"Yes, Let's Please have More Conversations about Global Warming."

[Bravus]

Did you read the link?

[olger]

Yes,

Here's a better one from your own country:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/fea...6-1226609140980

[olger]

As to the ACGW crowd now using the excuse "Yes but the oceans are now warmer..!" it serves to confirm a suspicion that I have held for some time now. Namely that you cannot win against these zealots. Two examples.

When the Global Warming crowd were greeted at many of their parties by record cold and blizzards (*see algore) they simply changed their rhetoric, which liberals are masters of. Ready? Here it comes. "Climate change!"

That's beautiful. Any variation in temperature from the mean average and they were jumping up and down like an exuberant fat man on The Price is Right "SEE I TOLD YOU SO..."

When they threw a party for ACGW and no excess British Thermal Units showed up, they spoketh eruditely "Of cawse, my good man. The lack of GLOBAL WARMING in the atmosphere simply indicates that all the heat went into the oceans!!" That's great. You simply cannot win with ACGW ideologues. If they didn't have the ocean goat to scape, they would simply invent another preposterous outlet for their "I'm never wrong" misplaced certitude. They would come up with something almost as creative as the "cow farts theory" or they would say "the trees ate the warming and they are going to get sick in August and explode all over the planet. "MILLIONS WILL BE WIPED OUT BY FLYING TOOTHPICKS!" And Bravus would come on here and defend it and Time Magazine (does it even exist anymore?) would put it on the cover of their late July issue.

Here is wisdom:

"When I made the clouds its garment,And thick darkness its swaddling band;[10] When I fixed My limit for it,And set bars and doors; When I said,‘This far you may come, but no farther,And here your proud waves must stop!'" (Job 38-9-11).

`oG

[Bravus]

We'll see. By the time we do, though, the devastation will be well under way (to the extent that it's not already).

These are actually *not* ad hoc explanations made up to cover up past unsuccessful predictions.

They are the actual science of climate, as opposed to an over-simplistic lay understanding of same.

'Warming' was *never* about uniform warming everywhere, and only people who didn't understand climate made that mistake.

It was always about *global* warming, hence the phrase. Local cooling, where there is greater warming elsewhere, means (net) global warming, which is exactly what has been observed.

Confusing local weather with global climate is a very, very basic mistake. It just seems odd to me that people who keep displaying that very basic misunderstanding of climate feel qualified to make very strong statements about what climate is and isn't doing.

[CoAspen]

[JoeMo]

Quote:

The slowed warming in the past decade or so is likely to have a number of causes, including the massively increased burning of coal by China and India with the associated shading of the earth by particulates in the air.

Gotta admit, Bravus - this is true.

[Bravus]

As another contribution to these conversations, let me share something my wife's nephew (a PhD student in engineering) sent me today:

Quote:

I saw a graph you posted somewhere on Antarctic Ice, so I thought you might find the following graph interesting. You may have already seen it or something like it.

I watched a presentation by the National President of Engineers Australia, David Hood, in which he briefly showed a slide on the decline in the extent of Arctic Sea Ice. I was so shocked by it that I didn’t believe it at first. So I did a search online and discovered that the Polar Science Centre allows free access to their data.

I downloaded the data, plotted it in Matlab, and ran a few curve fits. This graph shows two curve fits through the annual peaks and troughs (linear and 4th degree polynomial). The R2 values for the linear fits was 0.86 for the peaks and 0.81 for the troughs. The R2 values for the poly4 fits was 0.94 for the peaks and 0.93 for the troughs. Clearly, the annual freeze-thaw cycle in the Arctic is not stable. The worst case projections could see us experiencing an ice free arctic summer in four or five years. What concerns me most about this scenario is that the Arctic sea will begin to warm more rapidly once the ice has melted (i.e., no more energy being wasted on phase change).

To me, this is the most sobering demonstration of what humanity has done to this planet. The rapid change over such a short period of time (and more noticeably since the mid 90s) is dramatic! I showed this graph to a geologist. His reaction was, “Yeah, but what did the last 100,000yrs look like?” Whatever the natural variations on a geological time scale might be, I would be surprised if the rate of change was as severe as this. An asteroid impact could throw up a huge amount of dust that could plunge the planet into an ice age quite quickly, however, I can’t conceive of too many natural scenarios that might drive rapid warming.

Anyway, food for thought ...

[Bravus]

Short version: the curved lines (4th degree polynomial) fit better, which means the rate of loss is accelerating.

[Ted Oplinger]

Yes, Arctic ice is melting. That would be the consequence of Greenland warming enough to lose its ice sheet and become arable land again.

It happened 1000 yrs ago - all without man's fossil fuels usage and industry to blame, and stayed that warm for over 300 years.

The polar bears, seals, and arctic foxes all survived just fine, and coastlines didn't experience massive inland flooding.

Then came the Little Ice Age - with no man-made cause - and abruptly reversed all that. Again, by using the same data as the warmists, I can see points where the global temperature accelerated and plunged over a century's span, where today they rise in the same rapidity.

Rapid rise/fall is not unprecedented. So let's go ahead and talk about the boogeyman du jour - carbon dioxide.

Throughout the Pleistocene, there have been 4 glacial ages, followed by 3 interglacial points. Recent work has indicated there was a correlation between carbon dioxide locked within ice (indicating availability in the atmosphere).

Sure enough, there's a correlation - high during the warm periods, low during glacial periods. Must be that carbon dioxide causes the warming, right?

As I see it, there are steep increases and declines in carbon dioxide levels, the mechanism of which global climatologists are baffled, as they cannot pawn it off on man's fossil fuel usage and industry. It rises very steeply, then "saw-tooths" down.

