Global Warming is a Scam

I suppose you're right. But it depends on the circumstances. If the cause was sunspots, then I guess it would be hard for us to do anything about the sun. We might have a moral obligation to do whatever we could, but maybe we couldn't do anything.

I suppose there are just too many varieties of deniers to keep track of them all.In the end, though, something must still be donemorally and ethically speakingfor the folks affected, whether you attribute what is happening to global climate change or not.Dry fields are starving people. Rising oceans are flooding homes.It is still all about what we can do and not at all about what Mother Nature is doing.

And I suppose that there is a common error that involves many of them. If they talk like that, then they are idiots, and we may ignore every stupid thing that they say.

Brutal July heat a new U.S. recordHottest year on record for just about all of continental US.

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The July heat wave that wilted crops, shriveled rivers and fueled wildfires officially went into the books Wednesday as the hottest single month on record for the continental United States.
The average temperature across the Lower 48 was 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 3.3 degrees above the 20th-century average, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration reported. That edged out the previous high mark, set in 1936, by two-tenths of a degree, NOAA said.
In addition, the seven months of 2012 to date are the warmest of any year on record and were drier than average as well, NOAA said. U.S. forecasters started keeping records in 1895.

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It is fine to cut down on green house gases which will no doubt help, but the food shortages and the rise of the oceans is something that will happen regardless of cut backs in GHG's. I just don't see a lot of thought going in to dealing with this pro-actively.By the way, the only state that didn't suffer through this extreme heat is my next door neighbour. Here it has actually been a comparatively cool spring and summer.

Even some major skeptics changed their mind. One physicist actually did his own analysis to come to an independent method and conclusionOpinion | The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic - The New York Times

Lets not forget our fisheries.

If current warming is due to the greenhouse effect then we should see a higher rate of warming in the upper reaches of the troposphere than we do at the surface. We have not seen anything happening like this at all. This should indicate that the greenhouse effect is not the cause of current warming.

The only thing that will keep temperatures from rising is more low level cloud cover. The 20th century had over 8 percent lower low level cloud cover than the 19th century did. This is the cause of the .6C increase in temperature during that period.

No, we should see the exact opposite - warmer temperatures at the surface and a cooler troposphere, because that's what greenhouse gases do - reduce the net heat flow between the warm surface and the cool troposphere and thereby reduce the amount of the surface's heat that escapes into space. A climate that retains more of the sun's heat will warm. Hence, global warming.And as you've pointed out, that's what we see - increasing surface temperatures and a cooling troposphere. If the troposphere were warming, that would cool the surface, not warm it. Basic physics, here.

Wouldn't it be terrifying if warmer temperatures reduced the amount of low level cloud cover? It could be possible to create a positive feedback. I'd like to see the evidence you have found that supports this claim. Here is what I managed to find The possible connection between ionization in the atmosphere by cosmic rays and low level clouds E. Palle, C.J. Butler, K. O’Brien

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We show that, under the most favorable conditions, a reduction in low cloud cover since the late 19th century, combined with the direct forcing by solar irradiance can explain a significant part of the global warming over the past century, but not all. However, this computation assumes that there is no feedback or changes in cloud at other levels.

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Last year a researcher Roy Spencer published a paper analyzing cloud cover over the period from 2000 to 2010. He suggested that random increases in cloud cover cause climate warming and that the sources of the increase were chaos in the climate system.Here is a link to an article describing the paper and some of the criticism of the paper.Climate Change Debunked? Not So Fast | Live Science

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Spencer agreed that his work could not disprove the existence of manmade global warming. But he dismissed research on the ancient climate, calling it a "gray science."

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Foreveryoung goes where even climate change skeptic Spencer wouldn't go when he claims that cloud cover is the only thing that could affect global temperatures. I doubt he can find any support for that.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

This proposition is debunked in numerous places reachable by a google search and I'm not going to take on the science in it myself unless no one else does it. But the proposition does have another quality that I find interesting. Implicit in foreveryoung's statement is the idea that climate scientists and physicists are complete idiots. In order for this statement to be true, climate scientists must have ignored or lied about facts and science that a fool could spot in a heart beat.A rational thing to do when despite having little to no training in an area, and you come up with or encounter ideas like this and are tempted to glom onto them, is to do some research to make sure that your confirmation bias isn't being engaged. I know it is attractive to jump on every apparent piece of evidence that supports your current position, but by doing a little homework you can avoid the taste of Corvidae and the corresponding hit to your reputation, such as it is.

