Anthropogenic Climate Change Exists
There has been no global warming for 17 years, despite a 54% increase in CO2 Pro now
argues there is something wrong with NASA's Remote Sensing Satellite (RSS) data [6]
because it does not measure temperature with a thermometer. No scientist, to my knowledge,
has ever questioned the ability of RSS to measure temperature. Satellite measurements
are far superior to the spotty coverage of weather stations subject to urban heat
island effects. Satellites provide global coverage at much higher densities than attainable
with in situ observations. In situ observations also suffer from non-uniform temporal
coverage and undocumented changes in the instrumentation used that can lead to local
biases and increased uncertainty. … Satellites can measure the temperature of the
atmosphere by evaluating thermal emission from gases in the atmosphere. ... By choosing
the different measurement frequencies, and thus different values of absorptivity,
the emission from different layers of the atmosphere can be measured. RSS studies
the measurements made by 3 series of satellite-borne microwave sounders in order to
construct long-term, climate-quality atmospheric temperature datasets for use by the scientific community. [24.
http://www.remss.com...] If temperature continued to climb in the past 17 years, we
would expect advocates of the theory of CO2 dominated climate to trumpet the success of climate models. But those advocates recognize the fact that the models have failed, the Voosen
article I cited makes it clear that CO2 advocates are struggling for an explanation
of why the models have failed. I explained in detail why there is no inconsistency with having no temperature increase in 17 years and having the 2001-2010
decade averaging warmer than the 90s. Pro ignored my explanation and claimed that
there is a conflict. Pro said I claimed that the temperature anomaly was reset for each decade.
That's nonsense, I made no such claim, and if it were reset every decade then the
temperature anomalies would be a string of zeros. The anomaly is an arbitrary offset to prevent graphs from having to be scaled with the average global
temperature of around 59 degrees F or 287 degrees Kelvin. Pro's graph shows global
warming to have stopped since 2000. In additional to providing the actual data and
the opinions of scientists who advocate CO2-dominated climate, I provided the work of Von Storch and separately of Mauritsen who showed that CO2
models could not explain the pause. [7] Pro claims I misrepresented Von Storch because
in 2006 Von Storch said he believed CO2 dominates climate, but in 2012 Von Storch admitted the CO2 models failed. I quoted Von Storch as saying
“we find that the continued stagnation in global warming, from 1998 to 2012, is inconsistent with model predictions, even at the 2% confidence level.” [17] That's
not a misrepresentation. Scientists become convinced by unrelenting contrary data.
The same is true of other CO2 advocates, quoted by Voosen [20], who finally have given up trying
to defend the models. I cited Tinsdale's book [7] for it's extensive comparisons showing the CO2 models
fail. Pro argues that I needed to have shown and argued every piece of evidence in
the book. No, all I needed to do was to make a claim and cite the evidence. To refute
Tinsdale, Pro might have cited some contrary compendium showing all the models were
on target, but there is no such evidence to be cited. Some of the CO2 advocates claim the lack of global
warming is due to something other than cosmic ray clouds seeding. Hansen supposes it might be
reflective soot from coal burning in China. For the present debate, it suffices to
say that CO2 is not dominating climate, and so until the science is resolved future predictions cannot be made reliability under the assumption that
CO2 dominates. Cosmic ray effects, or something else associated with sunspots, are
clearly the most likely factor because the sunspot trend since the early 1800s has
been generally in favor of warming, but sunspots activity also tracks the Medieval
Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, the global warming pause from the 40s through the
70s, the 70s sharp cooling, and the current 17 year lack of global warming. All this
was shown clearly in the data presented in the debate. Current models do not include
all the natural forcings Pro's graphs of temperature with and without CO2 are purely
math model predictions. He says that they include sunspot and ocean oscillation effects,
but they unquestionably do not. That's apparent because the real temperatures post 2000 did not rise as the graphs show, and also because the projections
go out into the future. Voosen [20] specifically referenced these elements missing
from the models. The “natural forcings” in the model projections are defective because
they do not include the cosmic ray and magnetic effects of sunspots, rather only the
inconsequential changes in irradiance. Pro began by arguing that that we should not
look at temperatures before 1900, because that's when anthropogenic global warming
began. However, the physics of climate do not change, and temperature reconstructions on scales of millions of years, hundreds of thousands
of years, and the past 2000 years show that CO2 has never dominated climate, no matter what the source of CO2. CO2 levels have been many times current levels.
In the past, CO2 increase was a product of warming, not a cause. CO2 may increase
warming slightly, but it's never prevented natural forcings from driving temperatures
down. To show that CO2 now dominates climate, advocates must show that no other natural factors are significant, but current lack
of warming shows that the models are dead wrong. In this round Pro introduced the
argument that CO2-induced warming began in the 1800s. But then what caused the preceding
Medieval Warm Period and Little Age? It's far more likely that whatever caused those
major climate changes ended, producing the subsequent warming. Those major climate events were tightly correlated with sunspot activity. To argue it was CO2, a switch
must have been flipped around 1825 causing sunspots to no longer have an effect and
CO2 to start dominating. Polar sea ice has increased to a current high, contrary to
CO2 theory Pro began by claiming that the decrease in Arctic Ice proved that CO2 causes
global warming. That claim evaporated in the light of evidence that Arctic ice has
been disappearing and reappearing for centuries with the cycle of the Pacific Decadal
Oscillation, which is not in the CO2 climate models. Also, CO2 warming does not explain why Antarctic ice has increased so much
so that total ice has had a net increase. Pro shifted to arguing that total accumulated
ice on earth has been decreasing since the end of the Little Age, but that is better explained by sunspot activity than CO2. No one claims the Little Age was due
to a sudden CO2 shortage. Future CO2 levels are unpredictable. Pro offered only unsupported
assertions to counter cited expert opinion that we are rapidly running out of fossil
fuels, and technology will provide substitutes. The sun, not CO2, dominates climate We are seeing the real world destroy the theory of CO2 dominating climate. The CO2 math models cannot be tuned to explain how a 54% increase in CO2 has failed
to produce and increase in global temperatures. For a while, the notion was that the
failure was some transient glitch that would quickly disappear. After 17 years, it's
clear that there is a fundamental lack of understanding reflected in climate models. CO2 theorists have been fervent in clinging to their theory, but they are
nonetheless still scientists and ultimately obliged to yield their theory to the contrary
data. I'm sure that science will ultimately succeed in getting climate models that match reality, and that the models will include some effect of CO2. But it should not be a surprise that the sun dominates climate, even though we are still figuring out exactly how.
Pro vs. con view
Topic space view