Long before modern man and his technology arrived on the scene, there is already on display before us the earth itself experiences sudden releases of carbon dioxide, followed by a span of time when the earth's ecosystem re-absorbed the carbon dioxide - at times, in very dramatic drops.

As I am Creationist in outlook, I do not argue about the carbon dioxide ebbs and flows - just the time scale referenced. As I see those events happening far quicker than long age people do, again, I am baffled for an explanation, as are the long age people. Yet, these meteoric rises and drops happening over a more rapid time scale tells me what we are observing today is not unprecedented.

What man has contributed over the last 150 years is also subject to the same absorption process as the rest - and sooner (rather than later), the earth itself will correct this. There may well be a threshold point which must be maintained for a while before this rebalancing.

As the Little Ice Age occurred in a period of relatively high carbon dioxide levels, we are not at liberty to declare as fact whether the rapid drop into the Little Ice Age (and its corresponding rapid rebound) is a normal interglacial response or not - we weren't there to measure it, were we?

In essence - the rush to judge man and his technology is a bit premature...particularly since, thanks to our space exploration, we have been able to record the simultaneous rise in global temperatures on several planets and moons as with our own.

Hence my belief there is a solar system effect occurring, not just a planet earth thing. Sometimes, it is indeed a good idea to step back and look at the bigger picture than what is happening locally - in this case, not just our own little globe.

Blessings,

[JoeMo]

Bravus,

This is very interesting. By chance, has your wife's nephew done a similar analysis on Antarctic ice? I haven't seen the empirical data; but I have seen articles that antarcic ice is actually increasing. Seeing similar analysis as was shown in your post would be kinda cool.

Thanks for sharing this.

[olger]

That is correct Joe.

Mo

[Bravus]

I'll ask him. From memory, it's not all Antarctic ice that is increasing. More soon.

[Bravus]

In the mean time: http://www.nature.com/news/global-warming-expands-antarctic-sea-ice-1.12709

250 gigatonnes a year of ice lost from the land in Antarctica... not exactly a net increase.

[Bravus]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm

"There is of course uncertainty in the estimations methods but multiple different types of measurement techniques (explained here) all show the same thing, Antarctica is losing land ice as a whole, and these losses are accelerating quickly."

[olger]

"A Dutch study found that sea ice around Antarctica has expanded significantly since 1985, aided by global warming."

"Study: Global warming helps expand Antarctic sea ice."

[Bravus]

Laugh it up.

Or, you know, read the article. Understand what's going on.

[olger]

Bravus, you and I not agreeing on ACGW is the inevitable outworking of our different worldviews. Regrettable but real is your evolutionary worldview from which the environmentalist worldview arises.

The Christian church is standing today with regards to environmentalism, in the same place that our fathers stood 100 years ago with regards to Darwinism. Our response must be better than theirs, as we "take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ."

Rejoice always,

`G

[Bravus]

Christ does *not* require us to ignore stewardship of the earth, he enjoins us to it.

Nor does he require us to ignore reality.

And evolution is completely irrelevant to whether the climate is changing or not: it is.

Part of the problem is that your view is complex, and includes quite a lot of truth.

But when it comes to denying reality, we have to part ways.

[Bravus]

We can still be friends who like and respect each other, of course, and if I sometimes come across snippy I don't mean to: shortcomings of text and my own skills in using it.

[Bravus]

Short version of Antarctic ice: *area* of ice is not the same thing as *volume* of ice. If the ice is thinner, you could have a decreasing total amount of ice covering an increasing area.

[CoAspen]

Correct...same as having more snow fall across a larger area, but less of it. One of the side effects of warming and predicted. People will still jump on the statement leaving out the important part of it. Might be a lack of willful understanding.

[JoeMo]

Quote:

Short version of Antarctic ice: *area* of ice is not the same thing as *volume* of ice. If the ice is thinner, you could have a decreasing total amount of ice covering an increasing area.

Good point, Bravus. I have read in other places that the growth of the "area" of arctic ice grew this winter at an unprecedented rate. At first, I though "Right on - more proof that global warming is a farce". I was thinking about this after reading what I quoted above; and must rethink my original conclusion. If the water was super cold because so much of it had just recently thawed, naturally, it would freeze at a faster rate than in previous years.

Time (like the next 6 months) will show if the rapid that continues.

OTOH, I was thinking about the positive and negative impacts that global warming might have if it's the real deal. One positive would be that if arctic ice disappeared or was severely reduced, it would open up the proverbial "Northwest Passage" above North America, significantly reducing the distance and expense of ships from Northern Europe or the Atlantic Coast from having to go through the Panama canal or around Africa to get to Eastern Asia.

It would also open up vast new fields of oil and natural gas that have been unavailable due to arctic ice. Of course, there are people that don't necessarily find that to be a good thing...

[Bravus]

Thanks, JoeMo.

The 'record rate of Arctic ice growth' one gets brought out pretty regularly. This is the rate of growth in the fall from the summer minimum to the winter maximum. What is almost never quoted is the record - *and greater* rate of ice retreat in spring from the maximum to the minimum.

The graph from my nephew-in-law on the previous page illustrates this nicely. The 'rate of growth' being quoted is the vertical slope of the black zigzag lines, when what really needs to be looked at is the dotted multi-year trend lines, showing that that rapid growth is leading to a lower maximum each year, *not* to a net growth over time of the ice fields.

[olger]

[olger]

Sorry, CAGW enthusiasts. I realize this isn't what you wanted to hear.

It's time all CAGW zealots took a long deep breath and looked in the mirror.

Then ask the question "Why did I want Global warming to be true so badly?"

Why

Why

Why

rejoice always,

`oG