NEWSFLASH :

Here is an about to be published paper in the "Journal of Geophysical Research" by atmospheric scientist Stephen E. Schwartz of the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf

In short, the new research concludes that the Earth's climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the IPCC assumes, and doubling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would result in a 1.1 C increase in average temperature which is 63% lower than the IPCC's estimate of 3 C for a doubling of CO2.

"The consensus is about to be overturned In One Fell Swoop !"

http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDc0MTY2NmVlOWNiNjc4ODk0NGUzMDE2YTRlMjMxNzc=

MARK - this paper is way more complicated than 1 + 1 +. . . . . so beware !!!

WW or GSAC or whoever you are - This is REAL SCIENCE, so please "GIVE IT A CHANCE !"

BYE BYE IPCC ! BYE BYE AL GORE (who, by the way, is Chairman and partial owner of General Investment Management Corp. which stands to profit in the many tens of millions from any carbon-cap emissions trading program that may someday be enacted by Congress) !!!

BYE BYE all you AGW DOOMSAYERS !!!

The key words are "partially due to mammade greenhouse gas emissions". The question is - how much is partially?
There is no question that carbon dioxide absorbs infrared energy that is being radiated back toward space and that this warms the earth. However, it only absorbs within a couple narrow wavelengths and most of those are overlapped by water vapor. http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gccourse/forcing/images/image7.gif
Radiative forcing calculations don't take the overlap into account so they overestimate the impact of the CO2. Further, because there is already so much CO2 in the atmosphere, each additional ppm has less effect than the previous one. Atmospheric CO2 has reportedly increased from 280 ppm to 385 ppm. You can debate how much warming that increase has caused but to get an additional equivalent impact, atmospheric CO2 has to get up to 529 ppm.

Does anyone have the link to the sea ice melting because of soot?

Found it...
Perhaps up to 94% due to soot...

http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2007/06/dirty_snow_helping_warm_the_ar.html

Not sure why people measuring ice extent feel the need to carelessly throw in a theory about cause, but -

the Arctic has warmed about 1.6 degrees. Dirty snow caused .5 to 1.5 degrees of warming, or up to 94 percent of the observed change, the scientists determined.
http://www.physorg.com/news100354399.html

Most of the world's sea ice is in the Southern Hemisphere, and is increasing in extent. Either the southern hemisphere is not part of the "globe", or there needs to be a different explanation for ice loss in the arctic.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg

The only thing about to be washed away in the rising tides of GW are the reputations of people who swallowed and or promoted it.
The science will continue to show evidence and not supposition such as the claim made here,
but I expect more shrillness as reality continues to intrude.
Tough to be calm as you watch grant money evaporating as this fad fades away with time.
Yet it's amazing to still see "settled", "debate over" and other puffery spouted by GW cultists.
Our science isn't good enough yet to make real GW claims or cooling claims.
remember that when we first detonated the atomic bomb in world 2 there were scientists involved that feared it would create an unlimited chain reaction and destroy the planet.
Luckily for us they were wrong; so too is Al Gore.

"BYE BYE IPCC ! BYE BYE AL GORE (who, by the way, is Chairman and partial owner of General Investment Management Corp. which stands to profit in the many tens of millions from any carbon-cap emissions trading program that may someday be enacted by Congress) !!!

BYE BYE all you AGW DOOMSAYERS !!!"

LOL! Look at you, Bill. Science and understanding evolves on its own. You act like a cheerleader with a political axe to grind.

Here are a couple of links.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/distro_LightUpstairs_70810.pdf

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Video/070815/nn_thompson_warming_070815.vmodv4.jpg

Most of you are not interested in reality, only in proving your point no matter how scientifically incorrect. Unfortunately, you are in a position to do a lot of harm on your petty way. Noone who doesn't limit their sources to people who only present your biased point of view is going to continue here for long, so you may count yourselves as a pseudo-majority until the tide of flood, drought, famine, disease, or whatever reaches your door (literally).

"Similar to the way the El Nino pattern affects weather in the United States, more ice melt could change rain patterns and temperature patterns in the middle of the United States, which could have economic impacts on farmers," Sheldon Drobot, who leads Arctic ice forecasting at CU-Boulder's aerospace engineering department, said in an interview.

