"Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't one of the fundamental pillars of AGW the claim that the recent (150 years or so) warming during the rise of CO2 concentrations is outside of natural variations?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth...
As CO2 and other greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere the ability of heat energy entering the atmosphere from the 'day' side of the planet to exit at night decreases, leaving a net gain in heat energy. The very slow rise in atmospheric temperature begs an important question...where does the excess heat that isn't vented into space on the night side of the planet go? The data shows that the excess heat has gone to warm sea water and to melt ice. As long as sea water and ice absorb heat the temperature of the atmosphere will remain steady or increase slowly. Anyone who's ever put warm beer in a beer cooler knows what happens to the ice...it melts at the same rate it absorbs the heat energy of the warm beer.
Conclusion: Every year the atmosphere adds one to two parts per million more CO2 to the mix, and every year a major portion of heat not vented into space because of that accumulation melts more ice and warms more seawater. While the atmosphere warms only slowly, the EFFECT of the reattained heat becomes more obvious decade to decade particularly in the northern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere is different because most of the ice is land based and the ocean currents are different...but even there changes are happening. So...don't hang your denial just on atmospheric temperature...it's way more complex than that.
It is not a big rise, What was a big rise was the period of 1980 to 2000 a 1C rise in 2 decades which coincided with climate change theories taking off, without this rise global warming/climate change would only have been just another unimportant theory.
So there you are Climate Change is just coincidence.
Alarmists necessarily believe that the climate was stable before the industrial revolution. Obviously 0.8 degrees could hardly be measured in long term trends of glacial and interglacial variation.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F...
IMO, it is precisely why Mann undertook his bogus attempt to flatten previous variation in the creation of the hockey stick. The variation since the end of the Holocene 6000 years ago appears to be much larger than the a degree.
This non-tree ring temperature proxy seems to indicate modern rise is in line with previous variation. It fits well with many other proxies that haven't been manipulated to erase the previous variation to the extent possible.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warmi...
If alarmists can't convince enough people that 0.8 degrees is alarming, their cause is jeopardized.
During the past million years, during the periods of MOST rapid temperature rise prior to the current rise, temperatures rose by about one degree C per THOUSAND years. So we are now rising at a rate about TEN times greater than ever seen in the past million years.
I would say that the recent warming (late 70s to present) is the concern, but alarmist scientists talk out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to the cause. 1997-1998 El Nino caused a 1 degree spike in that short time period and it was shown to be a natural event. If the planet can raise its own temperature in 1 year or so, then the 0.8 C increase over the past 133 years is absolutely nothing for the planet to do on its own.
the real question is WHY? It may have happened before, say millions of years ago, but that does not change the physics of CO2.
0.8C is tremendously large.
One of the answers in Part 1 had this statement:
"Of course if this question had been asked of me I would have said 0.8 is probably not that big a deal and it isn't..."
Now correct me if I am wrong, but isn't one of the fundamental pillars of AGW the claim that the recent (150 years or so) warming during the rise of CO2 concentrations is outside of natural variations?
