Global Warming is hardly anything new

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But according to what I could find, the last eruptions of those were tens of millions of years ago! How could that be the cause of the very recent growth in global temperatures?

You miss the point. In their time they caused a sudden increase in the ambient temperature. And humans had nothing to do with that increase because they did not even exist at that time. Bottom line: global warming has occurred without any help from humans. There are natural forces that can both increase and decrease global average temperature. So why do the Powers that Be insist that this latest increase is of human origin. Have they eliminated ALL the other natural factors? No they haven't. When these other factors are eliminated, then one might very well conclude that human activity is the cause of the current warming spell.

ruveyn

Sure, I accept that. In fact, I think that this doesn't exactly help your cause. What you are saying is that a sudden increase in the ambient temperature is usually caused by something.



Actually, yes they have! Think about it. You yourself have admitted the following things:
(1.) A sudden increase in temperature is usually caused by a contemporary event.
(2.) None of the relevant factors has had an event recently, with the exception of the increase in human-released greenhouse gases.

So, what is the logical conclusion?

Wrong. They have weighted the factors. The weights are arbitrary parameters. That is exactly what I was talking about. There are too many free parameters in the climate models.

A single event, like Krakatoa, which lead to several years of worldwide cooling, from the ash, 1815, the year without summer, then warming from the gasses.

This matches the onset of the industrial era. Once started in motion, a slight warming puts more water vapor in the air, just by being warmer, and that leads to the release of Methane, as the edge of the permafrost receeds.

A plain industrial scale does not work, because the depression when factories, mines, were shut down was a hot decade. The 40s which tried to burn down the world was a cold decade, and in the resulting rubble, when activity was very low, the 50s were hot.

Modern coal fired plants producing electric came later, burned huge amounts of coal, and in the 70s there was talk of a coming ice age, as cooling was picking up.

The actual peaks of warm and cold do not fit the peaks of CO2 release.

It would seem that post WWII when we had the huge machines that could move mountains, strip mine coal, and fed a lot of new and huge coal fired plants, releasing more CO2 in a year than the prior times could do in a decade, there would have been an imediate spike in warming. It did not happen.

The last decade has been warm, drought, almost as bad as the 50s, 30s, and other droughts going back before records. The Southwest had drought from 800 which took down the Mayans, to 1100 when it ended the Anasazi, Casa Grande, and stuck around till 1500.

The Great Plains were in tall grass sod, with 90 million buffalo, which seems that blaming over plowing and cattle for drought is unfounded.

While it seems the Southwest was in a warming, drought period, from the same time, Europe was having a little ice age, crops were too wet to harvest, grew ergot in the fields, plague spred, and the climate did not warm until 1500, when it became cooler and wetter in western America.

After some unexplained sudden warming melted the ice from 15,000 to 10,000 years ago, raising sea level over 400 foot, it has continued to rise about one foot per hundred years since. Recent reports are saying eight inches, so the rate of long term warming is slowing.

If all the ice melted, raising sea level seven meters, we would be back at the beach line from 26,000 to 22,000 years ago. During that interglacial it was much warmer, London was tropical, and Norway more like Italy.

Somehow that caused it to snow, and six inches a day fell for a thousand years, 45 miles of snow, that compacted to five miles of ice, then flowed out till it was only three miles thick.

Our current interglacial, 15,000 years, the last, only 5,000, the ice and interglacial before 5,000 years each, but the ice before that, 125,000 years.

That seems to have ended with Campi Flegrei, an Italian Caldera going off 40,000 years ago.

So for 130,000 of the last 150,000, the world has been locked in ice.

During that time a three mile high ice cliff reached from London to the south end of the Urals, and from New York to Saint Louis.

During warmer times in Norway a grave was found of a young woman wearing short shorts, made of wool, a waist band, two leg bands, and cords all around connecting the top and bottom, with about 50% coverage.

If warmer times bring back peekaboo shorts, I am all for it.

Between warm and cold, is about five degrees, it seems like more in the north. At the equater, all through the Tropics, there is no change.

There is no long term pattern, Solar Cycle, Orbit, it all seems local, volcanic, and tipping points within a cycle.

The methane now being released by melting permafrost, is from the muck left from the murder of all life by a wave of ice. The eras when life was rich, dragon flies as long as your arm, plant growth to the max, faster than it could rot, formed the coal beds we now dig. It takes a lot of plants to form a ten foot coal seam. Long term, 125 degrees was the normal high, every day.

Panama seems to be what caused the endless warm to end. The Pacific is eight foot higher, warmer, and flowed through and joined the Gulf Stream. A few volcanos, ice ages. Leave it be, because we come later, and could not deal with a steaming swamp.

We might lose Florida, but we gain a reef. Peekaboo shorts may come back.

Our climate shifts can only be explained by local geologic time, an eratic clock. When the clock does run, mountains get pushed up, volcanos spurt, plates move, and climates change.

Warm puts more water vapor in the air, then a slight cooling leads to a thousand years of rain, snow, as things even out. The tipping point is never the same, so we are one fart away from triggering the next ice age.