The Oceans hold at least 1000 times more heat than the atmosphere.If the ocean is absorbing extra reflected long wave radiation due to anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases, we should see a corresponding increase in oceanic heat content. The ARGO network of 3200 floating robot sensors that have been in full deployment since 2003 show a decrease in oceanic heat content since then. How is that possible if the oceans are absorbing the increased amount of long wave radiation due to an increase in GHGs?One reason is thatlong wave radiation is only capable of penetrating a few microns past the ocean surface. This does not warm the ocean because of the latent heat of evaporation from the ocean surface. Evaporation is a continual process over the ocean surface. When water changes state from water to vapor, energy is required. Where does that energy come from? It will either come from the water or the air depending on which is warmer. Since,as a whole, the oceans are warmer than the atmosphere, that energy comes from the water, and the surface water in particular.Any energy supplied by absorption of long wave radiation therefore quickly goes into supplying this needed energy for the change of state from water to vapor.For a more intensive explanation of what I just stated, see the paper by (Roy Clark,2010) in Energy and Environment volume 21 number 4. From that paper: It is impossible for a 1.7 W.m−2 increase [predicted by the IPCC due to man-made greenhouse gases] in downward ‘clear sky’ atmospheric LWIR flux to heat the oceans." (p. 196).Although the purpose of another paper in Nature I am about to mention was not to support my above claims, it did just that. The paper was "Thermal skin effect of the surface ocean and its implication for CO2 uptake". It was published in Nature 358, 27 August 1992, pages 738-740. This paper shows that the evaporative cooling of the ocean skin from increased downwelling infrared radiation allows increased uptake of CO2 due to increased solubility of CO2 at lower temperatures. In case you missed it, that means downwelling infrared radiation causes evaporative cooling of the ocean surface. That means that instead of penetrating deep into the ocean and heating the ocean, downwelling infrared radiation instead only penetrates the surface and cools the surface.Another paper published today in Global and Planetary Change by (O. Humlum et al,2012) states "overall global temperature change sequence of events appears to be from 1) the ocean surface to 2) the land surface to 3) the lower troposphere. Another way of stating this is that Ocean surface temperatures are the main drivers in global air temperature changes.If the ocean surface is the main driver in changing global air temperatures, and the ocean derives all of its heat from the sun and not from reflected long wave infrared radiation, what role does increasing amounts of said infrared radiation play in global warming? Answer: none.

Other important points in that paper include:Global changes in atmospheric CO2 lags changes in global sea surface temperature by 11-12 months.Global changes in atmospheric CO2 lags changes in global air surface temperatures by 9.5-10 months.Global changes in atmospheric CO2 lags changes in global lower tropospheric temperature by 9 months.Global changes in ocean temperatures appear to explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980.

Just a few comments to make here.... Now this is fascinating, I may have to rethink my whole opinion on climate change.... oh wait, just looked, this is bullshitFrom Page not found | Argo But what do they know, I mean they are only the people actually looking at ocean temps. I did notice that a good amount of your post is from:THE HOCKEY SCHTICK: Why Greenhouse Gases Won't Heat the Oceans (I assume your writing?)Now on the Robertson & Watson (1992) paper from Nature. You might have a point if research on the subject ended there. I am sure in your exhaustive research on sea surface temperatures you must have seen the paper by McGillis and Wanninkhof (2006) suggesting that local increases in CO2 solubility due to wind driven evaporative cooling (not sure why you thought that infrared radiation caused this, but okay) and decreases in CO2 solubility when there is no wind and infrared radiation is warming the skin-layer have both been overestimated and the overall effect is negligible. Takahashi et al (2009) showed that because of evaporation the micro-increase in salinity at this skin-layer cancelled out the increased solubility effect of lowered temperatures.I cannot access the 2012 Humlum paper from where I am at, but I will take a look when I return from the field. If it is anything like his Humlum et al (2011) paper I do not expect to be impressed. You remember that one, right? Where the authors suggest that the moon is an important cause of global warming?Humlum, O., J. Solheim, and K. Stordahl (2011) Identifying natural contributions to late Holocene climate change, Global and Planetary Change, vol. 79, pp. 145-156.McGillis, W. R. and R. Wanninkhof, (2006), Aqueous CO2 gradients for air-sea flux estimates, Marine Chemistry 98 (1), 100-108.Takahashi, T., S. C. Sutherland, R. Wanninkhof, C. Sweeney, et al. (2009), Climatological mean and decadal change in surface ocean pCO2, and net sea-air CO2 flux over the global oceans, Deep Sea Research (II) 56 (8-10), 554-577.