I can give you some facts here.

1. Sea level rise has been happening for tens of thousands of years (since the last ice age).  It actually was slightly slower in the 20th century than the preceding ones.  Unless there is a massive collapse of the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets (remember, the Arctic ice is on top of an ocean, so even if it all melted sea levels would not rise), something thought not to be possible even in the worst-case scenarios for thousands of years, no, sea levels couldn't rise 10 meters.  In fact, sea ice levels are at above-average levels, Antarctica is expected to add glacial mass, and Alaskan glaciers recently have started advancing for the first time in hundreds of years.  So the answer is no, despite what Al Gore would have you believe, sea levels aren't going to rise more than a few inches at most.  Even the worst scenario predicted by the IPCC would result in 20 inches of sea level rise, and that is highly unlikely even according to them.

2. Polar bear populations are at record levels, despite the U.S. government declaring them "threatened."  Of 19 bear populations, 17 are stable or increasing.  The two that are decreasing are from overhunting, not lack of ice.

EDIT: By the way, here's what happens if you don't accept the global warming religion: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5664069/Polar-bear-expert-barred-by-global-warmists.html

3. This won't happen.  Even the worst-case IPCC scenario only predicts up to 7 degrees Fahrenheit warming by 2100, hardly enough to "fry" anyone.  Although obviously their models are incorrect (all 30 that they use; they average 30 models to get their predictions...which sounds good, until you realize that all 30 are wrong) since they predicted rapid warming since 1998 that hasn't happened, even while CO2 emissions have increased beyond what they predicted in their worst-case scenario.

These facts add up to excellent reasons to be suspicious of what people are selling.  When people start telling you that global warming is now called "climate change" and that it is this horrible thing that is causing COOLING, if you have any brains you are going to be skeptical of that claim.

Why should we call it "climate change"?  Because the globe is no longer warming so they needed a new term?  Open your eyes, man; that's called propaganda.

What "extreme" things are you talking about?  I'd really like to know.  Global cyclone strength is at its lowest recorded level, to take an example, despite doomsayers claiming we would have more frequent and stronger hurricanes.  Please give examples of "extreme" weather you believe is caused by global warming (sorry, climate change).  I'm very interested.

elprincipe, excellent reply.


If they're gonna call it 'climate change' (yes I know they've already started to do that since a few years now, im not an ignorant fool) it's just stupid. They can keep on with their cherry picked observations and make big news out of it and scare people. And people will just keep waiting for the 'big catastrophy' (which of course isn't something concrete, it's a fuzzy picture about something 'bad').

As soon as some random science expedition have measured some local penguin population to have decreased it's gonna keep feeding alarming news in the media.

And they're already started indoctrinating people with these 'trigger effects' and 'feedback mechanisms' (I dont have the tools right now to explain that mechanism, and there exists a more common phrase for it) that basically say that you don't have to observe a certain parameter rise anymore after a certain point, because it has already triggered some bad event that in turn will escalate through positive feedback mechanisms.


Im not questioning that such trigger-escalation mechanisms actually exixst, because they're common in the natural world on all levels, but in this case with 'climate change' this argument will be used to death as a trick whenever they lack the 'hard data' of no rise in temperature or sea levels.

I don't really see how you can say it has disproved the previous model.  On what timescale?  The previous model is based on predictions of what will occur in the future.  Until the future happens, you can't really say it has been disproved.  And the aggregate trend still demonstrates that things are getting warmer.  It sounds like you are saying to me that because the theory of global warming put forward earlier has been called into question that it has already been disproved.  And that's just patently false.  That's not even how science works.

I just think you are reading way too much into what the people have to say who question global warming.  I have no problem with people questioning any scientific theory.  But, as within any area of science, it is the new proposals which people should look at most skeptically as they have not been tested on the same timescale and have not been subject to as much peer review.  A lot of people come up with new scientific hypotheses that sound great, but disintegrate as time goes on.  For every Copernicus who shows everyone that the world is round and not flat there are 50 other scientists with new hypotheses who simply got it wrong.

And most great scientific theories take decades before they are firmly accepted.  And people haven't really been rigorously questioning the previous global warming models for more than a few years.  I'm not saying the new hypotheses are necessarily wrong, I am just saying that you can't yet say they are right.  And frankly I would be happy if global warming all turned out to be a big sham.  It would mean the world wouldn't get royally fucked.  But when the results could potentially be catastrophic, you prepare for the worst.  And the burden of proof still rests on those who argue global warming is not man-made based on the scientific evidence we currently have in conjunction with the potential risk.

