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Comment by linuxftw | Hacker News Reader

I'm firmly in the camp that CO2 has little to nothing to do with the temperature of the planet.

Fact 1: The earth has been warming since the last ice age.

Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently

Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the greenhouse effect. A planet that was already warming is going to continue to warm unless the energy input is changed.

Speculative: Some people believe the data has been manipulated intentionally to show a larger increase in temperature than what is actually taking place. This was 'climate gate'.

Finally, CO2 is the least of our worries. The real problem is toxic chemical pollution. Industrialized society is polluting our water and our food with toxic chemicals, slowly killing us all.

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> Fact 1: The earth has been warming since the last ice age.

The Milankovitch cycles have crested since that warming. Without the CO2 we would be cooling.

> Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently

Citation needed. Furthermore, if you can explain how an increase in the solar output woudl warm the arctic more than the tropics, there's a Nobel waiting for you.

> Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the greenhouse effect.

Water vapor has a habit of coming down as rain.

> Speculative: Some people believe the data has been manipulated

I challenge you to find a single temperature reading, longitude, lattitude, altitude and timestamp, and tell me when it was manipulated.

> > Fact 3: Water vapor accounts for almost all of the greenhouse effect.

> Water vapor has a habit of coming down as rain.

The GP is using a non-sequitur, taking a correct fact to support a falsehood. That water vapor comes down as rain does not make it any less important as a greenhouse gas.

What the GP does not say is that the amount of water vapor on the atmosphere is roughly proportional to the temperature, so it's only participation is in increasing the effects of the other gasses we emit directly.

> so it's only participation is in increasing the effects of the other gasses we emit directly

This is the falsehood perpetuated by the CO2-based warming position. The earth was already warming. The earth has continue to warm since the end of the last ice age. This created increased water vapor, the most impactful greenhouse gas. If there is a positive feedback cycle due to greenhouse gases, it's assuredly due to water vapor.

The earth has both warmed and cooled since the end of the ice age 10,000 years. You don't give a mechanism for this warming you seem to just chalk it up to the natural cycles that drive ice age related warming and cooling. It's just we know what causes those and we've ruled it out. Milankovitch cycles. The periodic variability in earth's orbit should have us cooling ever so slightly. Instead we are warming rapidly. Your claim that this is the same warming as what brought us out of the ice age is false and has been known to be false for a long time

> The earth has both warmed and cooled since the end of the ice age 10,000 years.

No, it has only warmed, otherwise we'd be in another ice age.

> The periodic variability in earth's orbit should have us cooling ever so slightly

That is only a single input. The other input is solar activity, which has increased. Also, if there is indeed a positive feedback loop, after the earth reaches X degrees, then water vapor will continue to increase the earth's temperature absent a reduction in solar input large enough to stop the loop.

> same warming as what brought us out of the ice age is false and has been known to be false for a long time

It's not known to be false, that's just nonsense.

Look how hot it used to be: (from [1])

> Geologists and paleontologists think that during much of the Paleocene and early Eocene, the poles were free of ice caps, and palm trees and crocodiles lived above the Arctic Circle. The transition between the two epochs around 56 million years ago was marked by a rapid spike in global temperature.

Crocodiles above the Arctic Circle!

But keep telling me how CO2 is going to cause the planet to combust.

1: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hotte...

Also, if there is indeed a positive feedback loop, after the earth reaches X degrees, then water vapor will continue to increase the earth's temperature absent a reduction in solar input large enough to stop the loop.

> same warming as

>It's not known to be false, that's just nonsense.

Yes it is. Milankovitch cycles are in cooling mode and they don't work at these speeds. Nobody besides internet crackpots are blaming milankovitch cycles.

Crocodiles above the Arctic Circle!

What was the co2 concentrations back then?

>But keep telling me how CO2 is going to cause the planet to combust.

Nobodys saying the planet is going to combust, but thTs a nice strawman.

>No, it has only warmed, otherwise we'd be in another ice age.

Theres no sources that support that, but ok.

> The periodic variability in earth's orbit should have us cooling ever so slightly

>That is only a single input. The other input is solar activity, which has increased.

Solar activity has been declining for 40 years exactly at the same time as the planet has been warming to record high temps. Solar has been ruled out not only through direct observation, but also through the nature of the warming. The lower levels of the atmosphere are warming fast while the upper reaches like the stratosphere are cooling. This is because the heat is being trapped at lower levels by the increasing greenhouse effect. Also night time temps are increasing faster than day time temps. Both of these are fingerprints of greenhouse warming and not solar.

