I’m sorry Brian, but your just rehashing all those claims made by fossil fuel supporters and climate change deniers for the last 40 years. They are tired, old arguments that have been debunked repeatedly but just keep popping their heads up when people repeat and repeat them. It’s like a game of whack a mole. If you really have an open mind, you should educate yourself as to the real issues and possible solutions from properly peer reviewed sources. All the information is out there and it’s overwhelmingly going in one direction.
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Obv if you’re busy chanting drill baby drill with your fingers in your ears and your eyes shut all the information won’t make a whit of difference.
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It would not have mattered - those would be weather, which is different from climate.
As @hairbear there is evidence supporting a connection between atmospheric CO2 concentration and climate. You just need to go and look for it with an open mind.
Let’s start with “do you agree that weather patterns have shifted considerably in the last 50 years and that there is reliable data to show warming of both the seas and atmosphere?”
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What evidence can any individual, institution, body or government provide to support claims that temperature level pattern, sea levels etc. are changing irreversibly in one particular catastrophic direction when data and their records are non-existent in a form that show short-term variations (data resolution) prior to year c. 1850? Alarmist claims are constantly being stirred-up on climatic variations over such short-term variations. It is easy and convenient for the less informed and supporters of climate alarmism to cast dismissive sounds without really addressing legitimate challenges to alarmist claims.
In this dinner party-type forum I really didn’t wish to get into much scientific detail, beyond broad principles, issues and just a few references to temperature and times. But, I read from the comments rebukes and dismissals about my highlighted points, and most disparagingly, that I should educate myself because I’m repeating just tired and old refrains from the fossil fuel industry supporting fraternity; all this without addressing core arguments that I have presented. I should add that I have been following the science and politics of this subject for a decade since I completed my postgraduate studies in renewable energies and energy management.
A comprehensive empirical evaluation has been completed of the relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration and surface temperature using high sample frequency proxy temperature and CO2 measurements over a period spanning 522 million years before present (Phanerozoic period). The Harvard reference for a peer reviewed paper on this is Davis, W.J. 2017. The relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and global temperature for the last 425 million years. Climate 5: 76; doi: 10.3390/cli5040076.
The striking observation from the investigation is the level of dissociation and even antiphasic relationship between CO2 and global average surface temperatures. The author points, as example, to the CO2 peak near 415 My, which is neighbouring a temperature trough. Similarly, a CO2 concentration near 285 My is coincident with a temperature trough at 280 My. Still not convinced? A CO2 concentration at 200 My coincides with a very prolonged and rapid cooling period. The author asserts that a weak but discernible negative correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and surface temperature is evident over the very substantial period of analysis.
It is unambiguous from the linear time series chart that the earth has been on an irrefutable cooling trend, with some punctuations of warming, over the 522 million years. The most dramatic cooling appears to be within the last 1 My. @hairbear comments that information unambiguously shows that information is going in one directions: this undisputable cooling trend is one such item of information. The chart highlights a point raised in one of my earlier posts, that climatic variations over a 270, or even 2,000 year time frame is utterly insignificant, and represents merely data noise.
Davis further concludes that 95% of the variance in surface temperature is attributed to unidentified variables that are beyond atmospheric CO2. Davis comments on the discussion on the lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature by aptly reminding one that “correlation does not imply causality [something I alluded to in one of my earlier posts}, but the absence of correlation proves conclusively the absence of causality”.
Although the period under study predates the existence of human existence, we should focus on what is being considered: the relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration and global mean surface temperature. Whether or not CO2 is resultant from human activity is utterly irrelevant, as there is no difference in the chemical composition of the the gas between the different emission sources.
I could not find any reports or features on this study or the peer reviewed paper on popular scientific publications or our media; this speaks volumes in itself.
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The many scientific disciplines of climatology has sadly evolved into a monster, where scientific method has been substituted by ideology, politics, personal & business interests. Climate alarmism has replaced scientific rigour, and wittingly, or unwittingly in some circumstances, feeds these interests.
Climate science has to an extent become a religion, hence the vilification term “climate denier” used to brand any one, body or institute that dares to ask or challenge the orthodoxy. All this in age of enlightenment, where we are to believe that debate and discourse has replaced superstition, dogma and religious suppression.
