back to article NASA pegs Noughties as hottest decade on record

The past decade was the warmest ever on record, showing that global warming is "continuing unabated," according to a new report from NASA. New surface temperature figures released by the US space agency on Thursday show average global temperatures have increased by 0.2°C (0.36°F) per decade throughout the past three decades. …

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  1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

    unabated != undebated

    nuff said

    1. Neil Stansbury
      FAIL

      Undebated?

      You seem to be under the sad and derisory illusion that scientific data is made available for "debate". That would be politics & religion - not science.

      1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

        Precision: not backed up == deleted

        Before y'all jump on my answer saying that raw data on climate was deleted, I want to remind the less tech-litterate folks that in IT terms "not backed up" is an almost exact synonymous for "willingly deleted". El Reg's readership is supposed to be tech-litterate enough to know that as a fact, but a reminder never hurts.

      2. ElReg!comments!Pierre

        Debate

        You seem to have a strange view on science. Science is no religion. Science is all about debate.

        As every scientist on the planet I am paid mainly to debate over scientific data. That's actually the very basis of science. That's why data and protocols should be available to anyone. What do we have here? Data collected over a small percentage of the surface of the globe. The raw data actually shows a remarquably steady temperature. The increase touted is only due to a "correction" factor applied by people whose funding depend on the warming being real. Now I'm sure the correction factor must be justified somehow, and the data might even be representative of a global trend, but it at least needs to be debated.... not religiously believed.

        It doesn't help that the other big dataset on global temperature trends was deleted for "storage reasons". Any scientist worth his salt knows that if you have to keep only one thing, keep the raw data. Everything else can be derived from that, but you will never find the original data back. Suspicious.

  2. Barbara in Austin
    WTF?

    Yet another Holy Grail of Fear

    The weather has always captivated the human curiosity about what the future may bring; and despite all the "mis-predicitions" that have taken place "since modern temperature measurements began being recorded in 1880"; one has to wonder, "Why the fuck would anyone believe a weatherman?"

    I mean, REALLY.

    Lets look at the HOLES in our electromagnetic field, not weaknesses, HOLES.

    Maybe if NASA had a "smaller carbon footprint", we wouldn't be in this situation.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Climate != weather

      and the space weather that sneaks in through holes in the magnetosphere != atmospheric weather generated by winds, currents and the differential heating of land and water masses

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      It might help your post

      if you knew the difference between weather and climate.

  3. Ammaross Danan
    Paris Hilton

    However

    This is great. They assume burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming, but:

    "though there was a "leveling off" between the 1940s and 1970s"

    Isn't that the time frame of things like the V8 cars/trucks that got 8mpg, nuclear bomb testing, and coal-based power plants burning at full steam with next to no regard for emission filters? Granted they have most likely built more coal plants since then, but all have been tightly mandated on emissions....Perhaps the nuclear blasts were saving us! (not likely, but hey, why not jump to conclusions?)

    Also, wasn't it NASA that calculates "average global temperature" by averaging select regions of the world, while neglecting regions of africa, Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans, and large regions of the Antartic? Most of which are shown by satellite-based temperature-monitoring stations to have "normal" or "below average" temperatures....

    Perhaps NASA just borrows data from our Climategate friends. Any Scientist's collected data has to be legit, right?

    Don't get me wrong here. I full well believe something we are doing as a species is causing adverse effects on our environment. Just what that is? I'm probably as in-the-dark as these scientists, except I'm not publicising my stabs-in-the-dark.

    Paris, perhaps the average temperature was raised by all the people she makes hot and bothered....

    1. Tom 13

      I wouldn't say NASA so much generally,

      but Hansen more specifically. In particular his now thoroughly debunked "hokey [sic] stick." I expect this is more of the same.

  4. Nexox Enigma

    1.5%?

    I'm just going by feel here, but it seems like the lower 48 probably make up more than 1.5% of the surface area of the planet.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Down

      US-Area

      Really? You think that maybe NASA got it wrong, but by pure gut-feel you can get it right? What's your best guess then?

