Evolution vs. Anthropogenic Global Warming

[Polk]

Then you should be VERY upset about water vapor and NF3, which are both FAR more powerful and efficacious greenhouse gases than the one vital to all life on the planet, CO2.

But, since neither of them is a product of evil capitalistic man's evil combustion fetish, they're either not ever mentioned or they are minimized.

Every religion needs a devil, and CO2 is the AGW devil. Evil industrial capitalistic man are the demons.

You "believe" releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is "bad" due to conditioning and mostly emotionalism.

Uhh...

Although CO2 makes up only 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, that small number says nothing about its significance in climate dynamics. Even at that low concentration, CO2 absorbs infrared radiation and acts as a greenhouse gas, as physicist John Tyndall demonstrated in 1859. The chemist Svante Arrhenius went further in 1896 by estimating the impact of CO2 on the climate; after painstaking hand calculations he concluded that doubling its concentration might cause almost 6 degrees Celsius of warming—an answer not much out of line with recent, far more rigorous computations.

Contrary to the contrarians, human activity is by far the largest contributor to the observed increase in atmospheric CO2. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, anthropogenic CO2 amounts to about 30 billion tons annually—more than 130 times as much as volcanoes produce. True, 95 percent of the releases of CO2 to the atmosphere are natural, but natural processes such as plant growth and absorption into the oceans pull the gas back out of the atmosphere and almost precisely offset them, leaving the human additions as a net surplus. Moreover, several sets of experimental measurements, including analyses of the shifting ratio of carbon isotopes in the air, further confirm that fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are the primary reasons that CO2 levels have risen 35 percent since 1832, from 284 parts per million (ppm) to 388 ppm—a remarkable jump to the highest levels seen in millions of years.

Contrarians frequently object that water vapor, not CO2, is the most abundant and powerful greenhouse gas; they insist that climate scientists routinely leave it out of their models. The latter is simply untrue: from Arrhenius on, climatologists have incorporated water vapor into their models. In fact, water vapor is why rising CO2 has such a big effect on climate. CO2 absorbs some wavelengths of infrared that water does not so it independently adds heat to the atmosphere. As the temperature rises, more water vapor enters the atmosphere and multiplies CO2's greenhouse effect; the IPCC notes that water vapor (pdf) may “approximately double the increase in the greenhouse effect due to the added CO2 alone.”

Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense: Scientific American

The physical properties of water do indeed make it a more powerful greenhouse gas, and your article does not dispute that. Yes, as temperature rises, more water vapor will be in the atmosphere. Unless one can attach causation of a rise in temperature to CO2 in the atmosphere, water still remains a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, both directly and indirectly. Physical properties don't lie.

What it does dispute is that your claim that CO2 doesn't really have much of an impact.

 

[Polk]

There has been no warming since 2001. Statiscally, where any climate change is measured, there has been cooling.

That's simply not true.

An analysis of global temperatures by independent statisticians shows the Earth is still warming and not cooling as some global warming skeptics are claiming.

The analysis was conducted at the request of The Associated Press to investigate the legitimacy of talk of a cooling trend that has been spreading on the Internet, fueled by some news reports, a new book and temperatures that have been cooler in a few recent years.

In short, it is not true, according to the statisticians who contributed to the AP analysis.

Statisticians reject global cooling - Environment- msnbc.com

Two quick observations:

Chris and Rocks would be quick to point out that Statisticains are not climatologists and therefore there insights are invalid.

MSNBC? 'Nuff said.

Statisticians are more than qualified to analysis a data set looking for trends.

And it's a wire story. I chose that link because it was the most readily available. You could find the same piece ran on pretty much any other major outlet.

 

[Si modo]

And, Code, taking into consideration that water vapor has an intense absorption of IR radiation > 3500 cm-1 whereas CO2's significant absorption band are ~2350 cm-1 (both compounds have additional IR stretches, but these are the most significant) with the concentrations, water is still a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.

As wavenumber (cm-1 is frequency for all practical purposes, and frequency is proportional to energy of light absorbed), the higher wavenumber of absorption indicates more vibrational energy, thus more heat with water vapor.

However, the agrument that water vapor is not significant is that it is easily removed from the atmosphere through condensation. But, there still remains an average amount of water in the atmosphere over time.

Some will argue that, yeah, water is a more powerful greenhouse gas, but as there is warming, there is going to be more water in the atmosphere. But, this is where an argument that CO2 still remains the primary GHG fails. As the question still remains as to whether the warming is due to anthropogenic CO2 or not, this increased contribution to warming by water cannot be tied to increased CO2 concentrations as of yet.

