".....humans started influencing the environment as early as 6,000 BC and that one of their biggest contributions was dying en masse around the year 1600"

".....we've been changing the climate that long, we should be able to steer it back on track"

Since dying is a human controlled function (???), then we have complete control over it ?????

PURE BS ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

This debate is becoming childishly arrogant !

If I may add my childish solution .......I'm sure it merits as much as the above .....LIVE FOREVER .........

Now, I will be accepting donations, grants and subsidies at my current address to further enchance our resolve to understand and solve the human contribtion to global warming and save the planet as well as the universe from guaranteed catastrophy ......all else being equal of course ! Approprate receipts could be issued ...... ROFLMAO :-DDDDDD

I have seen this coming, and am nervous about it. Farmers are going to get blasted, even though they live closer to the earth, and in greater harmony with the earth, than most others.

I already catch it from all sorts of young, idealistic college students, especially the vegetarians. They are sure I abuse my chickens, without even bothering to ask my chickens whether I am cruel.

When I tap my maples to make maple sugar I half expect a student to creep up behind me and dump a bucket of red paint over my head, for abusing maple trees by drilling holes in their bark.

Now I am going to catch it for my manure pile. Methane is a greenhouse gas, after all. And once it is shown that CO2 isn't going to end the world, a new bad-guy will be needed, and it will be me.

Before you know it, some will insist methane is a good reason for governments to step in and run the farms. And that, my friends, is an almost certain recepie for famine. If you don't believe me, study what happened in Russia, when the bureaucrats felt they knew more about farming than farmers. Or China, during their "Great Leap Foreward." Millions starved, and the incredible stupidity that passed as science makes the current, stupid ethanol fiasco look downright intellegent.

Sigh...I guess the best I can hope for is an ice age. It wouldn't be good for my crops, but it would make my manure pile the hero of the neighborhood.

Another example of how a small bit of scientific fact has grown into a full blown superstition, on a par with any madness mankind has ever succumbed to.

Ten parts per million is 0.00001.

What does it mean to "steer the climate back on track?" Back to the dust bowl? Back to the little Ice Age? The big ice age? Mass extinctions? 7,000 ppm CO2 in the Cambrian?

What will it take to bring mankind back to an age of reason? I shudder to think.

It seems obvious that population is a very large influence.

The anomaly trend is up seven tenths of a degree centigrade since the late eighteen hundreds, while at the same time the planet has gone from a population of less than two billion to one of almost seven billion, more than triple!

World population has increased two and a half billion since the mid nineteen seventies, five hundred million of that in the last decade alone.

Good quote from Ethan Allen in 1907

PERMANENCE OF CLIMATIC CONDITIONS.
[Extract from letter of Mr. ETHAN ALLEN to the Chief of Bureau. Dated Perry, Okla.,
January 22, 1907.

Observation has shown me that the weather conditions do not change; taking a number of years, say twelve, and making an average the rainfall will not vary more than an inch or two in any one period over any other. It is true that in some years the precipitation is slightly more than in others; during some years the rainfall is better distributed than others; but take any period and the rainfall is about the same. After all is said the fact remains that this is a dry country, and there are natural causes why this is so and why it will remain so. We read in the Old Testament that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, old cowmen of their day, living in a dry country, were fighting over water rights; and the fact is the people living in the same country in which they lived are to-clay disputing over the water necessary to support their stock. It was dry then, it is dry now, after all these years of settlers; and in a thousand or two thousand years there will not be any more rainfall in the Panhandle than there is now. Anyone that expects anything different will be disappointed.

Sometimes I can only throw up my hands, roll my eyes, and let out a long drawn out Sheeeeeshh.......

The articles we are seeing here seem to be getting more and more absurd, but the positive side to such is that it allows people to see just which AGW crackpot whackos are getting the print.

I remember several scenes in "The Pianist" where the Krauts brought out their folding tables, chairs, ink, stamps, and megaphones. They proceeded to line up the unfortunate Jew's to determine who would live and who would die, sic. The flip side is that the Krauts had no sense of AGW propriety (as the Hysterics would say)since their ovens made the CO2 output many times worse. They also compounded the problem by bulldozing trenches, shooting people en masse, then burying them under, vastly multiplying the methane problem. Curses! They should have known better!

