I wish you'd read the thread rather than just the bits you feel like.
The point of my graph post was in answer to sirearl - I was explaining that you can't tell from a bunch of raw data whether there's a trend in it and giving him that chart as an example of how you start to see one.
I had no other interest in it than that; I'm not showing it as any kind of proof of anything. But as you bring it up - it rather suggests that warming has happened since at least the 70s doesn't it? As measured by satellite or from land (despite Steve's earlier assertion).
(I know all about regression analysis - thanks - I do it every month; there's even an r squared function in Excel - it aint rocket science. I'd love to see the r squared of a horizontal line thru that data - tosh. The full paper will no doubt have the relevant information for you if you're that interested.)
You claim to be a scientist. Why don't you re-read this thread and make a note of the times that I've said that a consensus is not proof and where I've said that I too am sceptical and asked for anyone to show how the warming we are seeing now (which I assume is not too contentious) can be separated from the other periods of natural warming/cooling that we know the earth has already seen and then how we can be so certain it is man made.
The consensus came from somewhere and as it's a highly unattractive finding on any measure; economic, political, human - it didn't happen easily
I am not defending the consensus, merely pointing out that there is one so we have to be a tad circumspect with our own ignorant opinions.
Sorry if I make mistakes interpreting some posts. We are in page 33 of this threat and I read all of it from the beginning, but certainly I can not remember every thing that everyone said.
Now the question of the consensus. This "consensus" is a media/political creation the only proof of truth in science is facts, empirical facts, no other thing. As for the warming part is concerned, humanity will see during the next decades whether there is an abnormal warming or not, so far we know that the recent data from the last few years are not in agreement with the model predictions that foretasted a catastrophic climate change.
What is more astonishing form my point of view is the fact that the issue of how much human activity an affect the climate can be easily clarified with todays technology and resources and those studies, if they exist, have not been given the publicity that they would deserve. Imagine that the comparison with the variation of temperature in Mars and Venus would show that the behaviour of the Earth temperature wasn't consistent with those changes, wouldn't be a strong argument, a nice little graph, to be put forward on any news channel as proof that the climate change is caused by us? So far, the only argument I heard was that they couldn't think of another reason, really? being the activity of the Sun the most obvious.
Even if the activity of the Sun could bu ruled out as the cause of warming, there are other naturally occurring phenomenae that could have an influence on global temperature, that could also be ruled out or ruled in. For instance, variation on the strength of the Earth Magnetic field, which has been reported to have weakened during the nineties. The magnetic field creates a kind of a shield around the Earth that deflects some of the radiation that strikes the earth mainly from the Sun. A weakening of the magnetic field, which is constantly changing, and is a natural system of which we know very little, would encrease the amount of radiation that reaches the Atmosphere and the surface of the earth contributing to higher temperatues. But this can also be substracted out of the data, or added in if instead of weakening it was strengthening.
My issues with the whole theory is that I don't buy into it. I am a Physicist, although I wasn't working on Earth Sciences, but I tought at university many subjects on Physics, among them statistical Physics, and to my knowledge, this argument that the CO2 reaches the upper parts of the atmosphere and stays there for many dacates flys on the face of all text books on statistical mechanics. As intiution also tell us, when you have a misture of gases and you leave it to settle, the gases are ordered acording to their molecular mases, heaviest lower, lightest higher, that is why in the utter most parts of the atmosphere you only find hidrogen, because is the lightest gas there is. Also you find a thin ozone layer but that is because the ozone is in a kind of plasma state in which you actuly have molecules of O2 an free O ions recombining to make O3 in a kind or inestable states. Then, CO2 is heavier than air (about 70% nitrogen nearly 30% osigen). Fair enough that winds can push the CO2 up, but with less strength than the same winds will push the rest of the air, and it will fall faster.
All the green house effect theory of CO2, which I read, is a very tyni third order or lower corection. As is normally presented to the public, looks like radiation comes into the atmosphere and then can not leave (well par of it, I am trying to summarize), and that is what couses the warming. This is nonsense. CO2 is the same and has the same properties which eve way you look a it, so if it prevents radiation from leaving, also prevents radiation form entering. What they are talking here is about the radiatino emited by the earth due to the temperature it already have, the spectrum of the black body radiation if you want to check it, after all the Earth is a hot body, has a hot inner, and that effect is tiny. The temperature of the earth on the surphace due to the heat inside, compare to the contribution of the Sun is neglegeable, you only need to go to Island in the long winter night to check o it.
More so if we take into account the orders of magnitude a stake here. Some time ago, having a discussion like this I took the time to check the number. The proportion of CO2 in the Earth atmosfere is a litle under 0.5% is you measure it in weight and a little over 0.5% if you measure it in volume. The total human contribution to this concentration estimated in the Kyoto protocol is a small fraction of 1% of that 0.5%. I am not an especialist in the field, but I could bet my porn video collection that fluctiations of 1% on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere occur naturally without the need of our intervention.
Another point that Steve raised is the question would global warming be bad necesarily? I supose that that dependes on the temperature reached, but I am with him in the oppinion that the threat of a new ice age is someting we should thread more. The last Ice Age set in very rapidly, within decades, and the result was that as far as Birminham, more or less, the Earth was covered with a miles thik ice sheet. And that would really be a scary thought.
But, as things go, if the temperature start dropping, be prepared for the phenomenon to be blamed on human activity, because it happened already. A lower profile scare mongering took place in the sixties and early seventings blaming the drop in temperture back then on the burning of fosil fuels.
