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The Forum > Article Comments > The shift in state of the atmosphere > Comments

The shift in state of the atmosphere : Comments

By Andrew Glikson, published 11/2/2011

Research says that our emissions are well outside previous history and the effect will be worse than we have experienced before.

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"Climate models are not intended to explain the past. They are meant to predict the future. The belief that the world has not been warming since 1998 is of course nonsense since every decade since 1960 has been warmer than the one before it and the year 2010 was the warmest on record."

What can I say? The first sentence goes in the draw for 'silliest alarmist comment of the week'. (Don't get your hopes up, though -- there's always plenty of competition.) If a model can't accurately reproduce what we know has happened already, what reason do we have to believe that it will accurately predict what will happen in the future?

As for the second, you do realise that this is not incompatible with temperature flatlining in 1998? If temperature was going up in the 1990s but stopped going up around 1998, then all we need is one slightly warm year in the next decade to show a 'rise' -- albeit a statistically insignificant, utterly trivial one, probably due to weather stations in remote areas being situated near to air conditioners or taxi-ing aircraft?

And who says 2010 was the warmest year on record? See http://tinyurl.com/459ngkb for some alternative views.
Posted by Jon J, Friday, 11 February 2011 8:44:48 PM
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The author does not inspire confidence, as he relies heavily on assertions. For example, he asserts: "Because CO2 is cumulative, with atmospheric residence time on the scale of centuries to millennia, stabilisation of the climate through only small incremental reduction in emissions may not be sufficient to avoid runaway climate change and possible tipping points."

The above CO2 residence times contrast vastly with the measurements of 5 to 10 years reported in the 1990s by Tom Segalstad and by 35 other refereed papers ( see http://www.co2web.info/ESEF3VO2.pdf). The IPCC asserts 50 to 200 years. Furthermore, Segalstad concludes that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is 4% maximum, not the 21% claimed by the IPCC.
Posted by Raycom, Friday, 11 February 2011 10:22:39 PM
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Atmosphere effects will be highly noticeable well before the 50 years you mentioned Hasbeen, by which time, you and I may well have departed this world.
Posted by weareunique, Friday, 11 February 2011 10:59:15 PM
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What do the following have in common?

The effects of passive smoking.
Acid rain caused by industries.
The hole in the ozone layer.
The attempted reintroduction of DDT into the environment.
The introduction of GM food and patenting of crops.
Human induced global warming?

They have all had their official science strategically blurred by self-interest groups directed by think-tanks and funded by those industries who don't want further government regulation and want the free market to flourish.

For example, if Philip Morris could kick off their "passive smoking is harmless" campaign with $45Million for "their" scientists all those years ago, how much backing can the oil and coal industries scrape together?

Despite what people may think, the scientific proof behind the dangers of passive smoking is officially unproven and was thrown out of the US Supreme Court when an attempt at introducing Federal Laws was made.
All subsequent legislation is local or regional and based on controlling behaviour, rather than officially improving public health.
Is this a reasonable outcome for society?

The global warming debate is just another installment in the same ongoing strategy.
Posted by wobbles, Saturday, 12 February 2011 1:35:45 AM
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It seems a number of commenters here don't understand the concept of "residence time".

In the atmosphere, it refers to the average time before a molecule is reabsorbed into the top ocean layer. The top ocean layer equilibrates quickly to the atmospheric concentration, but has a very slow equilibration time with the deep ocean. Therefore, any anomaly between the atmosphere and mixed ocean layer takes a long time to disappear. This time is > 100 yrs.

This is the time that some people simply don't understand (unintentionally) or distort and misrepresent (intentionally).

Just to be clear (Curmudgeon et al), the mixing time for the atmosphere and ocean layer to come into equilibrium is short (around 5 years) as you suggest (there is nothing to dispute Curmudgeon). However, the longer time-scales of 50-200 years are for the mixing into the deep ocean. Furthermore, there is a long 'tail' of the response (>1000 years) due to the slow mixing of very deep ocean waters.

AoM
Skeptical Science has a post on it here:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-residence-time.htm

malrob
You may have missed it:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11572#197610

Would you please tell how you think Professor Karoly should respond to your list of questions and assertions.
Posted by bonmot, Saturday, 12 February 2011 5:46:59 AM
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Bonmot

Thank you for the reference which may be of more interest to Curmudgeon et al ?

My concern is that use of anthropomorphic CO2 concentration as an indicator of future temperature is misleading since it excludes the effects of feedbacks induced by global warming. I argue that CO2-e would be a more appropriate indicator since it takes into account the effects of all greenhouse gases, including those emitted by feedbacks.

I would further argue that as temperature continues to rise in polar regions, melting of seabed and land based clathrates and permafrost will accelerate. That could result in significant and relatively sudden emission of methane and other greenhouse gases resulting in a surge in average global temperature. This would accelerate melting and collapse of Greenland and WAIS.

My concern is that CO2 concentration only results in under-estimation of its effect on temperature. A reference arguing for preference of CO2 rather than CO2-e would be most welcome.
Posted by Agnostic of Mittagong, Saturday, 12 February 2011 8:42:52 AM
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