 

[Si modo]

Uhh...

The physical properties of water do indeed make it a more powerful greenhouse gas, and your article does not dispute that. Yes, as temperature rises, more water vapor will be in the atmosphere. Unless one can attach causation of a rise in temperature to CO2 in the atmosphere, water still remains a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, both directly and indirectly. Physical properties don't lie.

What it does dispute is that your claim that CO2 doesn't really have much of an impact.

No it doesn't. Not in the least, for the reason I wrote - attaching cause of warming to CO2. That is the biggest unanswered question that the science is still trying to answer.

 

[code1211]

That's simply not true.

Two quick observations:

Chris and Rocks would be quick to point out that Statisticains are not climatologists and therefore there insights are invalid.

MSNBC? 'Nuff said.

Statisticians are more than qualified to analysis a data set looking for trends.

And it's a wire story. I chose that link because it was the most readily available. You could find the same piece ran on pretty much any other major outlet.

I would agree that statisticians should be able to work the numbers. Rocks and Chris would agree between themselves that any referrance to a statistician would be invalid unless he was also a climatologist.

Just out of curiosity, why would these numbers be taken to a statistician instead of a trend analysis group?

Regarding the story, I see your article and raise you mine. Linear regression seems to be the accepted method in calculating this stuff. I didn't see that term in the MSNBC article.

The article also seems to dismiss satelite data even though it is obviously more accurate and less subject to well documented flaws in the methodology of the land stations including construction of the stations, painting materials, location, consistancy of collection and concentrations by national origin.

For any land based record to be meaningful, it must include averages, estimates and guesswork. All of these will serve to undermine the actual data. For instance in the Arctic, temperatures are estimated from existing stations to cover areas 1 to 200 miles away. Like using the temp in Louisville to estimate the temp in Chicago.

Finally, the whole basis of the AGW Crowd is the undisputable acceptance that CO2 is the primary forcing agent of climate and by affecting CO2 we will change the climate. The records since 2001 seem to put this into doubt. Whether there is only slight warming or actually cooling, the predominance of CO2 as a forcing agent is suspect.

For a skeptic to be skeptical, only doubt is required. For a proponent to be sure, there can be no doubt. I see cause for doubt in this.

The Reference Frame: UAH MSU: temperatures for 2009 and ranking

<snip>

Bonus: linear regression

As a bonus, I will list you the UAH warming trends (recalculated to temperature changes in °C per century) for various intervals:

1995-2009: +0.95 °C/century
1996-2009: +0.89 °C/century
1997-2009: +0.41 °C/century
1998-2009: -0.24 °C/century
1999-2009: +1.22 °C/century
2000-2009: +0.53 °C/century
2001-2009: -0.78 °C/century2002-2009: -1.56 °C/century
2003-2009: -1.43 °C/century
2004-2009: -1.43 °C/century
2005-2009: -3.70 °C/century
2006-2009: -2.30 °C/century
2007-2009: -1.00 °C/century
2008-2009: +21.0 °C/century
Of course, the last one must be taken with a big grain of salt. ;-) Otherwise, you can see among these 14 trends, 6 are warming (generously counting the huge 2008-2009 trend as well) while 8 are cooling! ;-) I could be more quantitative but this is roughly what we mean by saying that there has been no statistically significant warming in the last 15 years.

 

[SpidermanTuba]

1. Unlike AGW, Evolutionary theory is continually evolving, changing as new discoveries are made.

Simply not true and easily refutable.
There are over 37,000 hits with the phrase "global warming" on Google Scholar published just in the years 2008 and 2009

"global warming" - Google Scholar

2. Unlike AGW, scientists have and continue to aggressively argue over the details of evolutionary theory.

Again, the shear volume of research published in just the past couple of years is enough to show this is not true.

3. AGW is a very new theory, established merely twenty years ago.

Again, totally wrong, and easily refutable. The first paper published which suggested man made greenhouse gases could cause global warming was in 1896, over 100 years ago.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/1/18/Arrhenius.pdf

5. Last, but not least, there is the matter of scale. AGW was created and pushed by a small group of elite insiders, who went to great pains, even breaking the law, to keep outside scientists out of their research.

Kind of hard to believe its being pushed by "elitists" when the average salary for a SENIOR climate scientist in BERKELEY (one of the most expensive places to live in the nation) is barely over 6 figures.

Senior Climate Scientist Salaries in Berkeley, CA | Simply Hired


How far does $110k a year get you in Berkeley?