      2 minutes research - about as long as it took you to write your gut-feel response provided me with the following:

      Surface area of earth: 5.1 * 10^8 km2 (500 million square kms)

      Surface area of USA minus Alaska and Hawaii: 8.13 * 10^6 km2 (8 million square kms)

      Looks like 1.5% to me, but maybe I'm using the same numbers that NASA used. Maybe your gut-feel is still correct.

      This kind of "Nah, it can't be" attitude doesn't really matter when we're talking about the area of a country, but is crazy when we've got on the one hand people who have devoted their lives to understanding the climatic processes of the world we live in, and on the other hand some clown like Orlowski who thinks that he, with all his weeks of training as a hack on a tech-site can come up with insights the true experts haven't thought of. The true experts have forgotten more than Orlowski will ever know.

      As several people have pointed out, nice to have an environmental report that

      a) doesn't say "I know global warming isn't true b/c I had a really cold day yesterday"

      b) has comments enabled.

    2. joelja
      FAIL

      um...

      It's great that you can have an opinion about an uncontrovertable fact...

      do the math.

      8 080 464.25 (land area of the lower 48 in km^2) / 510 072 000 (surface area of the earth in km^2)= 0.0158418111

    3. The Ref
      Pint

      USA surface area

      9,629,091 Km2 - area of USA (1.888% of total surface)

      1,717,854 Km2 - Alaska

      7,911,237 Km2 - non Alaska USA (1.551% of total surface)

      510,072,000 Km2 - surface area of the earth

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_outlying_territories_by_total_area (Includes only the 50 states and the District of Columbia. UN figure includes Great Lakes and coastal water areas but excludes territorial waters)

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska

      USA is 6.5% of land surface of the earth

      Contiguous area of the USA is approx the same size as Australia

      (assumptions are that Wikipedia is correct on these - normally a safe bet for non contentious facts)

  5. Alan Esworthy
    Grenade

    NASA (and NOAA) cooking the books

    Here's just one article on recent analyses suggesting that the CRU aren't the only ones massaging the data to support their own conclusions.

    http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html

    These numbers are the primary bases for much of what passes for climate science and have been used to calibrate virtually all climate models. And it's all utterly corrupted.

  6. batfastad
    Jobs Horns

    More people = more energy = more heat

    No matter where your fuel comes from... people are using more energy than they did 10-15 yrs ago.

    As gadgets and consumer stuff gets more efficient, manufacturers will find ways to waste that efficiency for the "benefit" of consumers.

    Converting a fuel into energy will always release heat at some point in the process, doesn't matter where the energy comes from in the process.

    Yes that processor/GPU in your computer gives off heat... doesn't matter where the energy came from. 10 years ago you would have been laughed at for asking for a 500W power supply.

    Converting more fuel into energy for more people with higher energy demand = more heat. Simples!

    batfastad predicts teenies to be the hottest decade on record... you read it here first. Eat that NASA

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Heat isn't the issue

      True, but not actually the key point.

      Okay, I'm being pedantic but:

      The extra heat released by these 500w computers etc isn't really important: The energy we receive from the sun dwarfs the energy we consume from fossil fuels.

      However, when we burn fossil fuels we release CO2.

      CO2 in the atmosphere traps the heat from the sun: there's a cool experiment you can do where you use an infra-red camera to look at a candle through a glass cylinder - not with the candle in the cylinder; just looking through it. The candle will show up fine on your camera's screen. Then fill the cylinder with CO2. The candle will disappear from the screen. It is this effect that scientists are talking about when they say that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

      It is this CO2 (and other gases) that then makes the energy we receive from the sun heat the planet more effectively.

      So it does matter where the energy comes from. If _all_ our energy (planes and cars included) came from solar/wind/nuclear/geothermal etc then energy inefficiency would be almost benign.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Bit late but @Heat isn't the issue

        I've heard this simplistic line before.

        If you follow the logic of your comment... the CO2 stops heat from candle getting through...How does the SUN's heat get here in the first place??

        1. Anonymous Coward
          FAIL

          How the sun's heat gets here

          Easy: The sun's heat arrives on earth as relatively short wavelength radiation: Visible through to ultra-violet (the stuff that gives you sunburn).

