p.s. I'm still waiting for my medal. Can I have it gift-wrapped 🙂

What caused the cyclic temperature rise over the last 450,000 years?

Milankovitch (sp?) cycles mainly. We are worried about the impact of adding CO2 in large quatites to the atmosphere not natural cycles. If you want to know what happens when you add lots of CO2 look for periods of intense volcanic activity in the geoligal record and you'll find high CO2 and scorched deserts – the Permian.

Why did the temperature preceed a CO2 rise?

Again it doesn't matter – we are intested in what happens when you add CO2 to levels way above the natural cycle and then remove carbon sinks at the same time.

What cause the cycle temperature decrease over the last 450,000 years?

You mean compared with prior to 450 000 years ago. 1/ The consevation of angular momentum means the earth is very slowly moving away from the sun as tidal drag slows its rotation. 2/ Volcanic activity hasn't been especially high. 3/ The configuration and distribution of the continental crust over the Earth's surface has resulted in a pattern of ocean currents and land mass at the poles that favour ice build up and ice ages.

Why, although CO2 is higher than has been seen in the last 450,000 years is the global temperature not lots higher than has been seen before?

Because it'll take time for the planet to warm up. The ice sheet is currently buffering the impact of more energy in the atmosphere but once nearly all the continental ice has been melted temperatures will rise rapidly.

Why wouldn't we follow the same cycle now over the next 50,000 years?

Because CO2 levels are now so high they will prevent cooling that would otherwise have happened.

Why is any contribution due to man going to alter this cycle?

Because just as high levels of CO2 released by volcanic activity have put an end to a quiet cyclical period in geological history so man mmade CO2 has put an end to the the 450 000 year cyclical period we have observed.

Over to you Hainey. Where did you see those nonsense numbers you quoted for the levels and origins of the CO2 in the atmosphere for example? That was what dragged me into this as I don't like seeing people quoting nonsense numbers without a sourse to support their point of view.

ice core samples are evidence of past cycles, conditions have changed in a manner that wasnt seen in those cycles so what evidence is there that those cycles will repeat, other than blind hope and optimism? The ice core data does not explain how current CO2 levels will not cause warming. It has been shown in experiments that CO2 causes warming and we reckon that there is more CO2 now then there ever has been. My position has evidence, yours appears to just have hope.

Whether you're someone who sees our presence on earth in our current capacity as part of the natural order.

Thats a very good question and I would say that yes, it is part of a natural order.

Regarding tipping point, hmmm, well it certainly looks like we are at the peak of a cycle and should very soon, within a 1000 years or so, start seeing a downward trend. Ask my great great great great great great…..grandson, he will be the one saying i told you so on an internet forum somewhere! (joke)!!! 😉

No AA, my position has historical evidence where as yours is based on a prediction.

hindsight is a wonderful thing zulu but without it what do we do? What evidence do you have and why do you think its stronger?

I don't have evidence, but I'm fairly confident that the evidence being distributed as "proof" of global warming doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny, primarily due to all the various correction analogues and logarithms applied to make the data "fit" the theory.

I'm also confident that the computer modelling is flawed, as it relies on the same "value added" data.

I've made it clear – I think that we need to go back to the start and QA the raw data, reflect very carefully and produce a sound scientific reason before altering any data, then reanalyse it properly and see where the science takes us!

So Edukator,

Can you explain to me why all the reasons you have quoted for temperature and CO2 change are now not applicable?

how is it a prediction? Fundamental science has evidence that CO2 causes warming and ice core data shows that CO2 levels are at an all time high. That is evidence. Your position seems to have evidence that cycles have happend in the past, but no evidence about how they will repeat in the future.

Regarding tipping point, hmmm, well it certainly looks like we are at the peak of a cycle and should very soon, within a 1000 years or so, start seeing a downward trend.

Why do you think this?