So maybe Ruddiman has a suggestion? Maybe he should take a trip to the United Nations and lobby
to bring out the chairs and folding tables again. This way, we could get rid of the old, the infirm, the diseased, the mentally retarded, those 'not quite right in the head', and the homeless first, then have a lobby to snuff out theose perfectly healthy remaining if "projected results" are not met.

Or better yet, where the culprits don't have to be publicly identified, set up a few strategically placed dirty bombs full of ebola, etc, and decimate whole populations. This should do the trick. That tenth of a degree is important!

Will this do it? No??? Sheesh!!! Well damn those rice farmers!

Here is the link
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-04/st_essay

The author seems to be engaging in the standard AGW practice of making wild, unsupported, unsupportable and irrational proclamations about global warming without a single shred of evidence to back them up.

"It was about a fellow named William Ruddiman, a retired climatologist, who says that humans started influencing the environment as early as 6,000 BC and that one of their biggest contributions was dying en masse around the year 1600, which reduced CO2 emissions by 10 parts per million."

Finally the environmentalist plan comes out!! We need to have mass suicides to reduce the emissions of CO2. If we get rid of 90% of the humans that would save the earth!

Why of course we can change the climate Jesse.It is widely known that SSTs have risen about 1 degree since the industrial revolution. A recent article came out showing how the troposhere is affected by the heat in the Gulfstream.

See Gulfstream goes verticle:

http://www.sciam.com/gallery_directory.cfm?photo_id=C368916F-CC58-DAC9-03BF0906D192C107

It is resonable to assume if we can affect global SSTs due to greenhouse gasses then also it must be resonable to assume we are also affecting what goes on in the troposhere according to the article. As the gulfstream warms some of that heat is deposited high into the troposhere which can affect weather regionally and globally.
So if we want to gain control of our climate again we must build my "Tunnels". Any other solution will take to long for us to do so. As the "Tunnels" restore SSTs in the Gulfstream and oceans world wide to pre-industrial revolution temperatures quickly. We can see how the troposhere will respond by restoring weather patterns regionally and globally and physically.Computer models will prove how the "Tunnels" can save GODS good Earth.Any thoughts?

I checked the Wired website and the article is not available as of this time. This makes for a very poor topic since I can't read William Ruddiman's comments for myself.

This might be a good topic if the article was available. Otherwise, I'm going to have to buy Wired or just comment blindly. Please don't make this mistake in the future.

An interesting link about a house that is totally energy independent, also has information about green buildings that use less energy:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/StockInvestingTrading/PayZeroInHeatingBills.aspx

It sounds like a nice article for this private patch of toadstools and sour grapes.

Here is a book review -

Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humankind Took Control of Climate
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/49607;jsessionid=aaa7-iR4uyr0Of

and the 2003 article where Ruddiman first stated his idea -

The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era began thousands of years ago
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Ruddiman2003.pdf

jep, Kansas USA

I also come from Kansas. All this recent talk of creationism makes me feel right at home.

I, like you, would like to have read the Ruddiman article, but unlike you I'm not squeemish about making blind comments.

1) My opinion is that it is the very pinacle of arrogance to think humans can control everything that they touch.

2) It is also my opinion that it is very unwise to start trying to make control inputs into any system that you don't understand. (I learned this as a child to the embarrassment of any adult who happened to be responsible for my behavior at the time.) And I think it's pretty clear that although our knowledge grows every day we know very little about the cyclical nature of our climate. Think about it. We put a satellite up and see twenty years of some new data and think we know something. Twenty years. Nothing. Then we put up another instrument that records some new parameter , we look at the snapshot and go AH HA, just as I thought.

The Earth is old and doesn't care. It was here before us, it will be here after we're gone. When I (most of us I suppose) was in school they taught us that the Earth was constantly changing. Now they've changed the line to "OH NO. The Earth is changing, we have to stop it". I don't get it.