> > Fact 2: Solar output has increased recently

> Citation needed.

Maybe they meant 'recently' as in geologic time and not "since 2000"?

I think it's interesting that solar energy and magnetic fields and cosmic energy fluctuates from year to year. I think these primary inputs to the system not staying constant would make it impossible to model climate such that the model could be an accurate predictive tool.

This particular tool seems rigged to show a certain outcome, and I feel bad for folks here who are frustrated by its +1C floor on temperature rise by the end of the simulation. That (crude) part of the design was probably meant to frustrate and/or panic people into taking action.

I'm happy to see such obvious rigging of the game on display here and that folks are thinking about that.

The sun varys from year to year, but its variability is a lot smaller than you imply and solar irradience has been directly measured to be decreasing for the last 40 or so years while global average temps have climbed to levels not seen in 130,000 years.

Along with direct observation of decreasing solar output solar has been ruled out because the stratosphere is cooling while the troposphere is warming. This is consistent with greenhouse gasses not allowing heat to escape to the upper reaches of our atmosphere. Solar forcing would warm all levels of the atmosphere not just the bottom.

Also night time temps are increasing faster than day time temps. This is the opposite of what you would get with solar forcing.

Basically bringing up solar as an alternative hypothesis betrays that you do not have the requisite understanding to attempt overturning an entire field of science. Don't feel bad most of us don't.

I'm not hypothesizing anything, solar energy is the primary input to the system by nature of the fact that removing the sun would leave Earth a lifeless rock.

I do find all of the catastrophising of nature very fascinating. The switcheroo from "global warming" to "climate change" was pretty slick. The attempt to step the message up to "climate crisis" is going to be barrels of fun.

And, yes, I do feel for those people who are frustrated or living in fear by climate alarmists. "It's already too late ..." is full-on revolutionary agitprop. I can only hope people burn out on this whole thing, exhausted by it all, rather than have a psychotic break.

Solar energy is the primary input to the system, but it isn't driving warming. There is no evidence that it is. Literally everything else you said here is just politics.

There's literally evidence of the end of the last ice age, and how we've been warming ever since. To say there's no evidence that the sun is causing warming is just disconnected with reality.

There is actually multiple lines of evidence that the sun is not causing the global warming the Earth is experiencing.

Direct observation of declining solar irradience.

Night time temps warming faster than daytime temps.

Troposphere warming rapidly as the stratosphere cools.

None of these are consistent with solar forced warming. All are consistent with greenhouse gas forced warming.

> isn't driving warming

I never said anything about warming, that’s your line. I said, "I think these primary inputs to the system not staying constant would make it impossible to model climate such that the model could be an accurate predictive tool." Also, we’ve long moved onto “Climate Change”, even though all the models still predict warming.

> Solar energy is the primary input to the system, but it isn't driving warming.

You seem so sure, and that has me questioning my position. People seem to like to quote Wikipedia here, so I DDG'd for a few seconds with the !wiki thing. Here's what came up. I may need to throw some bucks in the Wikipedia fundraising kettle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_activity_and_climate

Says here after all of the prehistoric climate change hypothesized to be tied to solar output:

> The link between recent solar activity and climate has been quantified and is not a major driver of the warming that has occurred since early in the twentieth century.

Maybe you’re right! Let’s keep reading.

> Human-induced forcings are needed to reproduce the late-20th century warming.

I thought I was busted, except in the very next sentence …

> Some studies associate solar cycle-driven irradiation increases with part of twentieth century warming.

So solar cycle-driven irradiation CAN correlate with temperature change. And in fact, if you read the whole article you can see regular admissions there’s a lot we don’t understand and the sun is a contributing factor in varying temperatures.

I didn't say that it can't correlate. It just doesn't right now and hasn't correlated with global temps for a long time. Solar irradience has been declining for 40+ years while temps have jumped to levels not seen in 130,000 years

Beyond that the warming we have is characteristic of greenhouse gas driven warming and not solar forcing.

Nighttime temps are going up faster than daytime temps. The opposite of what solar forcing would do.

The troposphere is warming rapidly while the upper reaches of the atmosphere like the stratosphere are cooling. Because greenhouse gasses are trapping heat at lower levels. Solar forcing would cause all levels of the atmosphere to warm. Not just the troposphere.

