Has climate change slowed down?

[Fingal]

And no the cooling thing was mostly an joke, however lots of the answers to the lack of heating the last 14 years sounds very defensive like someone having to explain why they are behind target. Not like someone trying to solve an scientist problem.

There has been no lack of heating for 14 years.

[PakledHostage]

I'm not sure how this justifies arguing against the mounds of evidence climatologists have to support Global Warming. Especially since you're incorrect about that 3%. Almost every educated person 500 years ago knew the earth was round.

That's precisely the problem. There weren't that many educated people 500 years ago so it isn't surprising that only 3% of people believed the world was spherical (if that statistic is even true). The more telling statistic would be what percentage of educated people believed the world was spherical at that time? If 97 dumb hicks believed the world is flat and 3 educated people believed (based on evidence) that the world is spherical, it is still spherical. The same goes for climate science. If 97% of climate scientist believe (based on evidence) that anthropogenic global warming is real and 100% of dumb hicks believe "it is arrogant to believe that man can change the earth's climate", the balance of probability still says that AGW is real.

[Kulebron]

Please provide evidence that "AGW fanatics" have no problem with excess consumer consumption.

I'm not inventing this. I made interviews with specialists and politicians in North Europe (Denmark and Iceland). They do have problem with exess consumption, but 90% of time they discuss CO2. And these are not AGW fanatics, just normal people. They say like: "we reduce traffic, and CO2 emission." "We promoted renewable energy and reduced CO2 emission." Sometimes they'd discuss the waste processing problems, or that garbage is thrown out illegally, but the consumption was never mentioned at all. I heard there are some proponents of managed economic recession, but these are outsiders in politics.

I see that those countries mostly solved the issue of garbage in cities, and some of garbage is processed, but the problem just has been pushed behind the door. There's very limited and no so viable tech for plastic recycling: the quality of this plastic is low, and recycling is limited to 2 times, AFAIK. What do you do with it next? Rubber or plastic casing of cables, AFAIK, have no 2nd use. Dismantling thrown out items requires a lot of labour.

Some countries found a nice way to get rid of garbage: it's shipped to East Asia. Container operators only like this, because it allows to load the ships both ways. Now they deliver electronics from China, and garbage on the way back. This is far more big problem, and it's a matter of fact, but I don't see Al Gore speaking of East Asians living among wastes. And this is not just their own business -- then, why care of CO2 emitted by the others? -- it means those developed countries are not sustainable as they seem.

Garbage sorting is also not an improvement: it's just redistribution of costs on everyone. An improvement would be sorts of plastic that are safe to be burned, and really cheap degradable packaging. Then, there'll be no problem with dismantling or reuse of stuff.

This issue is quite big, is a fact, and I think this is the highest priority. Instead, I see a chemical plant in Iceland that captures CO2 from the atmosphere, absorbs it in don't remember what, and buries under the ground. I'd rather invest into better materials studies.

Edited October 7, 2014 by Kulebron

[rtxoff]

A fairy whispered to me that plastic burns very good, who am i to question fairies? Also that fairy whispered to me that some countries burn that plastic to heat their citys (more CO2). Doesn't make much sense for that fairy that anyone will ship their garbage to china. (waste of money)

Fairies are wise.

[magnemoe]

To Darnok, magnemoe, kulebron and all other clueless people on this topic.

The debate about global warming is over. Now the only debate is about if it would rise 3 or 7 degress to the end of century.

Of course when I talk of debate, I mean between the scientific community. Not between paid politicians and the shoemaker from the corner.

Why this is more important than other ecologic problems? Because it would extinguish many species, kill a lot of people, change a lot of ecosystems and would cost a huge amount of money (which the world does not have) just to deal with the consequences.

Now.. stop ignoring all the evidence presented because if you kept this idea and you are wrong, it means that you will spread the ignorance to other people who doesn´t know much.

And one way to stop this fast, is with conscientization.

3-7 degree? Well IPCC disagree with you. I thought we agree of an consensus here.

Their worst case scenario does not reach 7 degree increase in 2100. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms3.html

They are based on co2 emissions peaking more than 3 times today's level at the end of 21 century, I see this as unlikely even if we did not see global warming as a problem because of local pollution from coal and an lack of cheap oil and gas for this emission level, add future technologies who will reduce this more.

Scenario A1B or B2 looks more probable, yes it might be worse than this but not significantly, more probably it peak higher and earlier.

Personalty I believe the danger is overblown of reason posted earlier, so my gut feeling is the lower estimate and I end on 1.5 degree in 2100.

Now I agree with IPCC and you don't, I wonder who you use as source.

Note that I have not said that its no global warming, just that the models has way to high error margin and is a mess. Too much money in this to make it remotely scientific its politic . Solutions is fronted by people with an obvious agenda, reducing co2 emissions is not their main purpose.

[magnemoe]

Here's how I see it. We only have actual climate data from a miniscule time frame of just over a few hundred years. We then use ice cores and layers of rock that we can date to extrapolate how eons past MIGHT have been climatalogically. Ice cores and rock are great and all, but atmospheric data from the lowest few meters(aka ground/sea level) is a very small section of the gradient of the atmosphere. I'm not convinced that using these as fundamental data which we use to draw conclusions from eons past is reliable enough to come to a conclusion such as "The debate about global warming is over." Also note, I'm not a scientist so this is purely opinion.

We have pretty good date, problem is that its an chaotic system with lots of unknowns, trying to make an model on it is very hard, its probably a lot like weather forecasts but on a 10 year scale rather than 3 days. And no reason to talk about eons, since 1885 is bad enough.

You have an strong background noise as warm or cold seasons mess thing up, you have multiple long time patterns like El Ninjo who messes thing up, the sun is not constant.

Now try to find the global warming part in it.

IPCC is pretty honest and admit this http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms3.html

This makes them trustworthy for me

[Vanamonde]

When the argument descends into insults, it's time to stop and go do something else.