It could also open the Northwest Passage along the northern coast of North America and connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to shipping by as early as 2020 or 2025, he said. That could be a cheaper option for many shippers than the Panama Canal.

There is a major heat wave in the central part of the US right now. No doubt it is at least partially due to greenhouse gas emissions. Methan, and other gas are driving the change too. Soot is another possibility, but does it matter? Warming is warming and it is putting the planet in an entirely new climate.

Major heat waves and record low levels of arctic sea ice are here to stay along with increasing sea levels.

Until something is done, the climate is going to keep heating up for a long time.

WW,

Since the first days of man, there have been prophets of doom on every corner. We live in (by far) the safest and most comfortable time mankind has ever enjoyed. Mortality rates used to be 80% before the age of 30.

Take some time off and try to relax. Gore and DiCaprio are crying crocodile tears all the way to the bank.

"mrsund:
The key words are "partially due to mammade greenhouse gas emissions". The question is - how much is partially?...
...Radiative forcing calculations don't take the overlap into account so they overestimate the impact of the CO2. Further, because there is already so much CO2 in the atmosphere, each additional ppm has less effect than the previous one. Atmospheric CO2 has reportedly increased from 280 ppm to 385 ppm. You can debate how much warming that increase has caused but to get an additional equivalent impact, atmospheric CO2 has to get up to 529 ppm."

Read the GHG wiki. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are increasing atmospheric water vapour levels, thus amplifying water's Greenhouse Effect. Pretty much the opposite of what you said. In the time in takes to post erroneous neoconservative rhetoric, scientific facts can be Googled. No need for doublethink post-Google.

Anonymous:

"Read the GHG wiki. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are increasing atmospheric water vapour levels, thus amplifying water's Greenhouse Effect. Pretty much the opposite of what you said. In the time in takes to post erroneous neoconservative rhetoric, scientific facts can be Googled. No need for doublethink post-Google."

Increased water vapor also means more clouds which reflect sunlight and contribute to cooling. You have to look at both sides of the equation if you want to understand what's going on.

Major heat waves and record low levels of arctic sea ice are here to stay along with increasing sea levels.

REPLY: Yep, that major heat wave of 73 degres F for today's high, and 50 F for tonights low are really here to stay! Sure are!

SAVE THE PLANET FROM HOT AIR. MUZZLE A LIBERAL!

There is a major heat wave in the central part of the US right now. No doubt it is at least partially due to greenhouse gas emissions. Methan, and other gas are driving the change too. Soot is another possibility, but does it matter?

It completely matters because if you are attacking the wrong problem, you will come up with the wrong solution.

Major heat waves and record low levels of arctic sea ice are here to stay along with increasing sea levels.

Nonsense, climate is cyclical. Sea levels have been rising for 20,000 years. Someday they will decline again.

Until something is done, the climate is going to keep heating up for a long time.

Yes lets do "something", "anything" really, just so we can say we are doing something. No matter how destructive or harmful our actions are.

Andrew,

"Until something is done, the climate is going to keep heating up for a long time."

Where is your proof? I don't want to hear about computer models that have been fabricated for the well being of the AGW religion either. Show me the math, show me hard core evidence. Show me how the climate change isn't natural. Show me how the climate changed in the distant past without human emissions of C02. Show me proof that its not the sun. Show me proof its not precession. Show me proof its not something beyond our knowledge and understanding. Show me proof its CO2. Show me proof the climate won't start to cool in the near future.

Do you know why you can't show me proof? Do you know why I can't show you proof? That's because the climate does what it wants and there is nothing you, I, or anyone else can do. It's our job to take the ride on spaceship Earth instead of trying to alter it.

I don't care what anyone says, 30 years of data is NOT enough to declare record low sea ice. What if the record low sea ice was set in 1934? or some other random year before the launch of the first weather satellite. We will never know.

Just think about it, 1970's was the first weather satellite. I don't even think it could have worked all that well. Seriously, for some reason they still can't figure out how to get my satellite TV to work when it's raining. I love all 500 channels and watching TV (except the View with Rosie), but I want to watch it when it rains. Im rambling about my direct TV again, LOL.

