What do we have...here and now...climate change or weather variations...?
Currently, we still have 4 recognisable seasons... Summer is hot...Winter is cold. Sometimes...Summers are a bit hotter than usual. sometimes a bit colder than usual. We all see the posts here...Oh..its colder today than usual, so there can't be global warming. What stage of climate reversal do we have to get to, to label it climate change, not just a change in the weather?
2010-07-09T21:12:14Z
@ Dana...you have labelled it climate change...I suggest it is not climate change... Would you care to address the question.
2010-07-09T21:17:12Z
Specifically, not every year has been warmer than the previous...and has climate change only existed since Kyoto?. Even the most strident AGWer will have to acknowledge that a 13 year trend is not grounds for unequivocal proof of a climate change.
2010-07-09T23:58:23Z
You guys are unreal. The personal attacks only highlight to me the paucity of your arguments. One in a thousand would have been aware of the existence of the IPCC prior to Kyoto. So if the IPCC was formed in 1988 a mere 7 years before Kyoto, was climate change an issue before 1988? I was around then and have no recollection of it. Of course, that was around the time we were coming out of the New Ice Age scare. So thanks for nothing, you didn't or couldn't answer a simple question. Worse still, I'm presented with a graph from Dana that clearly shows no warming since 1997. I may have to go elsewhere for intelligent debate
2010-07-10T02:31:15Z
OK..it's a bit quiet here, so I'll have another go. I was irritated as no one went close to actually answering my question. I thought it was a straight forward question, not designed to trick . I'm sure climate change experts here are aware of periods in the history of this planet when there was ice at the Equator and rainforests at the Poles. Now THAT is what I call climate change...not a fraction of a degree temperature rise over a century. Also, anyone can Google to find out the history of recent climate change debate. The point I was making, is that in 1988 (I don't know your age so do not know if you are aware), there was no public debate on climate change. The Cold War was defrosting, the Wall was coming down, no one was considering the end of days through climate change. Finally...did you want me to give an in depth analysis of your graph? If you are to convince the general public to take climate change seriously, a "lull" over the last 13 years is not going to help your cause.
mick t2010-07-10T01:24:21Z
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The answer to your question is - both. Global climate is a dynamic process and, as such, is always in a state of change, always has been, always will be as long as we have an atmosphere. The one thing it never is, is static. Whether the climate is warming or cooling depends on your baseline and time frame, that is when you start counting and what time intervals you are using, annual, decade, century, millenia ect. Teasing out long term trends from highly variable short term data is in reality a futile activity because you can produce any result you want, and would no be done if there wasn't so much money and political power attached to to it. So the believers of AGW choose those parameters that support their hypothesis, and vice versa.
And, of course, we always have weather variation on any time scale you care to mention, daily, weekly, monthly, season, annual, decade, and on and on.
>>Currently, we still have 4 recognisable seasons...<< More or less... Spring and Fall are the less part...
>>Summer is hot...Winter is cold.<< That's way too technical an argument for me... Can you dumb it down a bit?
>>Sometimes...Summers are a bit hotter than usual. sometimes a bit colder than usual.<< Where? It sounds like you are talking about how someone would perceive local weather. As you know, local weather does not matter on the global scale.
>>We all see the posts here...Oh..its colder today than usual, so there can't be global warming.<< Yes, that's a classic.
>>What stage of climate reversal do we have to get to, to label it climate change, not just a change in the weather?<< You mean like when the planet is getting warmer and setting records year after year? I guess you'd have to see something like that.
>>So if the IPCC was formed in 1988 a mere 7 years before Kyoto, was climate change an issue before 1988? I was around then and have no recollection of it. Of course, that was around the time we were coming out of the New Ice Age scare.<< Um... I have drawings of a car that I sketched out first in HS in 1984. Before I graduated HS, the engine I was pondering was a turbine powering a generator and using batteries... In other words, a hybrid. Have any idea why I would think that was a clever idea? You'd be right if you thought to yourself that I'd seen the idea for hybrid cars in a magazine (have no clue which one at this point). I remember the idea was to lower emissions by making cars more fuel efficient... Oh, and I graduated in '88. I was well aware of the possibilities of Climate Change back then. Being a kid, of course I didn't know what to make of it, as I wasn't that into science, just into cars and the physics of such.
