to continue from the article ...

The solution: "Eventually it'll become damned clear that the Earth is warming and the warming is beyond anything we have experienced in millions of years, and people will have to admit..." He stopped and laughed.

"Well, I suppose they could say God is burning us up."

The basic physics of anthropogenic - manmade - global warming has been clear for more than a century, since researchers proved that carbon dioxide traps heat. Others later showed CO2 was building up in the atmosphere from the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. Weather stations then filled in the rest: Temperatures were rising.

"As a physicist, putting CO2 into the air is good enough for me. It's the physics that convinces me," said veteran Cambridge University researcher Liz Morris. But she said work must go on to refine climate data and computer climate models, "to convince the deeply reluctant organizers of this world."

The reluctance to rein in carbon emissions revealed itself early on.

In the 1980s, as scientists studied Greenland's buried ice for clues to past climate, upgraded their computer models peering into the future, and improved global temperature analyses, the fossil-fuel industries were mobilizing for a campaign to question the science.

By 1988, NASA climatologist James Hansen could appear before a U.S. Senate committee and warn that global warming had begun, a dramatic announcement later confirmed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a new, U.N.-sponsored network of hundreds of international scientists.

But when Hansen was called back to testify in 1989, the White House of President George H.W. Bush edited this government scientist's remarks to water down his conclusions, and Hansen declined to appear.

That was the year U.S. oil and coal interests formed the Global Climate Coalition to combat efforts to shift economies away from their products. Britain's Royal Society and other researchers later determined that oil giant Exxon disbursed millions of dollars annually to think tanks and a handful of supposed experts to sow doubt about the facts.

In 1997, two years after the IPCC declared the "balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate," the world's nations gathered in Kyoto, Japan, to try to do something about it. The naysayers were there as well.

"The statement that we'll have continued warming with an increase in CO2 is opinion, not fact," oil executive William F. O'Keefe of the Global Climate Coalition insisted to reporters in Kyoto.

The late Bert Bolin, then IPCC chief, despaired.

"I'm not really surprised at the political reaction," the Swedish climatologist told The Associated Press. "I am surprised at the way some of the scientific findings have been rejected in an unscientific manner."

In fact, a document emerged years later showing that the industry coalition's own scientific team had quietly advised it that the basic science of global warming was indisputable.

Kyoto's final agreement called for limited rollbacks in greenhouse emissions. The United States didn't even join in that. And by 2000, the CO2 built up in the atmosphere to 369 parts per million - just 4 ppm less than Broecker predicted - compared with 280 ppm before the industrial revolution.

here is an interesting article I found from physorg

Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that manmade greenhouse gases are warming the planet, accelerating the melt of Greenland's ice, and yet resistance to the idea appears to have hardened among many Americans. Why? "The desire to disbelieve deepens as the scale of the threat grows," concludes one scholar who has studied the phenomenon. Analysts now see climate as another battleground in America's left-right "culture wars."

"I don't think there were any newspaper articles about it or anything like that," the author recalls.

But the headline on the 1975 report was bold: "Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" And this article that coined the term may have marked the last time a mention of "global warming" didn't set off an instant outcry of angry denial.

In the paper, Columbia University geoscientist Wally Broecker calculated how much carbon dioxide would accumulate in the atmosphere in the coming 35 years, and how temperatures consequently would rise. His numbers have proven almost dead-on correct. Meanwhile, other powerful evidence poured in over those decades, showing the "greenhouse effect" is real and is happening. And yet resistance to the idea among many in the U.S. appears to have hardened.

What's going on?

"The desire to disbelieve deepens as the scale of the threat grows," concludes economist-ethicist Clive Hamilton.

He and others who track what they call "denialism" find that its nature is changing in America, last redoubt of climate naysayers. It has taken on a more partisan, ideological tone. Polls find a widening Republican-Democratic gap on climate. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry even accuses climate scientists of lying for money. Global warming looms as a debatable question in yet another U.S. election campaign.

From his big-windowed office overlooking the wooded campus of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., Broecker has observed this deepening of the desire to disbelieve.

"The opposition by the Republicans has gotten stronger and stronger," the 79-year-old "grandfather of climate science" said in an interview. "But, of course, the push by the Democrats has become stronger and stronger, and as it has become a more important issue, it has become more polarized."

Ninety-eight percent of the world's climate scientists say manmade global warming caused by CO2 is happing ...
and yet you still have deniers," observed former U.S. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert,
a New York Republican who chaired the House's science committee.

Last May the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences,
arm of an institution that once persecuted Galileo for his scientific findings,
pronounced on manmade global warming caused by CO2 --- It's happening.
Said the pope's scientific advisers, "We must protect the habitat that sustains us."

