Electric Monk

I have little trouble with deists who believe that there was an initial prime mover, for our universe, but those who claim increasingly complex and personal interactions between their deity and the universe need to offer me convincing evidence. So far none has been forthcoming.

Thanks for the quick reply, you folks have been busy this evening. For example, if I believe that everyone else is a figment of my imagination, and this belief helps me in my daily life,and makes me feel better about myself, then it is a rational belief? (This equates to belief in a deity helping me with anger management.) I think that rational beliefs are not always beneficial, and non-rational beliefs are not always detrimental.

Please define faith, then explain the above statement, I'm confused.

Yeah right, words that mean the same thing. There's a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What's the right mix? I think the answer to that depends on where your audience's head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis. How does the meaning of the word "over-representation" differ from the word "mis-representation"? How does this affect the meaning of Gore's statement, especially used in conjunction with the word "factual"?

You do realize that no references were provided in the link? Meanwhile you just talked about CO2 lag with temperature! Again how did we get so much warming when CO2 was not a player and that Water Vapor was essentially unchanged? Here is a link that will help clear your confusion: Does Carbon Dioxide Really Affect Temperatures? October 9, 2003 by Dennis T. Avery http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction...ubType=HI_Opeds I see you did not read this article that I posted earlier. Article

The idea of an average temperature of the world is no longer a good one.The data for it are not reliable or consistent.The stations themselves has been compromised by paint and by location. Dr. Jones large 1986 study has been recently shown to be worthless because the data behind it are not available.They have not been available for many years either.No way to know if his research was any good. Warwick Hughes has been vidicated. Dr Mann and his "Hockey Stick" paper is no longer worthy since it has been statistically debunked. The NSF had reduced it to just the last 400 years of confidence and stated that the MWP and the LIA existed as shown for a few decades now.The Wegman report invalidated it. The "other 9 reconstructions are mostly in camp.True independence from the camp are hard to find and not only that.They base a large portion of their conclusions on SECONDARY PROXY data. Do you have any links? I'd like to read them. Whaa? I don't doubt either of those existed. In all fairness, I haven't seen any evidence showing that they are compromised, or not. I'd like to see some evidence either way before I discard them completely. I do agree that the satellite and weather balloon data should be more accurate though.

Thanks for the link. Edit: Now that I've read the post, it certainly does sound like it could present a problem for data accuracy, good point. I wonder if a bias would present itself as a one time shift in the temperatures starting with the repainting, or if it would just affect daytime temps. I wonder what kind of records they are supposed to keep as far as maintenance, and environmental changes.

I don't understand, the Antarctic warmed, then C02 started to increase 200-800yrs later, then the northern hemisphere warmed. The Milankovitch cycle causes the initial Antarctic warming...and has nothing to do with the lag.

Google Milankovitch cycle. (I hope I spelled it correctly.) Edited to add this link.

Like I said, spin. The warming is natural, caused by sun spot activity. CO2 does not cause the warming and mans contribution of CO2 barely registers. However, carbon dioxide as a result of man's activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively. http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaruherald/4064691a6571.html Here's a good explanation of why Co2 is important, it absorbs radiation from a band that water vapour does not, effectively "closing" that radiative window at higher concentrations. A reply to Augie Auer Changes in solar radiation don't account for recent temperature rise according to the Max Planck Institute. Graph Source page

Historical, as in recorded human history? Versus the much longer timelines of glaciation? That's the point he's making there, in the time period that is relevant to anthropogenic global warming (about 1920-Present), we have been elevating CO2 levels far above past temperature induced levels and are now forcing more warming.

Thanks Electric Monk, good reference, sometimes you almost need a holistic detective agency to get to the bottom of these things. I find just digging gently around for a while, rather than trying to cut through like a Dirk works the best.

Ok, so you agree that global temperature rise can be linked causally to a global rise CO2 levels, correct? They do seem to be fairly tightly linked, (on a global climate kind of timeline, 200-800 years is a pretty long time for us!) Correctly read, the data does indicate that in the past, global temperature has been the driver for increased global CO2 levels. However, this does not preclude increased global CO2 levels from being able to drive global temperature. An interesting article on the subject.

How do you reconcile that with this?

I showed you why 98 is a bad year to start with if you want a correct answer. Global temperature is affected by many different factors, that work together to produce the end result. That's why we pay climatologists to do their analyses. On this page is a graph showing 5 of the factors. Climate change attribution

Please back up your assertion that they did not adjust for UHIE. Do the math when I can look at the graph that you posted that was generated from that data set? Have you done the math? If so how does it differ?

How about NASA? GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (They normalize their urban stations to the surrounding rural ones.) Seriously, climatologists know about things like Urban Heat Island Effect and take it into account in their calculations. And how exactly do you account for choosing 1998 as your starting year? If you go back just 10 years before 98, it is obvious that warming is continuing, and that 98 was an anomaly. The NASA page I linked above even gives a graph that shows the times of El Ninos- red squares, La Ninas- blue semi-circles, and large volcanic eruptions- little green triangles.

Are you talking about this? 1998 was the hottest year on record (till 2005), due to the strongest el nino of the century. 2005 passed 1998 levels without the help of el nino. This link has a good explanation. It also contains a graph including the 40's...decide for yourselves if they were hotter.

From what I've read, particulate air pollution was the likely cause of the recent cool period, masking the effects of the CO2 we were releasing. Interestingly , those developing nations coming online with their particulate pollution levels skyrocketing may help cool us down for a while (at the cost of many lives) till they clean up their act. On the subject of the graphs being different, I hear you, the margin of error on them is pretty big, and is not shown...but they're the best we have so far. I'd be a little suspicious if they were too similar, given the complexity.

And remember, we're talking about global climate change here, not just North America, so we really need to see average temps for the whole world. (Which I believe Jones, Mann, and those 9 other reconstructions attempt to provide us with.)

This is a handy site for checking historical temperatures in the United States from 1895 to the present. Average temperature seems to be trending upwards. I even tried breaking it down by month, they all are trending upwards.

Was it the graph from the IPCC 2001 report, or this one with Jones and Mann and nine other reconstructions showing the same trends? Care to address any of the other points on their own merits? (Not blanket pronouncements.)

Yes, but back on topic, have you watched both of the links above yet?

The Scam of the Great Global Warming Swindle I watched the original, and it was powerful and convincing. Then I watched the debunking, it was more so, even with the distorted audio and choppy editing.

I think having a moderator here would be an excellent idea.