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Originally posted by phlipper:

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Originally posted by clalouell:
Think about it....it would put MMGW BELIEVERS AND NON-BELIEVERS together...if the believers are proved right - great! mankind's a winner..if the non-belivers are proved right mankind's a winner!!!!

If it were only that easy. Unfortunately, if the unbelievers are right, it may be years before it's acknowledged. Meanwhile, we may have thrown trillions of dollars and euros down a rathole.

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Originally posted by TheHeretic:

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Originally posted by Sarah77:
I suppose that there are some of you on here who have actually carried out experiements based on the carbon cycle and so on.

I was wondering if anyone would be game enough to be able to list. YES list!! The complete list of variables someone would need to include in their study to calculate the 'supposed' reasons for climate change. This should give us some idea of the vast calculation that scientists are trying to make here.

Of course the obvious source of heat is the SUN and without it we would be a dead planet, and without the greenhouse effect we would not be able to survive either and as the programme stated..

Here is my list, in my unscientific mind these are the Variables I believe should be included.

Sun:Intensity/Heat of, number of sun spots, solar flares??
Water Vapour
Cloud density??/coverage
Absorption of heat by the earth, buildings, animals, people, oceans & seas etc etc
Absorption rate of co2 by plants, sea
Amounts of CO2 dispersed by sea, people, animals, sea, rotting plant-life
Other percentages of gases in atmosphere....
Heat generated by people, animals, fires/production plants which have a prolonged effect on the atmosphere...

Please feel free to pick me to pieces..

1. Milankovitch cycles are the the mechanism now understood to cause ice-ages. The eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit all vary in several patterns; these effect the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the earth atmosphere - resulting in the 100,000 year ice age cycles that the Earth has experienced over the last few million years.

Incidentally, you may remember the graph shown in "Swindle", where there was shown to be an 800 year time lag between CO2 levels in ice-cores lagged and the estimated average global temperature. This is because these graphs show vast periods of time; on this scale, the Milankovitch mechanism is the primary factor driving temperature change (and the changes are huge!). The transition to an inter-glacial warm period (we're in one now!) has an effect on the natural carbon cycle, gradually releasing more CO2 into the air.

Obviously, this doesn't prove that increases in CO2 have NO EFFECT on temperature, as was claimed in the program! It just means that in the long run, the Milakovich effect is bigger.

2. Aerosol pollutants (i.e., tiny particles come out of dirty industrial chimneys etc). The huge increase in this kind of pollution in the post war period produced, in effect, a thin layer of high altitude smog around the northern hemisphere - which reflected some solar radiation back into space. The effect is called "Global Dimming" - and is believed to explain the steady DROP in everage global temperatures between about 1950 and 1980. In the 70s and 80s, most industrial contries introduced "clean air" laws -- and when the pollution levels dropped, the cooling trend stopped -- and the global temperatre graph resumed the overall warming trend that's been apparent for most of the past century.

You'll remember that the temperature graph in "Swindle" showed the 1940s-1980 cooling period. It was suggested that this contradicted the view that CO2 raises temperatures.

3. Carbon sinks. When scientists first calculated the amount of CO2 we release into the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels, and calculated the effects this should have on temperature, they encountered a puzzle. Temperatures were rising - but much less than the calculations predicted! It was soon realised that this was due to various natural mechanisms which take CO2 out of the atmosphere. These include absorption of CO2 in the oceans, the growth of forests, the burial of vegetation in peat bogs etc. etc. When these factors are taken into account, the calculation fits the data much more closely.

4. Feedback effects. On of the long-term hazards of Global Warming is the possibility that increased temperatures could cause carbon sinks to rapidly release their carbon into the atmosphere -- either as CO2 or much worse, as methane (which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas). For instance, hotter temperatures in the tropics and a longer dry season causes more forest fires (releasing C02); hotter oceans are more likely to release methane, from deposits on the ocean bed; melting of the artic tundras will release still more. Its not yet clear exactly how much hotter it needs to get before these mechanisms kick in; current estimates are around the 3-5 degree mark. I just hope we don't have to see it happen, in order to find out!

4. Agriculture. Everyone goes on about fossil fuels, but a huge amount of greenhouse gas is produced on the world's farms. Rice paddies are a major source of methane -- and all the world's livestock, especially cows, produce vast quantities of the stuff. If we all went vegetarian, we'd reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by a huge amount. (Not quite sure of the relative figures here -- but suffice to say, its a significant factor).

Hope this helps.

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CO2 is an incredibly weak natural gas so its effects in many climate models are grossely over exaggerated.

