Global Cooling

[DimPrawn]

What's more scary are people like sasguru. That really does have me concerned for the future.

[The Lone Gunman]

Not really. I just can't work out if you really are that dim. A 10 year spell is nothing in the big scheme of things - my previous point still applies - variability can occur in any sequence, it just depends what time period you care to look at.

Selective cherry picking of a narrow time periods is a classic con usually perpertrated by politicians, as discussed in Darell Huff's classic "How to lie with Statistics".

This time series is more indicative:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/

If we accept that longer term trends can account for "blips" then surely the trends from the ice cores measured over thousands of years negate any the localised "blip" over the last hundred?
Google for Vostock ice cores.
This data covers 400,000 years of samples and shows a fairly regular patern of warming and cooling with appropriate CO2 levels.
Obviously man made contributions are excaserbating (sp?) the current upward trend of CO2, but there is little evidence that it is the cause of the upward trend in temperature.

[Marina]

Could this be a clue to why global warming isn't happening (yet) in quite the way widely predicted?

Leaving aside direct biological effects, it is expected that ocean acidification in the future will lead to a significant decrease in the burial of carbonate sediments for several centuries, and even the dissolution of existing carbonate sediments. This will cause an elevation of ocean alkalinity, leading to the enhancement of the ocean as a reservoir for CO2 with moderate (and potentially beneficial) implications for climate change as more CO2 leaves the atmosphere for the ocean

[ace00]

If we accept that longer term trends can account for "blips" then surely the trends from the ice cores measured over thousands of years negate any the localised "blip" over the last hundred?
Google for Vostock ice cores.
This data covers 400,000 years of samples and shows a fairly regular patern of warming and cooling with appropriate CO2 levels.
Obviously man made contributions are excaserbating (sp?) the current upward trend of CO2, but there is little evidence that it is the cause of the upward trend in temperature.

These samples show CO2 increase following climate warming:
" Nonetheless, recent work has tended to show that during deglaciations CO2 increases lags temperature increases by 600 +/- 400 years [9 "
There is no evidence for CO2 caused global warming that stands up to scientific scrutiny.

[Moscow Mule]

What I find amusing is that "man" is trying to understand a process that occurs over 1000s of years with data from 200 years (ish).

You can make almost any theory fit the data if you pick and choose what you look at. We'll need to be around a lot longer before it's properly understood.

[Bagpuss]

Although there is a lot of evidence for global warming being partially influenced by man, I do remember being told while at school in the 80s of

a/ the coming Ice Age
b/ Oil running out circa 10 years ago
c/ Computers enabling the 3 day week

maybe the teachers got this information from Space 1999. Or tomorrows world.

[TheBigYinJames]

Although there is a lot of evidence for global warming being partially influenced by man, I do remember being told while at school in the 80s of

a/ the coming Ice Age
b/ Oil running out circa 10 years ago
c/ Computers enabling the 3 day week

maybe the teachers got this information from Space 1999. Or tomorrows world.

The thing about humans is we always do what is easiest first. So digging up oil is cheap and easy so we do that first. When that runs out, we'll grow it/make it/power using some other fuel.

What we don't ever do is switch to the alternatives until we are just about down to the last drop of the old stuff.

[TimberWolf]

What I find amusing is that "man" is trying to understand a process that occurs over 1000s of years with data from 200 years (ish).

You can make almost any theory fit the data if you pick and choose what you look at. We'll need to be around a lot longer before it's properly understood.

Indirect measurements go back billions of years. Here for example are graphs collected by a mathematical physicist. As he says the alarming thing is not the absolute numbers (which have been way bigger in the past) but the rate of change.

[TimberWolf]

The thing about humans is we always do what is easiest first. So digging up oil is cheap and easy so we do that first. When that runs out, we'll grow it/make it/power using some other fuel.

What we don't ever do is switch to the alternatives until we are just about down to the last drop of the old stuff.

It doesn't come much easier than putting a straw into the ground and letting it flow into barrels though.

[Lucy]

Although there is a lot of evidence for global warming being partially influenced by man, I do remember being told while at school in the 80s of

a/ the coming Ice Age
b/ Oil running out circa 10 years ago
c/ Computers enabling the 3 day week

maybe the teachers got this information from Space 1999. Or tomorrows world.

d/ you went to a 'progressive' school