          Warm items (such as the earth's surface) produce infra-red radiation (what an IR camera or sensor sees).

          So extra greenhouse gases don't stop the sun's heat arriving but do stop them leaving.

          That's why in the experiment I described with the candle, you can still see the candle through the CO2 filled tube, but the IR camera can't.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      I think the word you're looking for is "entropy"

      mine's the one with the heat death of the universe in the pocket

  7. DavidN

    Medieval Warming

    Only using records back to 1880 - just after the mini-Ice Age!

    We need figures going back to 1400 or thereabouts to include the Medieval Warming.

    1. breakfast Silver badge
      FAIL

      Local versus global

      The medieval warming period was a local phenomenon affecting Europe and the eastern US, there is no evidence that it affected the rest of the globe.

      I have yet to see an anti-climate-change argument that holds together better than a clown car on a bumpy road once you start looking at the real science, rather than reading the opinion of ignorant people who think they are being "clever" and "different" but are spouting the same tiresome lies that the media is being paid to feed them.

      1. Nebulo
        FAIL

        Evidence

        Evidence for a 'Medieval Warm Period' in a 1,100 year tree-ring reconstruction of past austral summer temperatures in New Zealand (Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 29, no. 14, pp. 12-1 to 12-4. 15 July 2002) - E. R. Cook, J. G. Palmer, R. D'Arrigo

        Evidence for the existence of the medieval warm period in China (Climatic Change, vol. 26, nos. 2-3, March, 1994) - De'Er Zhang

        Local to Europe and the eastern US?

  8. Turtle

    Hansen: Professional Liar

    Hansen is a professional liar. If NASA sees fit to put him in position of responsibility, then NASA needs to be defunded.

  9. Cody

    Yes, it is warming!

    It is warming. It is the warmest year in the warmest decade of the warmest century. You may be looking at snow and at thermometers. This is a mark of being in denial. You do not understand that temperatures cannot simply be measured, a great many different stations have to be assessed.

    We cannot tell you which stations. We have signed confidentiality agreements which forbid it. No, we cannot give you copies of these agreements, we have lost them.

    Then the raw data has to be adjusted. No, we cannot, alas, give you any of the raw data before our adjustments. We used to have it, and would love to make it available, but we lost it during an office move some years ago. Sad.

    Anyway, moving right along, there is warming, its catastrophic, its going to get worse. Plagues, floods, famines are going to happen. But there is a way to avoid all this. All you have to do is pay! Isn't that simple? You thought it was far more complicated and difficult than that. No, you just have to pay. Who do you have to pay?

    Well, a number of people. First you have to pay me, to continue my studies into just how awful this is all going to be. Then you have to pay the US Corn industry. This may surprise you, but it is necessary. We have to pay them to stop growing food and instead grow oil. Or, if they insist on growing food, they have to be paid to not sell it to anyone to eat, but instead turn it into oil.

    Then, you have to pay to erect large religious monuments all over the Highlands of Scotland. These monuments will avert the wrath of God. You can think of them as our equivalent of the very effective Easter Island statues which were so successful in dealing with a previous energy crisis back on that little island. Or perhaps those cargo landing strips which the Pacific Islanders built at the end of WWII.

    Now that you are emerging from denail a little, well, now you can go outside and look at your thermometer. It reads 2C. Well now you understand, that means that it is really 7C, and this is the warmest winter in the warmest year in the warmest decade...

    Just keep repeating it, and you can walk right out of denial.

  10. Geoff Campbell Silver badge

    @Nexox

    Going by feel is always misleading. In very round figures, the 48 contiguous states of the US (that is, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, cover 3 million square miles, the world as a whole is 200 million square miles. So, 1.5%. Add in Alaska, and you get closer to 4 million square miles, giving 2%.

    GJC

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Ten years ago, maybe I would have agreed

    The winter of 2000 had a Christmas of near 70 degrees in the midwest, and there were a few years in that time when winter never really seemed to get started. But it's been almost four years now of colder and wetter weather, which I guess were supposed to think is somehow all magically warm.