**** me I give up…………….again.

Thanks Hainey,
I'm satisfied, to shoe-horn my two penneth in.
I think we agree on more things than the confrontational nature of a forum would initially suggest (we persevered though :)). We are undoubtedly natural and exploiting the resources we have available to us in an incredibly effective way. None of the things we're pumping into the atmosphere or eco-system are poisonous to the earth in any way, just disagreeable with the natural systems which support our existence on earth in the first place. Whether we'll adapt and innovate to the inevitable changes in these systems our influence will cause, who's to say, depends on how good a mood I'm in as to what I think.
What I can say with relative confidence (I'm a doubtful kind of guy) is that earth will happily chug along regardless.

The proviso is, if we are inherently natural (we're no an alien force as far as we know) then anything we perpetrate on the earth is natural and part of this inherent cycle, it just might be that this cycle is a little jaggedy than the ones when we were staring at large black plinths and hammering each others heads in.

Si C

I don't have evidence, but I'm fairly confident that the evidence being distributed as "proof" of global warming doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny,

so you have no evidence, fine. Any proof of global warming wouldnt stand up to scrutiny as it cannot be proven. I will agree with you to a certain extent, but I'm not sure if your saying predictions might not be very good (no doubt true) or that it wont happen at all (the strongest evidence suggests it will).

Can you explain to me why all the reasons you have quoted for temperature and CO2 change are now not applicable?

I'm pointing out that your natural cycle obsession is not applicable because man released CO2 and hacking down forest is not natural. Adding CO2 beyond natural levels resulting in warming most definitely is applicable. You're mixing things up again. Concentrate.

Edukator, you are quite happy to provide evidence of past changes, but also then happy to ignore them going forward. Why? Do you have evidence that the increase in CO2 due to man disrupts these cycles?

Wiredchops, glad of the sensible conversation.

That's fine if you don't mind being wiped out by storms on a scale not seen in the last 450 000 years Wiredchops. If however you'd rather not see everything around you flattened I suggest reducing your carbon footprint.

Volcanic events are the only past record we have of CO2 releases on a scale currently being duplicated by man Hainey. Now if you go back in geological time to those periods you'll find the Earth wasn't a very hospitable place.

Oh i see, so you are saying that it was the volcanos in the past that were responsible.

You're not really answering my question are you?

wow, some of you guys really don't understand how science works.

Which question have I missed Hainey? Could you repeat them in explicit comprehensible terms please. I've so far answered everthing you've asked me on this and the previous page. You still haven't provided a source for your 720 units of carbon in the atmoshere of which only 6 are man made.

Car to elaborate as to whom and on what subject ashmo.

so you have no evidence, fine. Any proof of global warming wouldnt stand up to scrutiny as it cannot be proven.

thats why I used the " " around the word proof.

I will agree with you to a certain extent, but I'm not sure if your saying predictions might not be very good (no doubt true) or that it wont happen at all (the strongest evidence suggests it will).

The scientist in me would say that we don't know till we get a reliable data set – which is exactly why I think its so important to reanalyse the data – what I'm sure of is that the people forecasting doom and the end of humanity as we know it, are not being critical or analytical enough of the quality of the data that they are using to back up their arguments.

If we're being told its NOT natural variance, and as such we need to take drastic action, then I want to be sure that the science backs up that action – I think the big risk (particularly with politicians involved in the process) is that we do "anything" just so as we can be seen to be doing "something" – if we CAN change the temperature by reducing CO2 emissions, great, but if we can't, then we could be headed off down completely the wrong path, because the scientists who should have been asking for an evidence based approach decided to "do the cautious thing and go with the majority view"

edit: Just a polite reality check here for all of us, in Haiti right now, tens of thousands of people are dead, many hundreds of thousands more have clearly had their lives turned upside down, by natural phenomena over which we have no control whatsoever – in the face of that, I think the prospect that we *might* get a global temperature change in the future, and as such need to drive the car 5 miles a week less, is angels on a pinhead territory

If we're being told its NOT natural variance, and as such we need to take drastic action, then I want to be sure that the science backs up that action

You don't need much science, just the ability to add up, just add up the carbon content of the world production of fossil fuels and you'll have a good idea of how much carbon were emitting. That ain't natural.

