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Originally posted by unityemissions
reply to post by winnar
I think you have difficulties interpreting the data within that graph.
First off, look at the graph CAREFULLY at the left. Notice that since we started deforestation after the agricultural revolution, the spike doesn't follow the sharp descent as it did in the last several cycles. Also note that it ALREADY peaked a while back. We thwarted a decline in temperature in this great cycle, ALREADY.
Note the CO2 in the graph. The high end is at 280PPM. Where are we right now
Also note that anything which has happened post industrial revolution isn't showing up as a perceptible data point in the graph. How do I know this? Look again at the CO2. Pretty sure that's close to per-industrial revolution readings.
Originally posted by mc_squared
Climate change study forces sceptical scientists to change minds
The Earth's land has warmed by 1.5C over the past 250 years and "humans are almost entirely the cause", according to a scientific study set up to address climate change sceptics' concerns about whether human-induced global warming is occurring.
Prof Richard Muller, a physicist and climate change sceptic who founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (Best) project, said he was surprised by the findings. "We were not expecting this, but as scientists, it is our duty to let the evidence change our minds." He added that he now considers himself a "converted sceptic" and his views had undergone a "total turnaround" in a short space of time.
For the mainstream climate science community - this "new" study is of course hardly groundbreaking, and simply belongs in the #tellussomethingwedontalreadyknow department...
However it is interesting because the Berkeley analysis team not only consists of a few prominent (or I guess now - former) climate skeptics like Richard Muller, but it was also notoriously funded by some extremely shady sources like the Koch Brothers (I wonder if they can get their money back?):
The funding for the project included $150,000 from the Charles G Koch Charitable Foundation, set up by the billionaire US coal magnate and key backer of the climate-sceptic Heartland Institute thinktank.
So it was for these reasons that last year, before the team announced their findings, they were the venerable darlings of the online climate "skeptic"/blog science community, with prominent blogger Anthony Watts going so far as to state:
I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. I’m taking this bold step because the method has promise. So let’s not pay attention to the little yippers who want to tear it down before they even see the results. I haven’t seen the global result, nobody has, not even the home team, but the method isn’t the madness that we’ve seen from NOAA, NCDC, GISS, and CRU, and, there aren’t any monetary strings attached to the result that I can tell. If the project was terminated tomorrow, nobody loses jobs, no large government programs get shut down, and no dependent programs crash either. That lack of strings attached to funding, plus the broad mix of people involved especially those who have previous experience in handling large data sets gives me greater confidence in the result being closer to a bona fide ground truth than anything we’ve seen yet.
Of course when the Berkeley team made their results (that showed global warming to be real) public last year, he immediately changed his tune - attacking them for anything he could throw at them.
Watts list of grievances on why the study was "flawed":
- it had only been accepted for peer-review at the time, but not yet actually peer-reviewed (even though Watts notoriously posts and promotes non-peer-reviewed "science" on his blog every day - as long as it's skeptical of AGW). *PS the Berkeley analysis has since been peer-reviewed and published.
- it examined data over a 60-year period rather than the 30-year window Watts preferred tocherrypickfocus on. (So analyzing a larger sample size and doing twice as much work apparently makes it less robust).
- the not-yet-peer-reviewed paper had spelling errors. (seriously)
Many other skeptics at the time seemed to accept the results, going so far as to say "duh, we already knew it's been warming" but then immediately pointing out that their beef is with the idea that humans are the cause.
...
So now that the Berkeley team has done supplementary research and announced that -
humans are almost entirely the cause
...it will be interesting to see what sort of back-pedaling excuses the remaining camp of so-called skeptics come up with. I'm not saying they have to accept this result (or else!) - but it provides for an interesting benchmark in separating real skeptics from phony ones.
Real ones will need to take this evidence into context with the enormous pile already in place that shows modern warming to be primarily man made. While the rest will no doubt ignore all that yet again, and try to deflect focus on spelling errors and tinfoil conspiracies.
(Then they'll probably cry something about how unfairly people label them 'deniers', while muttering what a 'religion' belief in AGW clearly is) [/quote
CRAP
Originally posted by surfnow
The argument is so simple its sad. The claim is CO2 is causing global warming, in a nutshell. Lets see, trees absorb and consume CO2 and release Oxygen. This kills the global warming theory cause by humans. How about our planet just goes through a natural process of change and there isnt a dam thing we can do about it
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Simply cutting trees doesnt release their carbon. They'd have to be burnt. I'd say there's a lot of forest tied up in housing and other structures. Maybe a few rainforests worth. People are sequestering carbon and then regrowing forests sequestering even more. The state forest around here is almost all new growth because it was basically all cut down and used for building, lots of it was floated down the river to Pittsburgh.