    The whole thing is just a tangled mess, with people bringing in political agendas and suppositions, and I'm tired of both sides. The younger people tend to forget that in the 70's the "smart" thinkers were predicting another ice age coming upon us. Today I'm convinced the oceans would freeze over and that should still be a sign of global warming, or maybe climate change is what they call it now.

    In the end the scientists lost track of what they were doing, namely seeing where the facts led, and correcting their hypotheses if they proved wrong. Instead it's become making the facts fit the agenda so they'll keep their funding, and assuming the rest.

    Most of the "warming" we're supposed to be experiencing is due to secondary effects from whatever carbon dioxide is supposed to accomplish, which so far isn't happening. But don't worry, they'll keep railing on that it's inevitable and only by dramatic action can we save ourselves.

  12. Geoff Campbell Silver badge

    @Batfastad

    The amount of energy we produce as a race (about 15TW in 2004, probably a bit more now) is dwarfed by the amount hitting the planet from the sun (174 PW, four orders of magnitude more than we puny humans produce). This is why the heat retaining effects of greenhouse gases are so important.

    GJC

  13. Wilco 1
    Thumb Up

    Good article

    ... never thought that would be allowed on this site!

    The reason for the leveling off between 1940-1970 seems obvious. Just like a vulcano eruption, blowing up half of Europe and burning coal in dirty power stations results in lots of particles in the air which block out the sun. Most are removed quickly, but others can take decades to wash out of the atmosphere.

    It's obvious we humans have a major effect on our environment (eg. cutting down our rain forests), and that includes the climate. The debate is really about how much and how fast we are affecting it. The science may not be perfect yet, but that is just a matter of time.

    The naysayers seem to prefer business as usual and burn up our scarce resources of gas, oil and coal at an ever faster pace. I wonder why? Surely improving energy efficiency and finding cleaner, more efficient, cheaper and renewable forms of energy is the only way forward - even if you are an AGW sceptic.

  14. Apocalypse Later

    Record

    Warmest decade of the century, maybe.

  15. Aron
    Flame

    bah

    Global warming my arse. They've reduced the number of temperature monitoring stations by two thirds in the last 20 years and have homogenised the data between them to such low resolutions that the models are reporting warming where there isn't any. To make it worse the quality of data recorded at the surviving temperature monitoring stations is poorly contaminated by urban side effects.

    They should end this hysterical nonsense and put proper context to the issue of energy security. If they are desperately manipulating data to pass regulation on carbon emissions then let there be a carbon trade between the very richest and the very poorest. Let the very wealthiest buy carbon credits from the very poorest so that everyone else in between no longer has to subsidise the welfare system.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Ahem...

      Reduced the number of monitoring groundstations, maybe, seriously increased the amount of satellites though.

  16. the old rang
    Thumb Down

    NASA has lost most of its budget...

    and the Dems say either speak like our puppets or go mute like the dead.

    that is the way in washington now.

  17. ratfox
    Coat

    0.2 degrees per decade?

    I find the number rather underwhelming. At this speed, it will take a millenium until Canada become habitable...

    The heavy one with a beaver hat, thanks

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Warmest of the warm

    It's worth noting how a month or season is awarded the title of "warmest ever". It's done by averaging a certain number of peak temperatures. So, despite the recent very cold weather, this winter was "the warmest on record" simply because of the very warm November. If you took the daily average temperature then it would actually be one of the colder ones.

  19. Werner McGoole

    NASA pulls a rabbit out of a hat

    I really am glad I'm not a climate "scientist" (although I am a scientist) because what they are attempting to do is very difficult indeed. In fact, I find it incredible that anyone is even trying to make accurate predictions of future climate (a known hard task) based on a motley collection of heterogeneous historical thermometer readings on which it is now impossible to impose adequate quality control. It is transparently obvious to anyone with experience in data analysis that the outcome will depend critically on which sub-set of the data you analyse.

    There has been a lot of criticism of how NASA selects the 25% of thermometers it actually uses (yes, apparently it rejects three quarters of all the evidence). What would convince me a bit that they're doing it right is if they produced a similar temperature graph using just the data they had rejected. That should show variations in temperature, but no overall trend up, or down.

