad or not.

oh, I just noticed, I've been saying 300 years for directly measured temperatures, I was mistaken it was only 100 years that we have been doing that, it's been a while since I've been involved in this discussion.

... and yet you are citing a map of global temperatures as a proof of your argument, really makes you wonder, doesn't it.