_In this July 15, 2011 photo, atop roughly two miles of ice, technician Marie McLane launches a data-transmitting weather balloon at Summit Station, a remote research site operated by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and situated 10,500 feet above sea level, on top of the Greenland ice sheet. Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that manmade greenhouse gases are warming the planet, accelerating the melt of Greenland's ice, and yet resistance to the idea appears to have hardened among many Americans. Why? "The desire to disbelieve deepens as the scale of the threat grows," concludes one scholar who has studied the phenomenon. Analysts now see climate as another battleground in America's left-right "culture wars."

Gary,

I'm sorry but I find your random comments rather difficult to follow and even more difficult to try to understand what reality you're believing...

Are you just selectively seizing upon any unconnected comment to back up your wishes?

So, to try to untangle your comments here:

... ps: I'm interested to see if you can see the difference between your chart for 550 million years ago and now. An obvious hint is that you've missed a little something off your chart...

I was going to leave this to allow a little further research and ripost, especially concerning the very well misused denialist abuse of two separate charts that have been conveniently combined from over ten years ago...

Turns out that very chart is so famous that a certain very famous denialist star has used it for one of his 'classic' presentations. Excellent stuff!

This demonstrates the case far better than a few random typings from myself:

Youtube: Monckton ... Correlations and Himalayan glaciers


All very gently presented.

Comments welcomed,

Did you see the large error in your video?
http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~ajs/2001/Feb/qn020100182.pdf
Brener re CCM-3:

For the effect of changing paleogeography on the temperature of weathering, rather than use the results of our CCM-3 modeling here, we rely on the earlier data of Otto-Bliesner (1995). Her results are for flat, ice-free continents, computed at several times over the Phanerozoic, which provide a first-order guide to changes in land temperature as a result of changes in continental size and position. This approach allows for the exclusion of glacial and periglacial land areas, which affect global mean land temperature, but which exhibit very little chemical weathering.

Thanks for the direct reference. It allows us to at least agree on what we are disagreeing about ;-)

To put that into understandable English:

You're taking an update from over 10 years ago for an experimental model developed about 20 years ago. We've moved on since then. Computers have advanced significantly since then to allow greater detail and accuracy to the modelling. So why linger with such old research that has since been developed further?

Modelling assumptions were made to gain a rough approximation and to show the different effects on CO2 concentration between glaciated and non-glaciated conditions. That is, an experimental comparison is made. Nothing is said that it was or was not glaciated in reality.

Note that glaciation reduces the rate of reduction of CO2 by protecting the land from weathering.

And so?...

You video:

Snowball earth.

OOPS! To get the result from the model that is wanted -- note CCM-3, the subject of the paper, is a model not observed data -- you must assume no glaciation and no snow. You video assumes a 100% ice covered world to start. Something isn't matching here.

If you read the paper, that section is about an experiment with the model to make a comparison against other data.

Meanwhile, there is real world physical geology which shows the earth was completely covered by ice. The physical discoveries, all around our planet, led to a long running scientific controversy as to how earth, in such a cold frozen and highly reflective condition, could ever possibly warm up for life to thrive. The steady increase in CO2 and methane from volcanoes saved our planet by generating a greenhouse that melted the glacias and generated a hot-house that promoted the age of the dinosaurs.

So on that count, I'm wrong... What mankind is doing now is actually the SECOND time that increasing CO2 has FORCED rapid climate change. However, I can still stand by the claim that such a forcing has never before been done so rapidly. Less than one century as opposed to spanning a few million years.

BTW your video starts cold, but the data on the chart starts hot. Something else isn't matching here.

Wait a second, your video uses a conclusion from a model, not observed data, to claim that CO2 and temperature track. Of course they track. That was the assumption made in building the model! (Circular logic)

You're just making things up. Watch the video again...

With strong external influences, then CO2 acts as a feedback to help things along. Only more recently for where there are no other strong changing forces, does CO2 determine/control our global temperature.

And our industry and land use is driving the increase in CO2 concentration ever faster.

As for suggested future carbon cycle modelling work, besides the usual plea for more data from all sources, there is a special need, in both carbon cycle and climate modelling, to consider only those land areas that have sufficient rain and are sufficiently warm to exhibit appreciable chemical weathering. This entails closer interaction between GCM models and carbon cycle models, with an attempt to look at weathering on a paleogeographic, not just global, basis. In addition, because of the importance of plants to weathering, many more experimental studies under natural conditions are needed to determine how much different plants accelerate weathering and how the plants respond to change in atmospheric CO2

Translation, we know we don't have enough data to draw a conclusion.

