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Berkeley Project finds more Global Warming

Miguelito

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Why? Similar findings have been peer-reviewed for decades without convincing any skeptics. I think Muller is trying to be as transparent as possible about the whole analysis.

I realize that. :) But the most transparent thing he could do would be go through peer review process, publish the papers, and then publish the reviewer comments with them. Putting out the paper before it's gone through peer review is unusual.
 

Snick

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You've responded to my joky points, not the stuff about Medieval warming it seems! The point was that 4 degrees is a lot and will cause big effects (or there would be no point raising those dikes!)

CO2 added about 4 % of the aditive by the greenhouse effect over the theoretical base temperature back in Medieval times also. I will have to look this stuff up again to refresh my memory.

If you want to worry about the Netherlands, then worry about the west ice shield of Antarctica. It sits on some high points, and without those places that pin it it would slide into the Pacific Ocean and raise sea level by 50 feet, or so. The initialsplash would raise sea level by a couple hundred feet in a series of waves. That would take out all coastal cities. If you ever hear of the ice shield sliding or breakiong up, then head for the hills as fast as possible. It would taje a few hours to travel around the world, but it will do in all of the oasts.
 

SPMiller

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We don't have as goos an idea of what the temperature was anywhere back then, but we can infer from vegetation that nearly all or the Earth was warmer, and it was considerably warmer in some areas.



You can believe that if you like, but it is an unproven assertion that contains some assumptions that are almost certainly false. Since we don't have a collection of Earths on which we can experiment about climate, We don't actually know what the Earth's temperature woul be now, if there were less CO2 in the atmosphere.
I'll go ahead and spoil the surprise: the temperature would be lower.

How much lower? That's the question.
 

Snick

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I'll go ahead and spoil the surprise: the temperature would be lower.
Maybe, but we don't know. There may be other factors, and we don't have a collection of planets on which we can experiment.
 

Torgo

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We don't have as goos an idea of what the temperature was anywhere back then, but we can infer from vegetation that nearly all or the Earth was warmer, and it was considerably warmer in some areas.

Well, the paper that contradicts that assessment is here, but if we're not going to trust the data from that far back, let's stop bringing up the Medieval Warm period?

You can believe that if you like, but it is an unproven assertion that contains some assumptions that are almost certainly false. Since we don't have a collection of Earths on which we can experiment about climate, We don't actually know what the Earth's temperature woul be now, if there were less CO2 in the atmosphere.

We do have satellites, however, which for 40 years have been watching the greenhouse effect happening in real time - more longwave radiation being trapped in our atmosphere, and at precisely the wavelengths that CO2 and methane absorb. These are measurable, empirical effects - CO2's influence is not an unquantifiable mystery.

We've also got really good models for things like radiative forcing and climate sensitivity to particular gases. How do we know they're good? There's a test, called 'hindcasting'. You set up the model as if we were back in 1900, and then try to predict how the last century would go. What happens is, the predictions match up really well with the observed facts. If anything, the predictions turn out a bit more conservative and less alarming than reality. So although we don't know what things would be like with less CO2, and we can't experiment on a real alternate earth, we have the next best thing. I think we can look at our models with a lot of confidence.
 

Snick

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Well, the paper that contradicts that assessment is here, but if we're not going to trust the data from that far back, let's stop bringing up the Medieval Warm period?

That looked like conclusion rather than raw data.

We do have satellites, however, which for 40 years have been watching the greenhouse effect happening in real time - more longwave radiation being trapped in our atmosphere, and at precisely the wavelengths that CO2 and methane absorb. These are measurable, empirical effects - CO2's influence is not an unquantifiable mystery.

The daa that I have seen shows the rise in CO2 levels to follow the temperature rise.

We've also got really good models for things like radiative forcing and climate sensitivity to particular gases. How do we know they're good? There's a test, called 'hindcasting'. You set up the model as if we were back in 1900, and then try to predict how the last century would go. What happens is, the predictions match up really well with the observed facts. If anything, the predictions turn out a bit more conservative and less alarming than reality. So although we don't know what things would be like with less CO2, and we can't experiment on a real alternate earth, we have the next best thing. I think we can look at our models with a lot of confidence.

Models are simply models.They do not explain anything, and they often contradict other models. Is like an investment fund hat uses a model of investing and applies it to the past. The reultsusually show that the fund would have done much beter than the market. When they put the model into current use it never does as well.

Before you put a lot of confidence in models you should decide which model you believe is right.
 

Maxx

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We don't actually know what the Earth's temperature woul be now, if there were less CO2 in the atmosphere.

We know that the temperature would be about 1 degree less on average than it is now and we know that as well as
we know anything about planets and atmospheres and gases and radiation and absorption. See the articles on the Berkeley project which just confirmed this and is the reason for this thread, for example.
 

Maxx

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The daa that I have seen shows the rise in CO2 levels to follow the temperature rise.

That doesn't seem to be what is happening at the moment. See the Berkely study and the articles this thread started with.
 

Snick

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We know that the temperature would be about 1 degree less on average than it is now and we know that as well as
we know anything about planets and atmospheres and gases and radiation and absorption. See the articles on the Berkeley project which just confirmed this and is the reason for this thread, for example.

i have read about that, and, while in theory CO2 adds 4% to the temperature above what the Earth would be without any greenhouse, that is a theoretical result; no one has removed all of the greenhouse gases to check.

As I wrote earlier, the article at the top of this thread does not contain evidence; it contains conclusions that are lleged to have been drawn from the evidence.
 

Maxx

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I realize that. :) But the most transparent thing he could do would be go through peer review process, publish the papers, and then publish the reviewer comments with them. Putting out the paper before it's gone through peer review is unusual.

The whole point of the Berkeley project is to have every step of the analysis be as open as possible. Some people don't seem to think peer review is as good as it should be, so the project is putting everything (absolutely everything) out there to be seen by anyone. So yes, it is unusual, but given the unusual responses to analytic work on global warming, maybe it makes sense.
 

Maxx

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