Still confused about climate change...

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During the Holocene Climatic Optimum, the temperatures are estimated to have been about 2C higher than now. Presumably, the sea ice at the North Pole was far less than today.

So why aren't the polar bears extinct already?

I'm not sure where you get those ideas. The reality is that ice ages are not the normal condition for this planet. It has spent far more time without ice than with ice.

Furthermore, it hardly defies anything the earth has already seen. The temperature changes of the Younger Dryas were far more extreme than anything projected from Global Warming. Not only that, the more usual temperatures of this planet are considerably higher than Global Warming.



By the way, no matter what happens today, this planet is probably going to be pretty much uninhabitable a billion years from now. Imagine how cold it will get during the night and how hot in the daytime during a day that is pretty much as long as one of our current months.

Don't worry. If it doesn't work, there are pills which can help.

Thanks.

Now if I can stop laughing.

CO2 by itself does not account for the temperature increases observed.

There is no doubt that CO2 is "green house" gas. This has been known since late in the 19 th century. Models based on CO2 alone do not account for observed temperature changes in the atmosphere or the oceans.

ruveyn

Michael Chricton - Aliens Cause Global Warming

The author's biases there...

He sets up several examples of scientists making good or bad predictions, and then says "global warming is like these" without providing much evidence at all to support his claim.

He says we need independent monitoring of global temperatures to verify projections. That is happening, and the results we are seeing are consistent with the models from the 90s. We're also seeing biological responses to changing temperatures.

Whilst the history bit of the article was enlightening reading, the bit about global warming seemed to have little or no grounding in fact.

His point about extrapolations is a good one, although the examples he gives aren't great - physical systems are more predictable than sociological ones. We can accurately predict the position of the moon hundreds of years into the future. There is more chaos in the climactic system, but we can still predict long term trends. For example, I will happily bet someone that the 1st of August will be warmer in Houston, Texas than in Melbourne, Australia, in three out of five years in any given five-year period over the next fifty years.

Did not NOAA, NASA, and JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency) find separately that 2014 was the hottest year on record? Didn't they also find that most of the warmest years on record came after the year 2000?

It's true that much of the eastern U.S. had a cold winter, but that does not really negate taking account all the temperatures around the world and seeing that the world has still been warming.

I remember posting about this on a weather forum, which thread got me banned, and I first posted NOAA and NASA, but just about every member there treated it as a hoax. I then showed them the JMA data, which was basically the SAMA as NOAA and NASA, and they were like, "What we're supposed to believe it's happening just because JMA said so?" What I was actually demonstrating actually went over those asinine people's heads.

I wasn't saying the the JMA was a source to behold every moment; instead, I was SHOWING that multiple sources were converging around the same conclusion. When weather models, such as the GFS, the NAM, and the ECMWF, all converge, they're quite happy to find that means what they're showing is likeliest to be true. How ironic that they don't give the same benefit to climate data sources.

They were, therefore, a joke of a science forum and I am glad to be banned from there.

Yes, some believe they found the hottest year on record after skewing data picked from the most noisy layer of the atmosphere in the most favourable direction, and the margin of error is double that of the alleged signal. Meanwhile, more accurate satellite measurements are showing a cooling trend since 1998. Climate change is nonetheless a great topic in terms of teaching people scientific methodology and sound scepticism. As such it has probably done more good than harm, but there are still crackpots out there who belive the world is coming to an end due to emissions of a harmless gas. We shouldn't be too harsh on them, but it is sometimes fun to wind them up and watch them go.

Nope! The current satellite data shows that we continue to warm. "Cooling trend" is only a lie. But since you believe that NASA, American Meteorological Society and EVERY source of legitimate scientific data are part of a conspiracy.... Well one cannot debate a conspiracy enthusiast!

Even the IPCC admits that there is a large pause in Global Warming. That doesn't mean that it has stopped, but that the rate has slowed down dramatically.

Among scientists, there is disagreement as to the reason as well as to how long it will continue. Among non-scientist true believers, the pause doesn't seem to be acknowledged at much all.

Please stop lying. There is no disagreement among scientists about the reality of AGW.
Well OK there is that 3% that are bought and paid for by the petrochemical industry.

Surely, someone who supposedly teaches philosophy is sufficiently capable of parsing sentences and understanding them. Recognizing a pause in the rate of warming does not, in any way, negate any consensus that man is at least partially responsible for global warming.

Sheesh!

There has been no pause in global warming. Stop lying.

First, I said that the pause is in the rate of warming. There is apparently a very slight warming at the moment, but not much.

As far as whether there is a pause or not, I guess that you and other non-scientists are the world's greatest source of information on the subject? It figures. You claim to have science on your side when you are really just making it up as you go. When science agrees, then that is fine with you, but if it doesn't, then you just make it up.

The fact remains that climate scientists are very aware of a large pause in the warming and are scrambling to try to explain it. Their general argument seems to be that it is a natural variation that will soon reverse itself.

For example, one potential explanation is discussed briefly in http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2015/02/26/the-pause-in-global-warming-is-finally-explained/:

Of course, you will have no problem ignoring the science and concentrate on theatrical debating tricks.