Could we be wrong about global warming?

Could the best climate models -- the ones used to predict global warming -- all be wrong?

Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery.

"In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record," says oceanographer Gerald Dickens, study co-author and professor of Earth Science at Rice University in Houston. "There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

During the warming period, known as the “Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum” (PETM), for unknown reasons, the amount of carbon in Earth's atmosphere rose rapidly. This makes the PETM one of the best ancient climate analogues for present-day Earth.

As the levels of carbon increased, global surface temperatures also rose dramatically during the PETM. Average temperatures worldwide rose by around 13 degrees in the relatively short geological span of about 10,000 years.

The conclusion, Dickens said, is that something other than carbon dioxide caused much of this ancient warming. "Some feedback loop or other processes that aren't accounted for in these models -- the same ones used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for current best estimates of 21st century warming -- caused a substantial portion of the warming that occurred during the PETM."

In their most recent assessment report in 2007, the IPCC predicted the Earth would warm by anywhere from 2 to 11 degrees by the end of the century due to increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused by human industrial activity. SOURCE
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Say it ain't so. Al Gore and his henchmen of global warming experts can't possibly be so wrong.

Temps rose nearly 13 degrees in a short peorid of time way back before man started cars and factories? What back then caused the temps to rise so dramatically? Could it have been something else? Like maybe the natural cycle of the planet or even the solar system?

That man might not be responsible for global warming has got to be a blow to the ego to all of mankind

Please. Big Al is making a bundle on his scam. Don't screw him up.
Global Warming Plot Thickens: Gore Joins Venture Capital Group | NewsBusters.org

If I am not mistaken there was a period of "Global Warming" in medieval Europe just before the Great Plague hit. Farmers were actually able to grow grapes in the northern most parts of England.

Then came what is known historically as the Little Ice Age...

Mr R

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Global warming slick idea to get into pocketbooks | Bemidji Pioneer | Bemidji, Minnesota

I think our planet does many, many things we as yet don't understand. I don't think we have global warming. I think in a few years we are going to get snow in July again.

It is what it is. I believe that the earth goes through its natural cycles and nobody is going to completely understand because the cycles last for so long, that anyone that was there for the beginning of the cycle is not going to be there for the end of it... or the middle of it for that matter.

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Gore's Nobel was for politics

Published: Saturday, July 11, 2009 at 4:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, July 10, 2009 at 1:19 p.m.

To The Editor: A letter writer recently stated that Al Gore won a Nobel Prize for discovering that carbon dioxide causes climate change. The writer failed to state that Al Gore won the Peace Prize, not the Science Prize. The Peace Prize is politically driven, with unfathomable award criteria. It was even awarded to Yasser Arafat, the peace obstructionist.

Carbon dioxide-caused global warming is a political movement, which is why Al Gore won the award. It started out as a legitimate scientific investigation, but dissenting opinions are no longer tolerated. It's a theory based on computer simulations of future climate change that have never been verified experimentally. Many reputable scientists, including winners of the Nobel Science Prize, question the theory.

The Democrat Party has long sought an energy tax as another source of revenue to fund social programs. Bill Clinton proposed a BTU tax in 1993. It passed the House but not the Senate. The real purpose of the Cap and Trade bill recently passed by the House is to create another source of revenue for the government — in the depths of a recession. That's irresponsible. Heath Shuler voted yes. Remember that in the next election. Tell Senators Burr and Hagan to vote no.

Ed Destremps

Flat Rock
http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/...s-for-politics

I hate to revive this thread after such a long time, but I believe that many are reaching an inaccurate conclusion based on Dr Dicken's paper. He does not conclude that CO2 was not the initial climate driver for the PETM. He reaches the conclusion that ""Some feedback loop or other processes that aren't accounted for in these models -- the same ones used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for current best estimates of 21st century warming -- caused a substantial portion of the warming that occurred during the PETM."

Here is a much better synopsis of the journal article from Science Daily.

So what the paper does state is that, after the rise of the CO2 level (about 70%) initially warmed the climate, a feed back mechanism kicked in that dramatically increased the temperature rise, which could not be accounted for by the CO2 alone. So if the IPCC and Al Gore erred, it was by being too conservative in their projections. And seeing as the current projection of CO2 accumulation will have the atmospheric level doubling by 2100, if this paper is correct, we (well, our children) are in for one heck of a climate ride.

Well-said, NVH.

That feedback mechanism involves events like methane gas released from thawing arctic permafrost and solar absorbtion by oceans previously covered by ice and snow. I find it astonishing that naysayers treat climate change so nonchalantly . . . as if we live on an indestructable planet. Sheesh.

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DD, there is no longer a debate as to whether climate change is happening. Most credible scientists have long-since agreed on that. The debate has shifted to climate change's causes.

Your point is mute.

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Silence is golden but duck tape is silver.

There is absolutely a debate. And why do you say climate change? It used to be global warming until proven wrong.

The only debate exists within politically driven, nonscientific circles. The scientific community uses the phrase "climate change" to educate the public: Climate change results from global warming. Scientist have evolved their terminology because of scientifically illiterate right-wing entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck who purposefully mislead a relatively small portion of the US population into believing that global warming should produce "global warming" when that's not the case. For this, I am eternally grateful.

Here's a primer on global warming's effects on the thermohaline oceanic circulation.

"Most of the studies and debates on potential climate change, along with its ecological and economic impacts, have focused on the ongoing buildup of industrial greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a gradual increase in global temperatures. This line of thinking, however, fails to consider another potentially disruptive climate scenario. It ignores recent and rapidly advancing evidence that Earth’s climate repeatedly has shifted abruptly and dramatically in the past, and is capable of doing so in the future."
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12455&tid=282&cid=9986

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[quote=wrsny337;137496][font=Book Antiqua][size=3]Scientist have evolved their terminology because of scientifically illiterate right-wing entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck who purposefully mislead a relatively small portion of the US population into believing that global warming should produce "global warming" when that's not the case.
It ignores recent and rapidly advancing evidence that Earth’s climate repeatedly has shifted abruptly and dramatically in the past, and is capable of doing so in the future."[quote]

So they had automobiles in the past?

Yes global warming should not produce global warming. What a ridiculous statement.

So, we agree the climate is changing. It has changed before. Occasionally dramatically.

What we do not agree on is that we human beings can do anything to change it, or whether it is even desirable to change/interrupt/disturb/possibly make worse a normal cyclical climate change.

So let me get this right......scientists made up the term "global warming" when they really meant something else so that the "illiterate" could understand the concept of change.......interesting

[quote=daisy-dog;137533][quote=wrsny337;137496]Scientist have evolved their terminology because of scientifically illiterate right-wing entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck who purposefully mislead a relatively small portion of the US population into believing that global warming should produce "global warming" when that's not the case.
It ignores recent and rapidly advancing evidence that Earth’s climate repeatedly has shifted abruptly and dramatically in the past, and is capable of doing so in the future."[size=3][font=Book Antiqua]
Did I say that? No.

However, the Limbaugh Comedy Hour and the Beck Belly Laugh have attempted to indoctrinate scientifically ignorant folk into believing that Global Warming (the warming of the entire planet) leades to global warming (the warming of the planet's entirety) . . . which is nonsense.

Can you tell me the difference between climate change and weather?

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[quote=wrsny337;137579][quote=daisy-dog;137533]simply put Climate Change = long term/large area weather = short term/small area

or to put it another way..... el nino effects the weather in small areas..... volcanic activity effects the climate

Well, on which we do not agree, is whether human beings have caused climate change. If we have, the we can change it.

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