For months I have been reading comments by various individuals here that we should leave this subject to the scientists and stay out of it. It is writings such as the one cited here that point up the fact that we can't leave this entirely to scentists to make decisions affecting the entire world. There are other factors involved such as effects of the cure that they propose is needed. Scientists haven't always demonstrated that their recommendations are practical or even reasonable. One need only review some of their past proclamations and see how they played out. Add to that the recent introduction of computer models that do not take into consideration all of the pertinent information and you have a recipe for some of the idiocy that is currently being fed to the masses. I am happy that we have this forum and others that bypass the bias of the MSM and allow us some latitude in our thinking. I continue to be optimistic that truth will prevail.

Wow... that article just proves how unintelligent these climate alarmists are.

I think Steve Forbes said it best and I paraphrase, "future generations will ask, how did so many supposedly educated people get caught up in this global warming hysteria"? And I might add, with so little real science to back them up. Why were their models so far off? I believe the statisticians who now question the placement and accuracy of their instruments may provide part of the answer.

Has anyone else read Ruddiman's "Peer Reviewed" paper on this? I'd like to know who peer reviewed it. If some AGW based paper is peer reviewed and rejected, do they get published anyway? RealClimate was nice enough to send Ruddiman Strait to "Go" and collect $200.

No need to check this guy's stuff out, he is with us, let's just parrot what he said so we can call it double peer reviewed, feedback, forcing, likely, CO2, "Hey look, a puppy!"

Andrew (haven't seen him in a while) once pointed to this paper about a year ago, Ruddiman's findings are fantastic, if not outrageous. To suggest that CO2 levels dropped by 10 ppm because of mortality rates at the time is going way out on a limb when Henry's Law easily explains the same phenomenon.

Let's thank the Peer Review Board and RealClimate (Gavin Schmidt) for holding that limb up, I heard someone hurt their back. Hope they're okay :(

He also talks about how a computer model that indicated two glaciers in Northeastern Canada "should" have formed during this period and didn't is some kind of proof that people are the cause of the warming.

What? Are there any scientific standards left to butcher? Who pays these people, I want some money for nothing. Not really, but I do want to stop our beloved Gov't from distributing our hard earned money to folks who produce NOTHING.

So two climate models predicted, 400 year after the fact, a glacier that never formed is evidence for what?

Can any of the other AGW Advocates explain how a model that predicted, in the past, an event that did not take place is evidence for anything other than the model does not work?

Should not a Peer Review have picked up this SMALL issue? Can any of the Skeptics add light? I knew AGW science was sloppy, but this reeks of fraud.

Anyone know if he got a medal for this piece, any prizes?

Steve

When the sea level rise
and horrendous rain falls from the skies,
That will many people to dies,
In that turn
The earth won't burn
And we will learn
the earth will again cool
Global warming will be bull
many will look like a fool
As population drops
no need for as many crops
And that is the plan
because Mr. Ruddiman must be the man
Less co2
Less oceans of blue
They will turn to ice
That does not sound nice
But is a world that people want
To me its an awful stunt
Go Green they say
For that it needs to be a warmer day
More co2
that turns green to me, not blue

Give me four parameters and I can fit an elephant. Give me five and I can wag its tail

Attributed to Enrico Fermi (among others)

At least there is some sanity in the world, see http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2352 - a couple of snips appended:

"THE IPCC: ON THE RUN AT LAST"

"the IPCC has the effrontery to argue in 4AR that a decline in the sun?s activity and increased eruptions from volcanoes would ?likely have produced cooling? of the planet were it not for offsetting human-caused warming. And this when there have been no recent volcanic eruptions of global import, and after 15 years during which the warming alarmists have consistently denied that solar activity is a significant cause of recent climate change. The self-serving nature of these arguments is breathtaking, and transparently the alarmists are now positioning themselves to explain away any continuation of the downturn in temperature that is now underway short-term.
"

"the IPCC has now largely abandoned classical (empirical) science and adopted the sophistry of deterministic computer modelling"

Mmmm. I'm planning on having Red Beans & Rice for dinner.

Global Warming sure tastes good!