    If it does show a trend, then others are quite justified in asking why. On what basis has the dataset been divided into two and the warming part selected to show to the world? Maybe just publishing your results works with some people, but as a scientist I know they put the rabbit into the hat a bit earlier when they selected the data - and that's the bit that I need to see justified.

    1. Klaus
      FAIL

      Not a very good scientist then are you?

      Speaking as a scientist myself, you should think of changing careers. Most science I've worked on starts out by trying to make a prediction based on poor data. I then go out, test it, and gather new data. I then go back and look at my original assumptions and refine my experiments. With each iteration my predictions will come closer to matching the data.

      "I really am glad I'm not a climate "scientist" (although I am a scientist) because what they are attempting to do is very difficult indeed. In fact, I find it incredible that anyone is even trying to make accurate predictions of future climate (a known hard task) based on a motley collection of heterogeneous historical thermometer readings on which it is now impossible to impose adequate quality control"

      1. Werner McGoole

        Exactly what I do too...

        ...but the bit I miss out is claiming that I've got a result before I really have.

      2. ElReg!comments!Pierre
        Boffin

        And you're good HOW?

        Well To be honest you describe an acceptable protocol, but you miserably fail with the last two sentences. "I then go back and look at my original assumptions and refine my experiments. With each iteration my predictions will come closer to matching the data."

        The idea behind science is that you make working hypothesis based on lousy data, then design a good experiment (i.e. one that _will_ give you an answer no matter what), go back on the field for more data, and then rework your _hypothesis_, not your experiment. Reworking the experiment is how frauds do it. If you are not good enough to design a proper experiment you shouldn't be allowed to get anywhere near science. Almost half of any science report is (and should be) discussion over the methods and interpretations. That's where you discuss the shortcomings of the experimental methods, should the need arise. Changing the experimental protocol to get data matching your initial hypothesis is _terrible_ practice. Unfortunately that's what happens routinely in climate science (as well as in most other politically- or financially-pressured scientific fields). That's also one of my pet peeves, in case you didn't notice. It's _BAD_. _BAD_, I tell you.

        Yes, experiment design _is_ the hardest thing about science, and the most overlooked, sadly enough.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Pft!

    In the 60's, 70's 80's it was THERMONUCLEAR WAR, which was going to wipe us out. Part of my job as a cardboard cutout soldier was to plot the fallout across the plains of Europe from all those nukes. Then it was an ICE AGE they where predicting. Then AIDS was going to wipe us out (nerds excepted), lately it is the MUSLIM TERRORISTS that is the threat. And GLOBAL WARMING now. Oh lets not forget BIRD/SWINE FLUE.

    One thing is certain YOU, yes YOU are going to die, might be tomorrow, might be when you are 90. So what difference does it make to anyone if YOU and I die tomorrow (choose your threat) , NONE, will you do anything that will change the world?, or the lives of millions? Chances are against it. So forget about global warming just get on with your lives, and in the words of Bill & Ted, be excellent to each other. There will be disasters, whether man made or natural, the Earth changes, continents rise and sink. There are mass extinctions every so often. Cue, Monty Pythons Galaxy song

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk

    The same people who protested at Greenham Common against the Evil American cruise missiles that where trying to deter the Soviets are now setting up Peace camps, against coal fired powered stations in the UK. As Muriel Gray mentioned, when China s building nearly a coal powered power station per day, I'll be buggered if I'm going to turn the thermostat down. What do they really hope to achieve? When has this sort of protest ever changes anything? NEVER, not CND, nor any of the others.

    Global warming or global cooling, it really does not matter, because the real problem is simply this. OVER POPULATION, a real threat destroying natural habitats and resources now, all around you, in plain sight. This is going to bring you your real change, your real apocalypse sooner than any climate change. TOO MANY PEOPLE. FINITE RESOURCES=WAR. Time to dust off my NBC gear. LOL

    Have a nice day, and consume less, wear a condom.

  21. Il Midga di Macaroni
    Grenade

    What's the significance of 1.5%?

    I had to read the article through twice. What's the significance of the 48 states totalling 1.5% of the earth's surface?