> 130,000 years

This has got to be measurement error or lies, damn lies, and statistics. Temperatures have swung so drastically over the last 130000 years, I just can't believe that's true.

Well if your gut says so then I'll tell the scientists they can throw away their ice cores, tree rings, sediment samples, fossilized coral and pollen, etc. You literally give zero reason for disbelief. It just sounds unknowable to you therefore it is.

Not JUST my gut, friend! There was "7 °C (13 °F) of warming in just a few years" during the Younger Dryas (around 12,900 to 11,700 years BP). That is in your 130k year range.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas

If you've got tree rings from that time that say otherwise, then by all means share. I'll tell my scientists to standby and wait for your scientists' call.

About halfway through the warming at the end of the last ice age there was a return to cooling followed by a rebound to previous warming conditions. It was most pronounced in northwest Europe, Greenland, and northeast north America. That's where you see the rapid 7C warming. Other parts of the planet were doing the opposite in a see saw fashion. The younger dryas is visible in the global temperature record, but it isn't as pronounced as proxies in those local areas.

It looks like a small hiccup in the middle of the warming. After the warming at the end of the younger dryas the planet was basically at the temperatures it would be for the entire 10,000 year holocene period. Which we are now above.

>This particular tool seems rigged to show a certain outcome, and I feel bad for folks here who are frustrated by its +1C floor on temperature rise by the end of the simulation. That (crude) part of the design was probably meant to frustrate and/or panic people into taking action.

What? No it makes you feel like the whole thing is pointless because people aren't even willing to take moderate action. If we drop everything and only focus on climate change we won't drop the temperature that much. 25% of the predicted warming has already been locked in. That's a massive loss and it won't be possible to do anything about it.

Argh, does this web app really engender such feelings of hopelessness in you or is this an act? I'm sorry either way.

Don't believe the hype! The +1C is a lie, propaganda. ;(

Solar activity may be rising (but I think it's falling actually?), and yes has had an impact in the past, and yes we don't know how large exactly. Does this mean we cannot make any valid predictions until we know it to the last digit? This of course depends on how large the uncertainty of its effect is, compared to other effects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_activity_and_climate

You cite a lot of uncertainty about Solar activity!

Sure, you can use models to make predictions for a date in the future. Then, you wait to see if you reach that date and the predictions come true. Then you can make qualitative assertions about the accuracy of the model, its shortcomings, and whatnot. Do we have evidence of past climate models making accurate future predictions? (I really don’t know, now you have me curious.)

Surely we have historical data to validate models with?! I'm no expert, but this all sounds very plausible to me. Some parts are even basic physics, like reflection and black-body radiation, which I'm pretty sure we have nailed down exactly by now. Other parts are uncertain: simplifications of topology, chaotic processes, methane content of melting grounds, etc.

The model allows to answer "what-if" questions, and the uncertainty of the answer also depends on the question. Would the temperature rise if earth's atmosphere suddenly had the composition on Venus? Hell yes, we can predict that with high confidence, without ever trying it for real. Can we predict the gusts of wind caused by this, the global heat distribution, the exact timing? Probably not, at least it's not plausible to me that we could model every effect that matters for such a detailed prediction.

But does it sound so unbelievable that we have a model accurate enough to predict the rough effect of additional CO2 on global temperature? Or would you argue that it is more plausible that most scientists are corrupt and follow someone's agenda, and have discarded the idea of doing honest science which they must have had when starting?

> does it sound so unbelievable that we have a model accurate enough to predict the rough effect of additional CO2 on global temperature?

Yes, it does sound unbelievable because CO2 is a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, and water vapor is approximately 2.5% of the atmosphere while also being the strong greenhouse gas.

It's a giant fraud used a political tool for the brainwashed masses.

You can make hypotheses and test them with models, that is science and it can shed light on how processes work. But these models have input variables that have some randomness and some which are currently unknown to us.

It's putting the cart before the horse to consider these models to be simulations, which is how we treat them politically. The only appropriate reaction to how we frame the climate in politics is skepticism.

There is clearly a push to amp the climate rhetoric up to crisis levels right now. It's easier every day to be a skeptic.

> Water vapor has a habit of coming down as rain.

Not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying water vapor is not a significant greenhouse gas? https://climate.nasa.gov/causes lists it as the most abundant greenhouse gas.