I concur we are being told policy through the suggestion that steering the earth climate back on course is accomplished by removing humans. I ask, whoose climate are we talking about here? Is this really about a pristine atmosphere? Or perhaps is our planet and species is under assault by unkown forces? And why is it that the wanton and dilliberate abuse of our natural resources is blamed on the poor world citizen who just wants to feed and shelter thier kin? Depopulation of planet earth by 87% is policy at some level. This is actual philosophy of sustainable development. To me the insidious thing is how policy such as this draconian means to an end is programmed into the human herd so we agree to it. The problem isn't too many humans , it is too many machines. Agricultural economics is required for any civilization, whether a technological or natural economy, you have to feed and shelter the people. Inovation and creativity have no limit when the culture chooses to stay within natural health limits. Environmental impact kept to a workable and maintainable level of activity will support much greater numbers of humans than meer 12 or 18 billion people. Death and Birth rates must also be calculated and surely regulating birth rates to harmonize with death rates is doable by other means than mass death. Growing food and obtaining sustainance from nature is exactly what humans like to do. We have agriculture, hunting and gathering, animal husbandry, ford tractors, and plenty of planet. People are not inherently The Problem....Humans HAVE a problem, a monkee on the back of humanity that controlls civilization by the sword of wealth and power. There are technologies today that are deliberately not introduced into our society. Follow the money. Knowledge is power, know how to live with nature, you don't need machines and factories. For humans to keep thier machines, they simply need to stop doing bad things with them.

No end in sight to "winter from hell"

Toronto won't get spring-like weather until at least May, as below normal temperatures continue to prevail, said David Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada. "I think there is a little bit of frustration out there, but we're going to have to be more patient. All of our models are saying cold, cold, cold. It's going to be colder than normal," Mr. Phillips said. The average temperature for this time of year is 7C, but we'll be lucky if we get to 4C on Thursday and -2C on Friday, with more snow in the forecast. Mr. Phillips said this trend in below-normal temperatures should be blamed on cold air sweeping down from the Arctic, a pattern that will continue for another four weeks.

Karl Stensson, senior vice president of Sheridan Nurseries, said the gardening season is two weeks behind schedule.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2008/03/24/no-end-in-sight-to-winter-from-hell.aspx

Hansen reports that northern hemisphere February temperatures have plummeted over the last ten years. Canada, The US, Asia and Siberia have cooled by as much as 12 degrees.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/NMAPS/tmp_GHCN_GISS_250km_Trnd02_1998_2008/GHCN_GISS_250km_Trnd02_1998_2008.gif

Temperatures for the whole winter are down as much as eight degrees.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/work/gistemp/NMAPS/tmp_GHCN_GISS_250km_Trnd1203_1998_2008/GHCN_GISS_250km_Trnd1203_1998_2008.gif

"Knowledge is power, know how to live with nature, you don't need machines and factories"

Posted without an ounce of irony from a person operating a computer.

A chunk of ice the size of the Isle of Man has started to break away from Antarctica in what scientists say is further evidence of a warming climate .... Scientists say the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out into the Southern Ocean towards the tip of South America, has experienced unprecedented warming over the last 50 years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7313264.stm

Never mind that the last 12 months have been among the coldest on record in Antarctica, and that the ice shelf sits over an active volcanic field. Let's blame it on CO2 and raise taxes.

probably most professional skeptic site explanation by an atmospheric physicist
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html

This doesn't really belong to this topic, but I'm posting it here as it is the most recent thread.

I found this 2006 article on the BBC web site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4685150.stm

It describes a family in Australia who are trying to make themselves self-efficient in energy using wind turbines and solar panels. They seem to be quite pleased with the results, even though they admit the amount of electricity they generate probably couldn't run a kettle and a toaster at the same time!

I also heard a report on BBC radio yesterday about the imminent break-up of part of an ice shelf in Antarctica, which scientists claim is happening sooner than predicted, due to 'global warming'. Does anyone out there have any more details?

GW Steve: RealClimate 'eh, I was wondering what the muse of our posts here could possibly be.

Did Ruddiman mention the Tambora eruption in 1815 spiking CO2 to 450ppm and yet bequeathed 1816 the 'Year without Summer'?

No need, this year, to beat down the rice farmers. The winter harvests in China have failed. In SE Asia and the Philipines they've been greatly stunted. Prices and futures are already rising with biofuels curtailing the West's acreages that might have jumped into the breach.

Global warming induced austerity here in the U.S. translates to famine elsewhere. This is 'Altruism'?

andy and george n. answered that already.

AGW is a vehicle, which is used to blame mankind for "driving" everything wrong with the world.