    The only conclusion I can come up with is that this warming was only measured on mainland USA - which means it's totally irrelevant in global terms.

  22. lukewarmdog
    Badgers

    Warm?

    Coldest winter for 38 years. Cold outside right now too. Cold in the office.

    So where's this warm then? Do I need to wear a coat made of burning coal?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Write out 100 times

      "Weather and climate are not the same thing"

      Longhand, no cut'n'paste.

    2. FraK
      Coat

      Yeah that's right.

      Of course, where you are right now is the only place on earth which could possibly be affected by changes to the climate.

      Mine's the one with the map showing %YOUR_COUNTRY% as the centre of everything.

  23. Barelysane

    Not GISS again

    It constantly amazes me that people take the NASA surface temperature record seriously. It's completely at odds with the satellite data and is full of some of the most questionable data practices you're ever likely to see.

    http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html

  24. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Happy

    @cody

    "...You do not understand that temperatures cannot simply be measured, a great many different stations have to be assessed.

    We cannot tell you which stations. We have signed confidentiality agreements which forbid it. No, we cannot give you copies of these agreements, we have lost them...."

    "Who do you have to pay?

    Well, a number of people. First you have to pay me, to continue my studies into just how awful this is all going to be."...

    Neatly summed up. My friend Smallhausen though so too. I thought "Denial" is a small town about 20 miles west of Boca Raton.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Warmest

    The ice age started to end 20000 years ago I believe.

    Nothing new here then.

  26. Mark Eaton-Park
    Thumb Down

    I am more worried by the deleted posts

    Having read a large number of posts on The Reg I would like to know why the missing post was deleted after going public. Does this mean someone other than The Reg insisted on its removal? are the Global Warming crowd doing a Scientology style censorship on our Reg?

  27. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: I am more worried by the deleted posts

    OH MY GOD!

    It's just moderating, Mark, I only wish it were as exciting as CENSORSHIP.

    1. IR

      Re: I am more worried by the deleted posts

      Attempt to get around the "just moderating":

      A reg article on climate that has recent facts, isn't full of spurious opinion, is only a single page, and has comments enabled?

      Ah, it's not by *REDACTED*. When do we get his take on this NASA announcement?

      Climate seems to be the new topic to add to politics and religion as something that shouldn't be discussed in polite conversation. People of every opinion just go nuts.

  28. deshepherd

    Obvious explanation

    > NASA said the figures show a "clear warming trend" on record,

    > though there was a "leveling off" between the 1940s and 1970s.

    I assume that was due to the Cold War

  29. John Hawkins
    Troll

    Climate debate attracts nutters...

    With a general interest in things climate and after few University papers on the subject I find the climate question entertaining. It has become like the the evolution vs creation debate, with the possible exception that drooling loonies are to be found on both sides of the fence. Makes the debate fun though and gives our beloved politicians even more opportunities to say stupid things while pretending that they know what they are talking about.

    My own view is 'so what' - climate change is normal and what we have now is well within natural variation. It is likely to have been influenced by human activities, but probably not in the ways most people assume.

    Advice? Don't drool and don't invest in forestry in low lying areas near the coast.

    ( Yeah I know, my comment in the debate makes me one too ).

  30. Simon B
    WTF?

    Been colder if you ask me!

    In the UK it's been colder if you ask me!! LAst time I remember a decent summer was in the 90's!!

  31. Tim #3

    Hmmm

    I'm still undecided whether the 2 years I spent in the 1980s studying the forthcoming ice age were a total waste of time or a good way of educating me to be more sceptical about scientists claims.

  32. Simon Neill

    Thoughts...

    1) @Superstitious git "f you follow the logic of your comment... the CO2 stops heat from candle getting through...How does the SUN's heat get here in the first place??"

    well, simple. CO2 blocks rays with a heat strength of less than 7 arbitrary units. Rays from the sun come in a 10 arbitrary units, bounce off the earth where 5 units are converted to other energy. The rays then attempt to leave at strength 5. These are blocked by CO2 and so remain, causing heating.