Conclusion, you are NOT reading the science. You are playing a very good game of quoting conveniently old results out of context to play silly unconnected games.


So why are you lingering over 550 million years ago? Considering the timescale, it is remarkable we have as much information as we do have. Note that time period is waaaaaay before the Creationists can admit to any existence at all...

Oooooops! You a Creationist?

Nice try but, have you nothing more recent or more applicable?



Looking to the here and now (and not old views from 20 years ago), our industry is converting vast volumes of O2 to CO2, changing the atmosphere, and quickly cooking us. That is being directly measured. No other big forces have been found to have any bearing on that.

I guess the fossil fuels industry and farming are the biggest political forces... Meanwhile, our planet is damned ever more quickly.


All on our only planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

And so for the game of politics and religion:

to conclude from the article ...

... In the face of years of scientific findings and growing impacts, the doubters persist. They ignore long-term trends and seize on insignificant year-to-year blips in data to claim all is well. They focus on minor mistakes in thousands of pages of peer-reviewed studies to claim all is wrong. And they carom from one explanation to another for today's warming Earth: jet contrails, sunspots, cosmic rays, natural cycles.

... Boehlert, the veteran Republican congressman, noted that "high-profile people with an `R' after their name, like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, are saying it's all fiction. Pooh-poohing the science of climate change feeds into their basic narrative that all government is bad."

... "This is building toward a point where the falsehoods of climate denial will be unacceptable as a basis for policy much longer," Gore said. "As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, `How long? Not long.'"

Even Wally Broecker's jest - that deniers could blame God - may not be an option for long.

Last May the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, arm of an institution that once persecuted Galileo for his scientific findings, pronounced on manmade global warming caused by CO2 --- It's happening It's happening.

Said the pope's scientific advisers, "We must protect the habitat that sustains us."

Indeed in prayer: May those political and industrial tipping points be reached "not long" from now whilst we have some sensible options still available...


All on our only planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Ninety-eight percent of the world's climate scientists say manmade global warming caused by CO2 is happing ...

100% of scientists held that the earth was flat and the center of the universe, that there was nothing like plate tectonics, the the universe was unchanging and steady, that there was an either that transmitted light, that planets orbited around epicycles ...

---

Ninety-eight percent of the world's climate scientists say manmade global warming caused by CO2 is happing ...

100% of scientists held that the earth was flat and the center of the universe, that there was nothing like plate tectonics, the the universe was unchanging and steady, that there was an either that transmitted light, that planets orbited around epicycles ...

Scientists and mathematicans have known the earth was a Spheroid from at least Ancient Greek times 200BC, and made calculations of the diameter, the tilt and the distance to the sun. AFAIK only religions have claimed otherwise.

I only ask one question to skeptics and non-believers of climate change. If (and that can be as big or small as you want) it is proved climate change is man made when do we start or when should we have started doing something about it?

Byron Leigh Hatch @ team Carl Sagan and WinterKnight:

Thanks for proving the point that 100% of scientists thought the planet flat. I actually expected a post of two saying it hasn't been so for a while. Thanks for proving my faith in humanity.

All:

But can you warmists see the single datum you provide from the top of an active volcano on CO2? Do you not see that it is exponential? Can you not deduce what correlates to that exponential?

5% or 10% cuts don't stop exponential growth. They might get a couple more years but in reality that is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Are you willing to talk about cutting the exponential factor, or are you warmists no different than what you call a denier as you deny the exponential and claim that linear cuts are enough?

I note that every climate scientist, as opposed to climate warmnig priest, ends every one of their papers with a call for more independent data. That is the key, even they know that too much of their work hinges on a single data set in places.

---

(We're unlikely to get as far as the temperatures on Venus, but we can certainly make a drastic mess of the entire ecosphere... Including our own demise.)

As a slight aside here, I remember a teacher at primary school saying that due to the sun cooling down, Venus is like earth was, and Mars is like earth will be. The beliefs of 60 years ago!!!

Yup. In the 70's it was global cooling, now, if you notice, it is NOT global warming, because, well, er an inconvenient truth is that it is now Climate Change. So, if we warm up, or cool down, it's all mankind's fault anyway and nobody knows for sure.

Faith does not make science.


"Monster, I do smell all horse piss, at which my nose is in great indignation."

Kind regards,

Andy

---

I agree, what we need is long haul scientific data based on planet wide observations with at least as much depth as we've had for the past 10 or 20 years --- that data needs to span at least 100 years.

Let us not do anything (rash or not) until that point is arrived some 4 score years from now.

After all, one thing we do know, doing nothing is a lot less expensive. Besides, the US, India and China have all that coal -- can't waste that.

