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jshell wrote: I know Merrick will give me 100 links to prove AGW
I've done that, repeatedly, because authoritative sources of information validate a position.
jshell wrote: but all that's been proven is that we are warming.
More has been proven than that. We are warming faster than at any time for many millennia, that the global average temperature is higher than at any point for many millennia, and that this rise is exactly in line with what we'd expect given the consensus about the effect of greenhouse gases and the addition of them to the atmosphere, mostly from burning fossil fuels.
jshell wrote: The IPCC is a political organisation who's stated purpose is to look at the effects of AGW. It's not there to look at 'if' there is AGW, it takes AGW as a given.
It's there to collate all the available reliable evidence so there can be a credible source of information. This is not the same as trying to enforce a perspective; where there is little evidence for an impact, or it is less than expected, they say so. Additionally, as it's a group process, it tends to dilute its conclusions in order to ensure consensus.
jshell wrote: they have been proven wrong, time and time again with many embarrasing retractions.
There have been numerous mistakes, which is not unlikely in documents thousands of pages long that, in turn, rely on thousands of inputs. the difference between the IPCC and the denialists is that the IPCC acknowledge mistakes and correct them. This is common in scientific endeavour.
And here we come to the stuff that reveals you as a denier. You keep repeating stuff that has been disproven.
In an exchange on this subject last year, you said it was unproven that CO2 affects global temperature.
So I gave you a link that shows how to prove CO2's greenhouse properties, with stuff you can find in your kitchen, in terms understandable by under-10s
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8394168.stm
Unless you have some theory as to why CO2 behaves differently in the atmosphere, I'd have thought that showed you.
This is, as Grufty Jim's explained on this thread, a piece of established uncontroversial climate science that pre-dates anyone's ideas about climate change.
And yet now you're saying
jshell wrote: there is no hard, proveable, repeatable evidence that Global Warming is caused by CO2.
jshell wrote: I cannot prove the links above are true, can you prove yours? I'm no scientist or climatologist
I'm not a scientist of climatologist either. But neither am I an engineer. If there were a hundred engineers saying a bridge was unsafe and one or two saying I should cross it, I'd not start walking.
There is a vast swathe of reliable science out there - stuff that's been peer-reviewed, subjected to the scrutiny of those whose work reinforces or challenges it - and it all points one way. Thousands of published papers. Show me one that says anthropogenic climate change isn't happening. Just one.
jshell wrote: A gas that we cannot see, cannot really distinguish
No, you're just wrong. Once again. We can readily distinguish it, which is why you can buy it in canisters, and why we're able to give readings of its presence down to a single part per million.
jshell wrote: cannot prove it's knock-on effects for many, many years
Yes we can. We're already seeing changes, such as rainfall patterns changing in eastern Africa or flood frequency increasing in Bangladesh, that are exactly in line with what was predicted.
jshell wrote: But eh planet warms and cools in cycles, but this is DIFFERENT!
Yes it is. As I explained to you last year:
The CO2 emitted from natural sources has been balanced by the amount absorbed (largely by plants and oceans). Thus, the amount in the atmosphere remained stable since the end of the ice age 10,000 years ago (between 260 and 280 parts per million).
Since the beginning of industrial times 200 years ago we have burned a lot of fossil fuels (emitting CO2) and cut down a lot of forests (preventing emissions being absorbed). Now CO2 is at 387 parts per million - an increase of nearly 40% - and the rate of emission is rising fast.
It's like overspending your income by 5 percent a month, and keeping upping it even as your overdraft level decreases. Now imagine your rate of overspend is increasing all the time. What would your bank account look like in 20 years?
jshell wrote: Not adapt to a few degC warmer
Do you understand what that's saying? At even 3 degrees increase - the middle of what's projected for this century - we're looking at massive crop failures, meaning mass starvation, tropical diseases spreading into new territories, glacier melt accelerating that dries the lands that feed huge swathes of humanity.
How would you say we 'adapt' to that? and would it be easier than switching to a low-carbon society that is entirely possible?
jshell wrote: the planet is warming as expected, been warmer before: MWP
No, you're just wrong. The best we can tell from this remived point in time is that it was warm then but not as warm as now.
jshell wrote: although the IPCC have tried to cover it over
No, you're just wrong, again. The IPCC are very clear about the MWP and what we know about it.
jshell wrote: They've tried to remove the Mediaeval Warming period from the records to cover it
Where is there any credible suggestion that the IPCC (or whoever you mean by 'they') tried to remove the MWP from the records?
jshell wrote: There are data published by 859 individual scientists from 511 separate research institutions in 43 different countries (and counting) to support the MWP being warmer than today.
I can find you more that say there's no link between smoking and cancer, or between HIV and AIDS. The question is not whether we can find scientists who say something but how robust their evidence is. Where's the peer-reviewed papers that say MWP was warmer?
jshell wrote: what comes first: CO2 or temperature? Records show that actually CO2 rises follow temperature rises and has done since time immemorial.
You said this last year too, but in less equivocal terms then - - "CO2 follows temp, not temp following CO2", and I said:
Temperature and CO2 levels rise in tandem; they tend to feed one another. Warmer temperatures lead to less sea ice, melting permafrost, forests drying out. Less sea ice means the matter on the ocean floor warms (releasing methane), permafrost melts (releasing methane), dead forests burn (releasing their carbon), this increases the greenhouse effect, leading to warmer temperatures, leading to greater emissions, etc.
It's called 'positive feedback', and the tipping point for it to start feeding itself in a way we cannot stop is widely held at 2 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. This is why the carbon cuts made now are so important.
jshell wrote: there's +ve feedback! Say what? Oh, that's a good one, seems to fit
Yes, it seems to fit the evidence presented. It's a common trait among things that are happening.
jshell wrote: if they can prove it! I don't think they can.
You're simply wrong, and I suggest you read what the IPCC say before pronouncing on what they've proven.
Are you really saying that less polar ice - replacing vast areas of white area with dark - won't affect the earth's reflective ability? (Again, the answer is provable with stuff you find at home to the under-10s).
Are you really saying that heating permafrost peat bogs won't - as is already being observed - make them melt then dry? And that drying won't make them decay, releasing their carbon? (Again, ditto, with a lump of peat).
The permafrost of the West Siberian peat bog, which began melting five years ago, contains carbon equivalent to over 70 years of human carbon emissions.
Is it rally that hard to understand how that works?
jshell wrote: When CO2 levels have risen in the past, why did the cycle not run away with itself and cook the planet?
Some of the causes - solar activity, changes in the earth's orbit, etc - may have abated. Some of the feedbacks triggered run their course. This time we're continually adding to the CO2 on top of it all.
jshell wrote: Did we achieve equilibrium and the planet recover?
Yes, if you mean 'we' in the sense of the whole planet. But if you mean 'we' in the sense of humans (had we be around then) then the answer's no.
The volcanic eruptions that ended the Permian period 250 million years ago were a massive outpouring of CO2 that caused a six degree increase in temperature. The vast majority of specied were wiped out, and the planet was uninhabitable to anything like humans for tens of millions of years.
'Save the planet' is the most ludicrous slogan ever conceived. The planet will survive us all perfectly well. It can change temperature and sea level wildly, and one form of life will give way to another. However, the species presently here - including us - are reliant on it staying within a pretty narrow set of parameters. So to go and fuck with that when we have other options is as stupid an idea as we could have.
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