    Ever parked a car in hot sun? noticed its hotter inside than outside? same thing. Or how about gone inside a greenhouse? both the same thing, hence why its referred to as a "greenhouse effect" clever eh?

    2) I don't believe we have ANY idea what will happen to the climate in the future. We can't predict conditions in the next 24 hours accurately, you expect me to believe predictions for 10 years? I keep seeing reports of "cow farts are causing global warming" "nuclear blasts stop global warming" "soot stops global warming" "burning coal causes global warming". Until I see someone say "the combined effects of cows, co2 and wasted heat are (not) countered by the effects of soot, nuclear blasts etc" I'm not going to be convinced either way.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Thoughts... 1

      Am actually trying to understand this ... not my field at all so ifyou could go 1 step further and explain it for the rest of us.

      Heat in car in SUN.. yes I get that and how greenhouses work but glass is a solid transparent barrier that also stops air flow etc.

      CO2 is a heavier than air gas so ....

      1 If there is so much of it at as a thick barrier surely we would have trouble breathing as it would be at ground level, of much more concern.

      2 As it must be well mixed with the rest of the atmosphere I would be interested to know how we can be sure the 'greenhouse' effect still works, especially as the mix must be different in different areas being dependant on wind patterns to distribute a gas being created intensively in confined locations. The summer clouds of Ozone being created from city exhausts but causing breathing problems in rural areas springs to mind as an example of what I am getting at.

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    re I am more worried by the deleted posts

    looking at the raving 'expert' arguments that got through, I'm rather glad to be spared those that failed the moderator's knife...

  34. Steve Swann

    Popular & Historical Revisionism

    1980 - "Smog" - Redundant

    1988 - "Greenhouse Effect" - Redundant

    1993 - "CFCs" - Redundant

    1994 - "Hole in the Ozone layer" - Redundant

    1998 - "Global Warming" - Redundant

    2008 - "Climate Change" - Current

    2011 - TBA

    "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." - G. Orwell

    1. breakfast Silver badge
      Go

      Dates, huh?

      1980 - Try telling people in many cities around the world about smog being redundant. They'll be well chuffed. Ahem.

      1988 - Greenhouse effect, major contributor to anthropogenic climate change. Still current. What are you talking about.?

      1993 - CFCs, actually an environmental problem that the world got together and solved. Go global community! Nothing to do with climate change, though.

      1994 - Caused by CFCs, see above.

      1998 - Global warming. Also known as climate change, largely caused by the Greenhouse Effect.

      2008 - Cilmate change. See above. Still a problem for people who are willing to investigate the claims of either side in a non-trivial way. Also for everyone else, but the rest are just cattle who go mindlessly to whatever consequences their actions have. If they can't be bothered to learn a few simple things about the world they live in then they can suck it down.

      2012 - Just after a world-saving climate summit finally looks like turning things around and preventing the worst excesses of man-made climate change, it transpires that the Mayans were right and it is the end of the world. Irony ensues!

  35. Thought About IT
    Stop

    The stakes are too high for mere science to count

    There's no point in trying to use rational debate to point out the fallacies in the sceptic's arguments, as they are just bulletin points given to them by the climate denial industry. There are huge vested interests at stake, and those interests are being very effectively promoted by professional lobbyists. All they have to do is maintain the fiction that there is some doubt about the science, and they can make it impossible for effective political action to be taken to curb greenhouse emissions. This is a lesson learned from the tobacco companies, who were able to deny the irrefutable evidence of the connection between smoking and cancer for about 40 years. The difference is that smoking only affected individuals and their families, whereas global warming will affect everyone.

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  38. Seeking the truth

    Question to the scientists.

    I'm trying to find out for my self how effective co2 is as a "green house gas" my question is why do we have better insulated d.g windows using more expensive argon instead of co2, if co2 is such a good greenhouse gas?

    The density of argon is 1.784kg/m3 where as co2 is heavier at 1.98kg/m3 so convection currents between glass pains should be less with co2.

    So is argon better at reflecting long wave radiation? If this is hypothetically the case then it would have a greater "green house effect" than co2 as it consitutes 0.934% of the atmosphere not 383ppm!

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