Regarding the debunking of the few points that I have raised, I have not been able to find such conclusive explanations.
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Indeed. We’ve reached the end of rational debate: identity, hurt feelings and who shouts the loudest is the only thing that’s important.
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I used these years as quick examples; I should have taken random periods. Let’s consider 30 year periods, which is a contemporary European meteorological institute climate period. My point was that data is not available, through records or by proxy, that would reveal prolonged heat, drought, wind, glacier growth/regression etc. over the random periods 948-978 and 1361-1391. So, your invitation to the forum group to comment on supposed climatic shift in the last 50 years does not contribute to our debate.
You raise an interesting distinction between weather and climate. Climate patterns are indisputably defined over longer periods, but I am arguing that even the 30 year convention is still two, three or many more orders of magnitude too short. Having established that climate is defined over some longer period than a year, commercial scientific publications and the media have been over the last 4-decades almost invariably been framed on individual day, week or yearly events as evidence of climate variation. Sadly, it is on this event alarmism reporting that the general public, and even the better informed and intelligent, disproportionately base their understanding.
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NO WE HAVEN’T!
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Make it 100 or 200 years if you feel that is more relevant.
Sea level measurement and patterns is a very complex matter that involves, among other disciplines, geological aspects. It is not the trivial endeavour that our media and popular publications would wish one to believe. For instance, where sea level may be observed to rise in one or more locations, this must be discounted among corresponding falls elsewhere on the globe. Sea level variations didn’t start in post industrial revolution years; indeed, there are accounts of land and habitation loss to sea rises from long before coal, oil and gas extraction became developed.
Your reference to the restoration of the ozone layer following a ban or control on ozone depleting gases is a valid one. This was one example of a genuine environmental issue that appears to have been successfully identified and rectified; it will take a considerable lapse of time to know whether measures have been successful.
However, your claim that the possible long-term success of ozone depletion abatement and restoration will engender mankind with the capability to reverse a supposed trend change on an impossibly complex and little understood system is perplexing.
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Still much too short.
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So there’s really no point having a discussion. Not that there was anyway as I can see your mind is set on this issue.
I think we’ve established that Brian doesn’t think there is a problem and even if there is that it is not caused by mankind’s outpouring of CO2 into the atmosphere.
We will just have to agree to differ.
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Isn’t it clear, though, that what’s unusual about the last two hundred years is the level of industrialisation, the quantity and type of novel emissions?
If that is so on this subject of climate, why do we not hear the arguments and opposing views of the the many scientists who do not confer, or are sceptical, of the orthodox climate claims? Many scientists, often individuals in the 80s, have been studying & researching the CO2 molecule and climatology for much of their professional life. They are not being featured or even referenced on our broadcast and printed media? Instead, we have grown accustomed to the pontification from the likes of the opportunists Al Gore, Bill Gates, and the Hollywood acting class.
With no real debate being available to the masses, and the branding of alarmism sceptics, like myself, as “Climate Deniers”, how do you think the mass public or governmental legislators stand a chance of becoming informed; how are the public supposed to decide whether to make protest or challenge governmental policy that severely impacts living costs, freedoms etc?
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Considered over this very, very short period of climate history, the rise in CO2 is small compared to what it has been over at least several hundred million years; the chart I posted clearly shows this. Looking at what is happening over 270 years is comparable to judging the life experience, personality etc. of an 80 year old person by what they do in a few minutes of time.
In your observation, you are conflating correlation with causation, a common mistake; the peer reviewed paper to which I referred earlier makes reference to this.
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It isn’t closed; as someone with an engineering and scientific background, my understanding is based on fact, not beliefs, mantra or propaganda. I have read no evidence on this discussion that would change my understanding on the issue.
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Whoosh!
That’s the sound of a (not very good) joke going over your head.
Do I understand correctly that you are a climate change denier @BrianGerard ?
My claim is that there is no evidence to support the supposition that mankind is the cause of a claimed catastrophic change to climate patterns through its CO2 generation, or that any climatic abnormality even exists.
More generally, there is ample evidence over a meaningful period of climatic history that demonstrates CO2 is not the control mechanism of surface temperatures. Finally, CO2 plays a relatively minor role in retaining solar energy on earth.
I agree that we will have to agree to differ.
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