Mark,

All you did was call Bill a cheerleader. Im disappointed, I really wanted to hear your side of it. Really, I'll be looking out for it.

Anon,

Google this - from an "even more" authoritative source than the wiki

The warmer atmosphere can then hold more water vapor and so on and so on. This is referred to as a 'positive feedback loop'. However, huge scientific uncertainty exists in defining the extent and importance of this feedback loop. As water vapor increases in the atmosphere, more of it will eventually also condense into clouds, which are more able to reflect incoming solar radiation (thus allowing less energy to reach the Earth's surface and heat it up). The future monitoring of atmospheric processes involving water vapor will be critical to fully understand the feedbacks in the climate system leading to global climate change. As yet, though the basics of the hydrological cycle are fairly well understood, we have very little comprehension of the complexity of the feedback loops. Also, while we have good atmospheric measurements of other key greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, we have poor measurements of global water vapor,

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html#wvhttp://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html#wv

"The warmer atmosphere can then hold more water vapor and so on and so on. This is referred to as a 'positive feedback loop'. However, huge scientific uncertainty exists in defining the extent and importance of this feedback loop."

Sorry, I was the previous poster and didn't mean to imply the wiki as an authoritative source about anything. Just that a two minute Google can debunk neoconservative myths repeated ad nauseam here. If the NOAA has already proven/suggested water vapour initiates a *positive* temperature feedback, what is to argue? You are treating this fact as if they claim rising CO2 levels catalyze a H2O-initiated negative temperature feedback. Really, the NOAA is just qualifying there is some uncertainty as to *how* bad the warming will be (it would be bad enough without any water vapour positive temperature feedback).

"...Show me how the climate change isn't natural. Show me how the climate changed in the distant past without human emissions of C02. Show me proof that its not the sun. Show me proof its not precession. Show me proof its not something beyond our knowledge and understanding. Show me proof its CO2. Show me proof the climate won't start to cool in the near future."

We have records of climate in the distant past:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years
We know it isn't the Sun: http://www.gcrio.org/CONSEQUENCES/winter96/sunclimate.html
(only 1/4 strong enough to cause the prequisite Global Warming effect we observe over past 140 years, and this link is old)
We know it is CO2 because scientists and those who believe in scientific reasoning understand very basic physics about the absorption characteristics of CO2 molecules. There are also many dozens of independant alternate scientific methodologies that will reach the same conclusion. The Sea Ice structure itself provides annual records proving it didn't reach a record low in 1934.
Maybe warming will alter ocean circulation patterns enough to initiative a global cooling in the future.

I used to think this was willful deception, but now I'm starting to think 50.1% of Americans aren't just protecting their networths; they really are brainwashed. Sad to see after watching you slay the USSR. :(

Emiliano,

I just checked the stats for Buenos Aires. After the cold weather this week, August is now nearly six degrees below normal, and you are averaging about five degrees below normal for the last three months.

Sounds like global warming is burning you up down there. Argentina has a "fever." Better raise taxes .....

Wicked hot August in Greenland this year. Averaging 4F (-16C) in the interior.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/station/04416/2007/8/19/MonthlyHistory.html

Good thing Barbara Boxer and the Dems traveled there earlier in the month to objectively report on the ravishes of warming, and the need for immediate action to cool things down. Scary to see summer temperatures above 0 degrees Fahrenheit.

Phillip Huggan :

Thanks for the link to the SunClimate article. It was very long, and I only had time to skim it but I pulled some excerpts from it below. Contrary to your claim, this article does not at all imply that the sun's role in climate can be ruled out, and in fact suggests it may very well be responsible for the warming which has occurred up to the 1970's. It also implies that the Climate Models could be very wrong in the way they factor in both solar and natural variability. The bottom line was that they simply don't know, as this article is filled with "if's" and "more study is needed."

"Still, since we have been able to monitor solar total radiation for only about fifteen years, knowledge of the Schwabe radiation cycle is less than complete. Experimental uncertainties in the spaceborne measurements allow an amplitude as high as 0.15 percent for the Schwabe cycle. Moreover, other cycles may be quite different, as a result of longer-term changes on the Sun. One and a half decades of solar monitoring is simply not long enough to detect other possible cycles of longer period--and perhaps higher amplitude--that may well be fundamental features of the Sun."