Here we go again:

A SINGLE DATA SET

Figure 1: Atmospheric CO2 levels (Green is Law Dome ice core, Blue is Mauna Loa, Hawaii) and Cumulative CO2 emissions (CDIAC).

Taken from the top of an active volcano!

This is what warmists have to use to prove their point. Single datum's prove nothing!

Have they set up a station where the ice cores were taken? Have they used data from that station to show the gas caught in the ice matches the CO2 in the air at the time it becomes trapped? Have they shown there is no diffusion or other chemistry taking place in the ice over time? Of course not. If they did, it might make their single datum fall apart and they would be out their cushy job!

---

At the corporate (and state corporate) level, doing nothing to address this is much less expensive for the corporations and state corporations at least within the corporate time horizon. (Quarters and years, not decades or longer).

It is interesting that some of the same folks who see in government debt a fearful legacy for the next generation have absolutely no problem with the environmental debt being left for the next generation. The internal logic is .. interesting.

Industrial pollution of our skies and oceans is at a far greater level than it has ever been, and there has been little political will to deal with it, at least not until now in the UK.

That's a gee-whiz graph which I teach my statistics students is unethical. Go re-plot it and start the Y axis at zero; then tell me what you are trying to convey and what conclusion I should draw and what action you are going to take in your own life.

Right, y scale is everything, make it 0 to 10000 -- see, nothing is going on.

Do that for heart rates too -- 0 to 1000 -- see, we are all the same.

Heck, we could have a graph, death caused by conflict 1900 - 2010 -- Zero to 150 Million. What a peaceful world we live in.

The monthly variation is half of the four year gain. What do I and you conclude from that. There must be millions of people sneaking on and off the planet periodically to account for human causation of CO-2. I fail to see the warming data in the graph; so how do we conclude that man is causing global warming ?

I guess that given a Normal Distribution of intelligence, half of all people are below average. Ne pas ?

So now it is a three year time scale. Okay, explain how CO2 was over 100 times higher in the past, but the planet didn't turn into Venus? It seems the only way a warmist can is to invoke divine intervention.

---

Gary, I suppose the answer is, it's more complicated than that. There is a human activity component to things - to deny that is to deny a fair body of evidence. There is also a component not related to human activity - to deny that is to deny a fair body of evidence.

When folks develop either/or arguments, I suspect the end result is embarrassment.

That is a typical graph deliberately designed to distort the figures to a gullible public. A quick first glance looks like the CO2 has doubled, in fact the average level has only increased by 2% over the last 5 years.

Exactly.

OK, any regularly observed increase in CO2 levels is not to be welcomed, but it is not quite so dire as some would have us believe. It is usual political practice to vastly overstate your case with lurid claims, in the belief that more of it will stick, and the warmists are no different.

However on the other side of the coin, if that CO2 trend carries on, then it will be 50% higher in 125 years time. It takes time to convince the world that there is a long term problem, so starting to bang the drum now is probably a good move. As more Nations industrialise, what will be more important is the rate of increase, i.e. if the graph goes exponential. Then we start worrying.

Agreed.

Is the planet warming? Seems so. AGW? Don't think anyone knows for sure, yet.
Presentation of graphs like the above is disgraceful, for the reasons stated in the posts below it. It is because of downright misleading information such as that that I begin to doubt everything they say.
You know, for me the most annoying thing about the Warmist cause if their Holier tha Thou attitude. Question the evidence, and you are of course:
a)A knuckle dragging Troglodite.
b)Paid for by Big Oil.
c)Both of the above.
Their evidence cannot, must not be questiond or you will be humiliated.(I almost wrote "terminated" :-))
While I still have a questioning nature, I will not fall into line with this new evangelism/fad. Makes me wonder what happened to all the Lefties in the UK when the Labour party slung them out. Where did they go?

Kind regards,

Andy

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Makes me wonder what happened to all the Lefties in the UK when the Labour party slung them out. Where did they go?

They went and sat on top of volcanoes measuring CO2......

---

The Kite Fliers

--------------------
Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.

Makes me wonder what happened to all the Lefties in the UK when the Labour party slung them out. Where did they go?

They went and sat on top of volcanoes measuring CO2......

Aha! it seems so!
Ps, sorry about the typo's in my previous post. I was spitting feathers. Some young person had recently come to my door trying to convince me that I should donate to the RSPB because of man made global warming. Glazed eyes, reading from a script, totally unable to comprehend what He/She/It was actually saying, and when challenged on sources, did a fantastic goldfish impersonation.
The answer I had was "But the RSPB say so."
See how these people work?

Get 'em young.

Get your cash.

Indoctrination, pure and simple.

Kind Regards,

Andy

---