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The following parameters are varied in the climateprediction.net experiment:

vf1
Ice fall speed through clouds – important for the development of clouds and determining type (rain, sleet, hail, snow) and amount of precipitation

ct
This relates how quickly cloud droplets convert to rain.

rhcrit
‘critical relative humidity’ relates the grid box scale atmospheric humidity to the amount of cloud in that grid box

cw_land, cw_sea
This relates how much water there is in a cloud to when it starts raining, which is dependent on the condensation nuclei concentration – the more condensation nuclei there are (bits of dust, salt etc. in the atmosphere on which raindrops can form) the smaller the raindrops.

entcoef
This parameter determines how rapidly a convective cloud (imagine a plume rising over a power station, or a bit thunder cloud) mixes in clear air from around it.

eacf
Empirically adjusted cloud fraction This calculates how much cloud cover there will be when the air is saturated.

dtheta
This has to do with the initial state of the atmosphere – what it looks like when the model starts in 1810.

ice_size
This gives an effective radius for ice crystals in clouds – i.e. what radius would they have if they were perfectly spherical. It is important in the radiation scheme, to calculate how much incoming or outgoing radiation is reflected etc.

i_st_ice_sw, i_cnv_ice_sw, i_st_ice_lw, i_cnv_ice_lw
These parameters all allow for non-spherical ice particles in the radiation scheme.

asym_lambda
This has to do with how rapidly air mixes by turbulence in the boundary layer (the layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth).

G0
This has to do with the fact that the ability of turbulence to mix air varies with how stable the air is – the more stable the air, the less turbulent mixing you get.

z0fsea
This parameter governs the transfer of momentum and energy between tropical oceans and the air (wind) above them.

charnock
This parameter governs the transfer of momentum and energy between seas and the air (wind) above them.

r_layers
This is related to the number and size of plant roots in the soil – and, consequently, to how water is taken up from the soil and into the atmosphere by plant transpiration.

eddydiff
This parameter governs the diffusion of heat from the slab ocean to ice, where there is sea-ice present in the model.

start_level_gwdrag
Gravity waves are waves in the atmosphere for which gravity is the restoring force – think of air passing over a mountain, it is forced upwards over the mountain, and then gravity will pull it back down, resulting in an oscillation (you often see clouds form downstream of mountains as a result). The air particles oscillating in these waves tend to lose energy because of friction (drag), and this energy manifests itself as heat. This parameter determines the lowest model level on which gravity wave drag is applied

kay_gwave
kay_lee_gwdrag
These parameters govern the way that gravity waves are formed as air interacts with surface features, such as mountains.

Alpham, dtice
These have to do with the fact that the albedo (reflectivity) of sea ice varies with temperature.

diff_coeff, diff_exp
Diffusion coefficients and exponents govern how quickly something spreads through the material it is in – so, for example, if you put a drop of oil dyed purple into a beaker of un-dyed oil, how rapidly the dyed oil mixes with the oil around it until all the beaker has the same colour. Diffusion refers to mixing due to the random motion of particles, rather than turbulent mixing which happens when there are actual vortexes mixing things (which would happen if you stirred the beaker with a spoon). In the case of the atmosphere, the horizontal diffusion coefficient and exponent determines the rate of diffusion of heat from a warm air mass to a cold one.

diff_coeff_q, diff_exp_q
These diffusion parameters determine the rate at which water vapour diffuses from a very humid air mass to a relatively dry one.


In addition, in experiment 2 we vary:
anthsca
The scaling factor given to the anthropogenic sulphur dioxide emissions to allow for the range of uncertainty in emissions.


isopyc
Models the effects of mixing of water along surfaces of constant density in the oceans.


mllam, mld
Mixes the top ~100m of the ocean.


vdiff
Coefficient of vertical diffusion of temperature and salinity in the oceans.


vvisc
Parameterises the friction between the different vertical layers in the oceans.

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he first item on the list is the one thing AGW is denying. Cool

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You are saying that the Sun contributes 7% of the .6 of a degree. So that would be a very small number indeed. What percentage of 6,000 degrees Celsius is that? How would you measure the difference between the pre Global warming Sun and the post global warming Sun with such a high degree of accuracy? Astronomers don't even bother to include 100's of degrees when they are rounding off the temperature of the photosphere. The Solar Corona is given in millions of degrees.
And you are expecting me to believe that the IPCC has some meter that will tell them within a faction of a degree the added solar forcing?

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The IPCC have quite wide error bars on forcing from solar irradiance of between 0.06 and 2.4 W/m^2 with a most probable value of 0.12.

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in a number of different wavebands to a good level of accuracy