HAINEY can i please have a reply to the two questions thet i add to our previous exchange.
me: "Please for the sake of my sanity , the quailfied scientists who drew up the ice core data think man made climate change is an issue."

you:"Wrong, some do, some don't."

you: "don't know, i haven't read the article, i lifted the graph directly from the web to highlight the cyclic nature that people were shouting for evidence of."
question one! PLEASE Name one qualified scientist who currently does not think man made climate change is an issue or who belives that the current tempreture rise is due to the natural cycle postulated from the ice core samples???By the way i was actually originally pointing out that the person whose graph you used does not think it shows what you cliam it shows.

me "The geologists think the world orbiting the sun and spinning on it's axis erratically is a cool theory but does not fit all the sedimentary data available"

you"Wrong, some do, some don't"

question two! PLEASE name one geologist who argues that the Milankovitch cycles fit all the sedimentary data currently available.??

Or tell us your scientific qualification?

zulu that all seems thoroughly commendable in the most part however I'm not sure I agree with you on this bit

we could be headed off down completely the wrong path, because the scientists who should have been asking for an evidence based approach decided to "do the cautious thing and go with the majority view"

The majority view of climate scientists is based on evidence that man made climate change is real, however the predictive power of models may well suffer from the problems you state. I do not know enough about how the models are made and evaluated, what does yank my chain is whenever the media repotrt models they always look at the worst case scenario. Doing the cautious thing and going with the majority view was my feelings on the matter, its not how those who study these things form opinions. I'm not a climate scientist I'm a teacher who has done research in ecology.

Or tell us your scientific qualification?

**** me. Some mountainbikers are arguing about religion on a forum and you want CVs?

Comparing the effects of an earthquake with converting much of the planet into an unproductive desert and the bit you live on into a storm lashed peat bog demonstrates that you don't seem to have got to grips with the reslts of properly greenhousing a planet.

An earthquake is inevitable, greenhousing your planet avoidable.

**** me. Some mountainbikers are arguing about religion on a forum and you want CVs?

The elephant demonstrates his lack of understanding yet again

This thread is brilliant – I'm using it as an example to mates to discuss

[list][*]how science really works (get data/theorise/predict in cycles)[/*]
[*]how climate 'skeptics' argue (proclaim stuff, ignore requests for clarification)[/*][/list]

It also works on studying religious people (how you can't prove a negative).

Keep it up, it's fascinating!

Car to elaborate as to whom and on what subject ashmo

i can't really elaborate on who because, to be honest, reading 15 pages is boring.

however but several general themes need addressing here and i'm coming at it from a paleo/geological background an atmospheric pysicist or whoever may place focus in other areas.

the whole premise of this thread is wrong anyway (i realise this has probably already been said), it is highly likely (from model and proxy data) that climate change (not global warming as things are more complicated than it getting a bit warmer) will cool UK latitudes depending on deglaciation rates and oceanographic changes.

there is overwhelming (note that i do not say irrefutable) evidence human are affecting climate and that climate operates with a system of internal thresholds and forcing lags (e.g. the paleocene-eocene thermal maximum and younger dryas events) and we should therefore be worried. some of these events are correlated with milankovich cycles, some are correlated with cryospheric changes, some are correlated with co2/ch4 changes (from various sources: surpise surpise the carbon cycle is ruddy complicated). direct comparisons to paleo environments are to be used with care as climates change in response to solar/oceanographic/astronomical/tectonic forcings simultaneously.

research is ongoing, there is no proof (if there is such a thing in paleo-climate); science is iterative and doubt is normal. there is edidence that catastrophic climate switches have occured in the past, which would have massive human cost if they occured today. it is clear the carbon cycle is a major component of the climate system. the idea you BELIEVE climate change is an absolute nonsense the EVIDENCE is what's important.

Edukator,

That was a great series of answers to hainey's questions – don't go wasting your time on those US/Indian/Chinese forums.

There are plenty of people on here who take this whole thing seriously and even those of us who believe in the threat of climate change are learning things.

Z11

I don't have evidence, but I'm fairly confident that the evidence being distributed as "proof" of global warming doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny, primarily due to all the various correction analogues and logarithms applied to make the data "fit" the theory.

How about rising sea levels – do you think that offers any corroboration?