"There are no direct measurements of solar radiation on climatological time scales, but a variety of circumstantial evidence suggests that longer- term variations do occur, perhaps with larger amplitudes than those found in the two most recent eleven-year Schwabe cycles."

"We also know from isotopic archives of solar activity that the Sun exhibits greater variability on time scales that exceed the eleven-year cycle. Detecting and confirming larger-amplitude, longer-period cycles in solar radiation--if they indeed exist--will require reliable continuous solar monitoring, well into the next century.
Climate model simulations indicate that changes in solar radiation a few times larger than those confirmed in the eleven-year cycle, and persisting over multi-decadal time scales, would directly affect the surface temperature."

"Since such models cannot account for the climate system's apparent sensitivity to small perturbations in solar energy apparently brought about by the very long term changes in the Earth's orbit about the Sun, they may also underestimate climate sensitivity to energy output fluctuations caused by solar activity, even during the eleven-year Schwabe cycle."

"Nor do these simulations yet include potential effects of changes in the solar spectrum, including the more variable UV."

"Climate simulations using only greenhouse gas changes predict a warming that exceeds the 0.5C that is documented in the instrumental record of the past 140 years. To reconcile the difference between the observed and the predicted values, either the models are wrong or other, natural and anthropogenic forcings must be properly factored in."

The only firm conclusion drawn was that the sun is likely not responsible for the warming occurring since the 1970's when the "great climate shift" occurred, and it urged investigations into other potential causes, including both natural climate variations and anthropogenic changes. To conclude that this means CO2 is the sole cause, is just plain wrong.

Phillip Huggan :

Thanks for the link to the SunClimate article. It was very long, and I only had time to skim it but I pulled some excerpts from it below. Contrary to your claim, this article does not at all imply that the sun's role in climate can be ruled out, and in fact suggests it may very well be responsible for the warming which has occurred up to the 1970's. It also implies that the Climate Models could be very wrong in the way they factor in both solar and natural variability. The bottom line was that they simply don't know, as this article is filled with "if's" and "more study is needed."

"Still, since we have been able to monitor solar total radiation for only about fifteen years, knowledge of the Schwabe radiation cycle is less than complete. Experimental uncertainties in the spaceborne measurements allow an amplitude as high as 0.15 percent for the Schwabe cycle. Moreover, other cycles may be quite different, as a result of longer-term changes on the Sun. One and a half decades of solar monitoring is simply not long enough to detect other possible cycles of longer period--and perhaps higher amplitude--that may well be fundamental features of the Sun."

"There are no direct measurements of solar radiation on climatological time scales, but a variety of circumstantial evidence suggests that longer- term variations do occur, perhaps with larger amplitudes than those found in the two most recent eleven-year Schwabe cycles."

"We also know from isotopic archives of solar activity that the Sun exhibits greater variability on time scales that exceed the eleven-year cycle. Detecting and confirming larger-amplitude, longer-period cycles in solar radiation--if they indeed exist--will require reliable continuous solar monitoring, well into the next century.
Climate model simulations indicate that changes in solar radiation a few times larger than those confirmed in the eleven-year cycle, and persisting over multi-decadal time scales, would directly affect the surface temperature."

"Since such models cannot account for the climate system's apparent sensitivity to small perturbations in solar energy apparently brought about by the very long term changes in the Earth's orbit about the Sun, they may also underestimate climate sensitivity to energy output fluctuations caused by solar activity, even during the eleven-year Schwabe cycle."

"Nor do these simulations yet include potential effects of changes in the solar spectrum, including the more variable UV."

"Climate simulations using only greenhouse gas changes predict a warming that exceeds the 0.5C that is documented in the instrumental record of the past 140 years. To reconcile the difference between the observed and the predicted values, either the models are wrong or other, natural and anthropogenic forcings must be properly factored in."

The only firm conclusion drawn was that the sun is likely not responsible for the warming occurring since the 1970's when the "great climate shift" occurred, and it urged investigations into other potential causes, including both natural climate variations and anthropogenic changes. To conclude that this means CO2 is the sole cause, is just plain wrong.