The Sun is More Active Now than Over the Last 8000 Years

An international team of scientists has reconstructed the Sun's activity over the last 11 millennia and forecasts decreased activity within a few decades

The activity of the Sun over the last 11,400 years, i.e., back to the end of the last ice age on Earth, has now for the first time been reconstructed quantitatively by an international group of researchers led by Sami K. Solanki from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany). The scientists have analyzed the radioactive isotopes in trees that lived thousands of years ago. As the scientists from Germany, Finland, and Switzerland report in the current issue of the science journal "Nature" from October 28, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years. Based on a statistical study of earlier periods of increased solar activity, the researchers predict that the current level of high solar activity will probably continue only for a few more decades.

Fig. 1: A large sunspot observed on the Sun in early September 2004. The field of view encompasses around 45,000 by 30,000 km of the Sun’s surface - the entire earth would fit into the area several times over. Sunspots appear dark because the strong magnetic field in the them suppresses the transport of energy through gas flow. In the central dark area of the sunspot (umbra) the magnetic field is perpendicular to the surface, whereas in the lighter coloured periphery (penumbra) the magnetic field is largely horizontal to the surface. The image was captured by Vasily Zakharov with a one-meter solar telescope on the island of La Palma. The telescope is operated by the Institute for Solar Physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Image: Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research

The research team had already in 2003 found evidence that the Sun is more active now than in the previous 1000 years. A new data set has allowed them to extend the length of the studied period of time to 11,400 years, so that the whole length of time since the last ice age could be covered. This study showed that the current episode of high solar activity since about the year 1940 is unique within the last 8000 years. This means that the Sun has produced more sunspots, but also more flares and eruptions, which eject huge gas clouds into space, than in the past. The origin and energy source of all these phenomena is the Sun's magnetic field.

Since the invention of the telescope in the early 17th century, astronomers have observed sunspots on a regular basis. These are regions on the solar surface where the energy supply from the solar interior is reduced owing to the strong magnetic fields that they harbour. As a consequence, sunspots are cooler by about 1,500 degrees and appear dark in comparison to their non-magnetic surroundings at an average temperature of 5,800 degrees. The number of sunspots visible on the solar surface varies with the 11-year activity cycle of the Sun, which is modulated by long-term variations. For example, there were almost no sunspots seen during the second half of the 17th century.

For many studies concerning the origin of solar activity and its potential effect on long-term variations of Earth's climate, the interval of time since the year 1610, for which systematic records of sunspots exist, is much too short. For earlier times the level of solar activity must be derived from other data. Such information is stored on Earth in the form of "cosmogenic" isotopes. These are radioactive nuclei resulting from collisions of energetic cosmic ray particles with air molecules in the upper atmosphere. One of these isotopes is C-14, radioactive carbon with a half life of 5730 years, which is well known from the C-14 method to determine the age of wooden objects. The amount of C-14 produced depends strongly on the number of cosmic ray particles that reach the atmosphere. This number, in turn, varies with the level of solar activity: during times of high activity, the solar magnetic field provides an effective shield against these energetic particles, while the intensity of the cosmic rays increases when the activity is low. Therefore, higher solar activity leads to a lower production rate of C-14, and vice versa.

By mixing processes in the atmosphere, the C-14 produced by cosmic rays reaches the biosphere and part of it is incorporated in the biomass of trees. Some tree trunks can be recovered from below the ground thousands of years after their death and the content of C-14 stored in their tree rings can be measured. The year in which the C-14 had been incorporated is determined by comparing different trees with overlapping life spans. In this way, one can measure the production rate of C-14 backward in time over 11,400 years, right to the end of the last ice age. The research group have used these data to calculate the variation of the number of sunspots over these 11,400 years. The number of sunspots is a good measure also for the strength of the various other phenomena of solar activity.

The method of reconstructing solar activity in the past, which describes each link in the complex chain connecting the isotope abundances with the sunspot number with consistent quantitative physical models, has been tested and gauged by comparing the historical record of directly measured sunspot numbers with earlier shorter reconstructions on the basis of the cosmogenic isotope Be-10 in the polar ice shields. The models concern the production of the isotopes by cosmic rays, the modulation of the cosmic ray flux by the interplanetary magnetic field (the open solar magnetic flux), as well as the relation between the large-scale solar magnetic field and the sunspot number. In this way, for the first time a quantitatively reliable reconstruction of the sunspot number for the whole time since the end of the last ice age could be obtained.