It will killl most people, which must be a good thing, and it will lower sea level and expose the Cities of Atlantis. Most of our history is along the old beach line of 22,000 to 15,000 years ago, the Golden Age of Hairless Ground Apes.

But come back to the pool table analogy. Like I said, it would be very difficult to understand the motion of all the balls in detail. But that doesn't really matter.

There is only one thing which has happened which could possibly serve as an explanation for the sudden increased clack frequency - the addition of an extra 100 balls to the table. And it is very easy to see how the extra balls could cause an increased clack frequency, even though we don't have a good mathematical understanding of the pool table.

There is only one thing which has happened which could possibly serve as an explanation for the sudden increased global average temperature - the addition of human-released greenhouse gases. And it is very easy to see how the human-released greenhouse gases could cause an increased global average temperature, even though we don't have a good mathematical understanding of the climate.

There is a well known practical fallacy of reasoning: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc After this, therefore because of this.

Ponder that a bit.

When we are dealing with highly non-linear chaotic dynamics we cannot assume that the least well known driver has a negligible effect on the outcome. The proper weighting of orbital variation, solar output, effects of cosmic rays on cloud formation, wobble of the earth's axis has yet to be determined PRECISELY because we do not yet have a theory of climate change. I keep pointing this out. All we have are MODELS. As an analogy, climate study is in it pre-Newtonian, pre-Keplerian phase. We do not have a proper worked out dynamics. We have the equivalent of Ptolemy's epi-cycles and deferents. Where is our climatic Kepler and Newton?

If we decided tomorrow to give up industry and technology, go back to hunter gathering with the result that 99 percent of the human race perishes, we have NO ASSURANCE that the remaining 1 percent will enjoy climatic stability. Given the fact that positive feedback process are happening even as we speak (for example the release of methane from the arctic tundra released because the tundra is melting) there is every chance that temperature increase will continue. All of the restriction and controls the eco-phreaks recommend are not guaranteed to improve matters. We we can either suffer climatic warming with some prosperity or suffer climatic warming in squalor and poverty.

ruveyn

ruveyn

Humans are to blame, but for more than CO2, removing forests, that consume CO2, paving roads, parking, cities, reduces the evaporation, and creates heat islands. The square miles of buildings, roads, parking, all increase heat and lower evaporation, and without plant life, cease to trap CO2.

That is a 100% change from nature. compared the CO2 we produce is a small percent of the air. Besides that, eight billion farting monkeys.

Warmer air holds more water vapor, that traps more heat. Water vapor is stronger than CO2. Heat then melts permafrost, releasing Methane, also stronger than CO2.

The same numbers used for industrial CO2 production match forest clearing, paving, building cities, and the monkey population.

CO2 is a natural cycle, if it kills us, it will then settle down. Forests used to just burn, for years, so that to is natural. Paving the surface is alien, life killing, heat producing, and will continue long after we are gone.

We cut cycles short, trees were the long term storage of CO2, so we altered that. Then we produced more.

Cities and roads as heat islands, get a lot hotter than bare dirt. They do not cool off at night, and the heat is stored and increases. It cannot be released by the normal evaporation of water. Compared, the deep shade under a forest is always cooler.

We are producing ground heat, hot air holds more water vapor, the most common greenhouse gas, so the air heats even more.

Co2 and Methane are in there, in parts per million, water vapor is so common it leads to rain with just slight cooling.

So with a million water balls on the table, adding one more for CO2 and Methane, is not going to bring a major change.

The major cycle is ground heat, evaporation of water. There is no doubt that our paving and building produce extra heat. Nor is there any doubt that trees have stored Carbon and were the main sink.

Deserts are hot because there is no water to evaporate. Our cities and roads are artifical deserts. Hot dry air can hold more water vapor, so we get droughts.

CO2 might be good at trapping heat, but it does not produce it. That happens when the sun light falls on the surface.

As a trigger to global warming, our cities and roads cannot be ignored.

What would you recommend? Going back to being hunter gatherers? If so, over 95 percent of us will perish. When you write down a list of the Soon To Be Dead, is your name on it?

ruveyn

I agree, it's technically a fallacy. But this comes back to the point about unreasonable expectations. 99% of the reasoning of sane practical people is filled with things which are actually fallacies. In the pool table example, it is not technically "proven" that the extra balls caused the increased clack frequency. But any sensible person would come to that conclusion.

How quaint. And your point is?

Scientific results or results that claim to be scientific are always under review and re-evaluation particularly when new facts are discovered.

That is how the aether hypothesis was finally falsified.

ruveyn

If manmade CO2 emissions were the culprit, then the rise in atmospheric CO2 in the last fifteen years would have a corresponding and proportional rise in global temperature.

Right?

Why only the last fifteen years?

Why not? A direct relationship is a direct relationship.

Here is the latest NASA figure of temperature change:


Source: Goddard Institute for Space Studies: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/, Hansen, J., Mki. Sato, R. Ruedy, K. Lo, D.W. Lea, and M. Medina-Elizade, 2006: Global temperature change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 103, 14288-14293, doi:10.1073/pnas.0606291103 (updated with most recent data).

I suppose the 5-year running mean is the best response to your request.