>>Worse still, I'm presented with a graph from Dana that clearly shows no warming since 1997.<< considering that 1998 (which is what I assume you meant) was a very anomalous year, it's...ignorant to claim that there is no warming since then. Look at the 5 year mean. It's still warming...
>>I may have to go elsewhere for intelligent debate<< You may want to phrase that differently. Maybe, "I may have to go elsewhere for intellectually comparable debate." or something...
>>The point I was making, is that in 1988 (I don't know your age so do not know if you are aware), there was no public debate on climate change.<< RR had been in office for seven years... Also, maybe you remember, but not many people had network access back then.
To your point that there was no debate prior to 1988, I can only answer that I was made aware in college in 1979. The early climate models of the late 1960s were predicting warming and the physics had been worked out in the 1800s
The first publicity appeared in the magazine Modern Mechanics in 1932. Global warming was then also presented in Popular Mechanics and Time Magazine in 1953.
That you were not aware only indicates that struggle by climate scientists to get the world to understand that the risk was real. Al Gore finally made the public aware through Inconvenient Truth and that was most people's introduction to the subject. I was very surprised by the reaction the film because I had though most people were already aware, but obviously I was wrong in that.
<<and has climate change only existed since Kyoto?. .>>
What on earth are you talking about? The Kyoto Protocol was initiated in 1997. The IPCC was formed in 1988. Guess what the "CC" in IPCC stands for. The term "climate change" has been in use since at least the late 1970's. It is not a replacement for the term "global warming", it is just a broader description. It encompasses not only the warming but also the changes in precipitation, wind patterns, storm intensities, and other changes which occur as a result of the warming.
<<Even the most strident AGWer will have to acknowledge that a 13 year trend is not grounds for unequivocal proof of a climate change??>>
Again, what are you talking about? It is not a "13 year trend". Thermometers existed before 1997, believe it or not. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
EDIT:
<<<The personal attacks only highlight to me the paucity of your arguments. >>
What "personal attacks" are you talking about? I see none in this entire thread. The fact that people disagree with your blatantly false claims doesn't mean that we are making attacks against you personally. Some people just get irritated when people say things that aren't true. Some people value honesty, and some don't, so I'm not one to judge you if you don't. To each their own.
<<<One in a thousand would have been aware of the existence of the IPCC prior to Kyoto.>>>
No, because 999 out of 1000 people in the year 2010 are not ignorant of the ability to make a 2 second Google search in order to check the accuracy of a claim before making it.
<<was climate change an issue before 1988?>>
Here is a paper from the journal Science, from the year 1975: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/189/4201/460
<<I was around then and have no recollection of it. Of course, that was around the time we were coming out of the New Ice Age scare.>>
You're talking about a few popular media articles. See Myth #1 for a good summary: http://www.greenoptions.com/wiki/global-warming-myths
<<Worse still, I'm presented with a graph from Dana that clearly shows no warming since 1997.>>
There was also "no warming" from 1940 to 1950, and from 1960 to 1975, and from 1980 to 1983. You're zooming in on a tiny lull in the warming, a lull which is comparable in magnitude to many which came before it. (Not to mention that 2005 was in fact the hottest year on record, 0.23 C warmer than 1997.) The climate warms for a few years, then slows, then warms again. It has been happening like this for 100 years. No one said the climate should warm at a steady rate year after year. There is a steady forcing with other, temporary changes occurring on shorter timescales. Focusing on the most recent decline in a saw tooth graph is about as dishonest as it gets.
<<I may have to go elsewhere for intelligent debate>>
Right. That's why you don't even know the most basic history of climate change research. Why don't you read this, and come back for an "intelligent debate". Intelligence is hard to recognize in someone who doesn't have a most basic knowledge of the subject they're debating. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
But first, you might want to learn what the Dunning–Kruger effect is, and see if you recognize yourself a little bit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
As always bob you show the same trend claims everyone is insulting you and no particular interest in the facts, how anyone who want to claim even a vague understanding of graph reading can claim the graph posted by Dana http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif does not show steady warming over the last century, is beyond me. The over rise rise is blatantly obvious PDO cooling easily explain the drops in the 40s and 60s as the strongest El Nino in a century easily explain the strong rise in global temperature in 97/98.
"Finally...did you want me to give an in depth analysis of your graph?" Yes please I could do with a laugh!