It has a residence time in the atmosphere of 72 hours. Water vapor only works as a feedback. It isn't a prime mover of climate change.

The sun is the prime mover of climate change, literally everything else is feedback. If increased temperature creates increased water vapor, and increased water vapor causes increased solar radiation retention due to greenhouse effect (resulting in further temperature increases), that's a positive feedback cycle.

Water vapor is undisputed as the the #1 greenhouse gas.

The sun has been ruled out already.

> The Milankovitch cycles have crested since that warming. Without the CO2 we would be cooling.

This is not a fact, this is a theory. This is common in 'science' that scientists believing something 'should be happening' and then attempt to pencil in details after-the-fact to explain something that doesn't fit their preconceived model.

> Citation needed.

From [1]:

> Since 1750, the average amount of energy coming from the Sun either remained constant or increased slightly.

If you heat something, it's going to get gradually hotter. If you increase the amount of energy you use to heat it, it's going to get hotter still. If the average temperature goes about X naturally, which in turn causes increased water vapor, which in turn increases the greenhouse effect, then we have a positive feedback loop that was started by natural forces.

> if you can explain how an increase in the solar output woudl warm the arctic more than the tropics

How does one even make such a measurement? Are we talking about just the atmosphere? Or just the ocean? Or the ice masses? Or the land masses? In any case, imagine a space heater in a room. The heater will be hot, the rest of the room relatively cooler. The cooler parts of the room are going to accept the heat faster than the warmer parts of the room. Why should the planet be any different?

> Water vapor has a habit of coming down as rain.

Show me the historic atmospheric H2O levels. You can't dismiss water vapor without data showing that it was less in the past.

You can see NASA wants to talk about water vapor at [2]. Unfortunately, they still make the climate-leap-of-faith that CO2 causes the original warming, rather than the obvious fact that the increase of water vapor itself causes the warming. You can remove CO2 entirely from the equation, increased water vapor will create positive feedback.

> I challenge you to find a single temperature reading, longitude, lattitude, altitude and timestamp, and tell me when it was manipulated.

See [3]. If agencies are going revising past temperatures in new data sets, one can argue that's manipulation. Some will argue that this 'adjustment' is prudent and necessary. Others argue that it's not. There's an abundance of evidence on both sides of this particular issue. Now, you probably won't like the source of that information, and I'm sure it's all been 'debunked,' but the other side can say the exact same thing.

1: https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/

2: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/vapor_warming.htm...

3: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/04/noaancdcs-new-pause-b...

> This is not a fact, this is a theory. This is common in 'science' that scientists believing something 'should be happening' and then attempt to pencil in details after-the-fact to explain something that doesn't fit their preconceived model.

This is exactly how science works: if something doesn't fit your theory, you adapt it so that it does or replace it with a new one. Everything in science is a "theory".

> If you heat something, it's going to get gradually hotter. If you increase the amount of energy you use to heat it, it's going to get hotter still.

> The cooler parts of the room are going to accept the heat faster than the warmer parts of the room. Why should the planet be any different?

Unlike your room, the planet can radiate heat away. Actually, that's precisely what the greenhouse gas effect prevents.

> Now, you probably won't like the source of that information, and I'm sure it's all been 'debunked,' but the other side can say the exact same thing.

I don't like that source of information because it redirected to an ad that tried to make me download malware and filled my history with junk. Couldn't even read it, literally, because they were too eager to exploit me.

Follow the money, indeed.

Don't you use adblock? You could say the same about NYT & WaPo too.

I do not, and I’ve never visited a page on the NYT or WaPo and literally been redirected to a malware site that adds 20 items to my history so I can’t hit back, and hits me with every dark pattern trying to get me to download said malware.

So, no, I can’t say the same thing about NYT and WaPo.

By what mechanism is water vapor increasing to be the primary driver of the warming? We know why co2 is going up. What can cause water vapor to go up and stay up when it only has a residence time of 72 hour and do you have any peer reviewed work supporting this idea that h2o can be a primary driver of climate?

I don't really understand how these things are compatible with a 4°C+ change within 100 years. Previous temperature changes happened over tens of thousands of years. Where is that sudden temperature increase going to come from? Why does it coincide with massive population growth and the invention of modern technology. By the way the 4°C numbers are still conservative because they completely ignore unpredictable mechanisms such as feedback loops and only model the direct impact of human activity.

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