Does anyone on here have local evidence of recent rising sea levels?

Just a simple question.

Z11,

in the face of that, I think the prospect that we *might* get a global temperature change in the future, and as such need to drive the car 5 miles a week less, is angels on a pinhead territory

But I think that the prospect that we *might* get a global temperature change in the near future that will unleash devastating hurricanes and cyclones around the world, rising sea levels (1m forecast in the next century) that will wipe out many coastal towns and cities, and droughts that will devastate harvests in the poorest parts of the world is quite important. Maybe if people can be persuaded to drive less it will make a difference.

On the other hand, I can't do much about earthquakes.

re: tyger: sea level rise

no, probably not, unless anyone on here lives on an atoll in the indian ocean. eustatically sea level rise is a barely noticeable 2-3mm pa, isostatic effects are important in previously glaciated areas (i.e. the north of the uk) and then it becomes complicated…….and that's not even mentioning geoidal changes.

many feel the ipcc07 underestimated sea level rise as it does not consider the potential collapse of the west antarticic ice shelf, for which there is serious evidence.

an interesting point is that in the eemian interglacial (130 kya, i.e. the interglacial before this one) sea level was 5-6m higher than it is currently. which is aroud the contribution eustatically the WAIS would have should it collapse.

Ashmo, when looking at the past deciding which of your solar/oceanographic/astronomical/tectonic forcings dominates or which factors combined to produce sets of conditions is complicated. However once you have worked out which influence each factor has then predicting what will happen as a response to a major change in any one of them is quite easy:

Solar: A massive increase in solar activity and we fry, but it's unlikely that we will see anything out of the range we've observed any time soon. The Earth's orbit is well described and sun spot cycles are well documented from tree rings and lake sediments. Sun spot activity has been low for years and we should be cooling in response.

Oceanographic: continents move a few cms a year so we shouldn't see any dramatic changes any time soon other than those provoked by climatic change. The north Atlantic conveyor appears to be slowing according to the voltage in telephone lines so we are working on finding out why. The most likely answer is due to more fresh water in the Arctic ocean which in turn is evidence of a response to a climatic change towards warmer conditions rather than a cause of warming.

Astronomic: Milankovitch in other words. Nothing in his work to suggest we should be suddenly warming now.

Tectonic: We're going through quiet time in terms of volcanic activity, nothing to provoke warmin here.

So if all the natural factors point to us cooling and we're warming then you can be pretty certain that the human factor we've identified is responsible: the emission of large quantities of CO2 whilst simultaneously removing the sinks. IMO it's time to kick one's scientific philosophy of doubt into touch and tell the public the way it is without all our beloved conditionals:

500ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and we're going back to atmosperic energy levels not seen in 25 million years and that won't be very nice. The Hawaii data says were already at 380ppm or well over half way there.

Edukator, first you are saying it Milankovitch, then volcanos, then sun spots, then a potential of all combination or none.

Can you explain again what was the cause of the peaks seen appproximately every 100,000 years? Oh, and for just for clarity why this isn't relevant today?

"**** me. Some mountainbikers are arguing about religion on a forum and you want CVs?"
No mate we are arguing about science and one of us is saying 97% percent of the experts are wrong , and even producing as proof of his thesis graphs generated by the experts he disagrees with effectively saying his interpretation of their data is better than their's. Thats why i want to know his qualifications before i decide wether to go with the lone voice in the wilderness or stick with 97 out of 100 guys with labcoats and thick glasses and initials after their names .
Some one sugested this argument is like religion christians vs islam , it's not, that one is falling out over whose imaginary friend is best. This argument is more like the athiests vs the scientologists. Scientific thinking and rational debate opposed to wishful thinking blind hope and a refusal to engage.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

IMO it's time to kick one's scientific philosophy of doubt into touch and tell the public the way it is without all our beloved conditionals:

i understand this view, however presenting uncertainites as certainites can (as we see in this thread) result in a kickback from non-scientists who aren't familiar with the scientific process and be ultimately destructive.

97% percent of the experts are wrong

Go on, i am going to have to ask for proof of that statistic.