Fig. 2: Top: Reconstructed sunspot activity (10 year average) for the last 11,400 years based on C-14 data (blue curve) and the directly observed historical sunspot data since 1610 (red curve). The reliable C-14 data ends around the year 1900 so that the sharp increase in sunspot activity in the 20th century does not appear in the graph. The reconstruction shows clearly that a comparable period of high sunspot activity previously existed over 8000 years ago. Below: An enlarged section of the upper graph (hatched area) with several episodes of higher sun activity; comparable to the 20th century.

Image: Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research

Because the brightness of the Sun varies slightly with solar activity, the new reconstruction indicates also that the Sun shines somewhat brighter today than in the 8,000 years before. Whether this effect could have provided a significant contribution to the global warming of the Earth during the last century is an open question. The researchers around Sami K. Solanki stress the fact that solar activity has remained on a roughly constant (high) level since about 1980 - apart from the variations due to the 11-year cycle - while the global temperature has experienced a strong further increase during that time. On the other hand, the rather similar trends of solar activity and terrestrial temperature during the last centuries (with the notable exception of the last 20 years) indicates that the relation between the Sun and climate remains a challenge for further research.

______________

You want to refute this, Akuma? I will accept your chart if you accept mine.

Once again your response is not one little bit on point to the question of whether the bolded statement is accurate.  However, I might respond by saying that if the statement IS accurate then I would feel justified in trusting every national/international scientific body with a stated opinion on the subject over one individual (especially since I'm sure I could dig up equally respected individuals on the other side of the debate).  

Look, Kasz216 came up with an actual reason to doubt that statement (see our discussion in previous posts).  Either just get behind him, or come up with a real reason on your own, or admit you can't and move on to attacking something else instead of pretending to be on point to this particular point.  

You needed examples of the extreme weather conditions, I guess taking two seconds to click on the links I provided was to taxing then. But then again you cut them out when quoting so hey, they must not have been important enough.

Oh and the globe is getting warmer, it's the heat that will cause a climate shift in many parts of the world, that's why global warming is an incorrect term. Who's feeding me this propaganda then? The scientists who run a quest for knowledge not propaganda? No, the only propaganda is the media overblowing it. It's like that old saying PHd students have about the media "A clever mans words published in a silly salesmans words". (or something to that effect)

I wont say climate change isn't happening, because it is, all my point is that the media has overblown it a lot. But that doesn't stop the fact that we have to make very small changes to make a difference.

I'll never criticize good experiments and data.  And this looks pretty sound.  But conclusive?  That's too soon to say.  And extrapolating things like this in the past can be a difficult thing to do and typically requires several different indicators to demonstrate that the predicted data is accurate.

So, yes, this calls the hypothesis behind global warming proposed by the majority of scientists into question.  But does it disprove that hypothesis?  No, not until this one is subject to more peer review.  There is no such thing as a perfect scientific model.  Almost all scientific models that have ever predicted anything with reliability have been revised significantly, often multiple times.  So claiming one article disproves a hypothesis is a very premature thing to do in the scientific world.

Like I said, if global warming is a big scam, then we all benefit.  I don't personally benefit if man-made global warming is a reality.  But we all lose if it is.  As of now, we should still be thinking in terms of dealing with the worst case scenario.

This is some pretty good data.  And this is something the sunspot theory can be tested against compared to average global temperatures:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/solar_minimum09.html

The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.

2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73 percent). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008.

Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days (87 percent).

It adds up to one inescapable conclusion: "We're experiencing a very deep solar minimum," says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Compare to this data:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090116163206.htm

2008 Global Temperature Ties As Eighth Warmest On Record

ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2009) — The year 2008 tied with 2001 as the eighth warmest year on record for the Earth, based on the combined average of worldwide land and ocean surface temperatures through December, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.  For December alone, the month also ranked as the eighth warmest globally, for the combined land and ocean surface temperature. The assessment is based on records dating back to 1880.

So do I consider the sunspot theory conclusive?  No.  Do I think it is plausible?  Yes.  Has it disproven the previous model?  No, not until it has been further tested with more data and by more people.

I mean seriously, why shouldn't you be as skeptical about this sunsport theory as you are about the previous model?  Scientists are always more skeptical about newer hypotheses than older ones.  That's really how the scientific community works.  The newer hypotheses that can endure intense scrutiny will survive, much like natural selection.  The other ones that seem plausible at first but turn out to be a bunch of bunk do not.