The problem is that this vehicle has run out of gas. Some physicists are now trying to push what they just bought. Time is proving just how far off they were. They are huffing and puffing, heads down, pushing their vehicle from behind. But they will never reach their destination, for their "theorized vehicle" is a lemon.

-RICH

Patrick Henry,

Is that map you posted a simple differential between February 1998 and February 2008? Or is it a graphical representation of the ten-year trend. If it's just a comparison between the two years. It's meaningless, because 1998 was the second warmest (or warmest, depending on whom you talk to) year on instrumental record. Since this was largely because of a powerful El Nino, I suspect that February of 1998 was MUCH above nromal temperature wise. Thus, almost any other year will appear to be cool in comparison.

I agree with that most of the Antarctic Penninsula's warming probably has little to do with AGW. I remember reading a National Geographic article that admitted as much.

Just for a moment lets imagine modern America moved back in time 17 million years and we inhabited the flat lands of Arizona that were the banks of the Colorado River. Would we blame man-made influences on global warming as the river continued to carve out what is now known as the Grand Canyon?

Then around 5 million years ago when the Gulf of California opened and lowered the river to its present day levels, would this have been blamed on man made global warming?

If Al Gore is correct that someday Florida will be under water up to Lake Okeechobee why is that a result of man-made global warming?

We use a lot of words and phases like: Alarmist, Skeptic, Consensuses of Scientists, Doubters, Cynic, when discussing global warming. What ever side of the discussion your on, maybe it is time for all of us to realize this planet we inhabit is living and forever changing, and I am not writing about those of us sitting in front of our computers. Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, droughts, floods, ice ages, global warming, the extinction of species and evolution of new species occurred long before man and will continue long after we are gone.

Maybe the planet is warming and some of it is a result of man-made influences. Just a the first humans had to learn to hunt for fur to keep warm, humans adapt and if the planet continues to warm I believe we will continue to adapt. Sorry for those of you in your beachfront properties in South Beach.

I do not believe we can with present day technology and science can determine what the planet will be like in just 100 years. I would settle for them to just get the forecast correct for 5 PM when I am leaving the house at 7 AM.

Now just one decision left. Do I keep the Vegetarians happy and eat rice for dinner or kill a cow and have a big steak. Add methane or reduce methane? What a dilemma!

Ah the irony of TALKING about Sustainable Civilization and having other options to stabalize the world economies, environments and health of humans besides killing most of the humans! Oh my, what non-creditability to opperate a computer and post ideas on the web...like living within the environmental limmits of the planet we inhabit...factories and internal combustion engines and oil and coal fired power plants and heating systems are the source of the lions share of aireborn pollutants...And are we not living in an artificial economy? When we reach 90 percent of the earths poppulation in service trades and NOT food production...we reach a real failure. I in no way suggest everyone ride a horse...I am suggesting we use our collective smarts!

Is there actually a course online you take to be a scientist, because it seems as though everyone has became one recently, well at least the ones that support Global Warming. Report on T.V this morning about the ice break in Antartica, sure they say the reasons they want people to hear and the reason is fear{sorry no more poems right now} In the newspaper here yesterday they show a woman in the streets near Annapolis Md painting a line through the street and marking this is where the sea level rise will be. Now someone tell me the difference in this and yelling fire in a crowded theater, wait I got the answer there is no difference, each is intended for fear purposes and neither one is happening. That is ridiculous to put this in the paper, allow this woman to to this in public and what the guy beside the line "on the dry side" hes got to be thinking "damn, that was close, I pitty my neighbor" I mean come on, someone has got to take control and stop some of the nonsense, these people have no evidence that this is man made. But hey, there is the power, money, control factor and that is the ultimate in their minds, not the truth because they have never and will never come to that point. Stop doing this, buy this, tax that, please enough already, this is the U.S and we live how we want not how you chose us tooooooo!

The latest ice breakup in the Antarctic is obviously due to AGW... what else could it be?

Unless of course it could be due to the many volcanoes around the Antarctic Peninsula and the Ross Ice Shelf.

Naw, that couldn't be it. AGW it is. The science is settled. Discussion is over. Pass me a plate of carbon credits.

You mean climatology is old enough for there to BE retired climatologists?