Talk:Climate change/Archive 3

message: 2019 - The first three archives are a disaster. I've cleaned them up somewhat.  Here in archive 3, a few years ago someone went back and tried to give topical headings the threads were long done.  See Talk:Global_warming/Archive_1 for more details. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 02:04, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

message: Another question about endorsement by national scientific bodies. How relevant are such organizational endorsements, in light of the 1975 NAS endorsement of a looming "ice age"?  --Uncle Ed
:@Ed, Again, haven't you done enough research on how scientists base their claims to already know the answer?  I believe that the discussion of a looming ice age is based not on local data (meaning, temperature records for the past 100 years), but rather on more global studies of our climate -- e.g. there has been an ice age every x number of years in the past, so we would be due for one now.  This is like saying Halley's Comet comes by ever x number of years, so it is due again now.  But what if there is some event in space that disrupts the comet's path?  That would lead to a different prediction based on a different kind of data.  I think this is the case of global warming; the theory is that it has to do with CO2 emissions that did not exist prior to the industrial revolution and whose effect, therefore, would not be found in data on earlier ice ages.  Isn't this obvious?  IF global warming theory is correct, human activity is affecting natural cycles.  The cause of the climate change is different, so the evidence is different.  And both claims could be true: based on natural cycles, we are due for another ice-age -- but due to human activity, we are experiencing global warming.
:As I said I am not an environmental scientist so I hope others here with special knowledge will correct me if I am wrong.  But note, Ed, that I am not putting ANY of this into the article.  I am not an environmental science and have not done rigorous research so I am not screwing around with the article (this was the case with my interventions in New Imperialsim, and Irish Potato Famine, in which I was active on the talk pages because I knew something about the phenomena, enough to raise what I thought were good questions, but they were not my fields of expertise so my contributions to the articles themselves were minimal).  I think that the only people who put major assertions of fact, or explanations, into an encyclopedia article are people who have the training or have done the research that qualifies them to do so. Slrubenstein 21:10, February 5, 2003 
::Actually, NAS did not predict a "looming ice age" in 1975. I've added a discussion of this to the "global warming skepticism" article, under the subhead of "global warming vs. global cooling." Sheldon Rampton  -- 02:39, February 6, 2003
:::Luckily, we have a professional author helping us! I researched the quote and found that the NAS merely said, "...there is a finite probability that a serious worldwide cooling could befall the earth within the next 100 years."  Apparently it was then Science magazine which turned "finite probability" (which for all I know was only 1%) into "likely". I need more help digging into this. --[[User:Ed Po
::I know it's anectodal, but I lived through the 1970s Coming Ice Age discussion as an amateur scientist.  One of the significant factors at the time was that we had observed global temperatures were dropping for 30 years.  Looking at the climb out of the Little Ice Age up to a peak and then back down was quite a concern.  Living in exported Viking country, I was aware of the reports of warmer weather around 900AD but temperature studies were few. -- SEWilco 16:04, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popularity Contests (started at 20:44, February 5, 2003‎) 

message: I'd like to see this article restructured to address various key questions:
# How fast, if at all, is the globe warming?
# What are the causes of global warming?
# What are the consequences of global warming?
# What action is being taken to avert global warming?
Or some other structure... Martin
::Yes, these (1 and 2) would be valuable (but) It's more sane to ask what are the consequences of climate change — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.82.89 (talk • contribs) 20:48, February 7, 2003 (UTC) Parentheticals added by me, when I removed the interweaving from the prior eds comment in 2019 NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:22, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Key Questions Structure Suggestion 

message: ::This is absolute worthy-of-tenure-pulling nonsense.  The consensus of ecologists and climate scientists is that the biggest release of greenhouse gase into the atmosphere was the 1870-1890 plowing of the Great Plains of North America - entirely consistent with the observation that most of the warming and thus the temperature rise happened early in the 20th century.  This person is clearly not qualified to discuss this issue.  In fact, most of the greenhouse gases from human activities entered the atmosphere BEFORE 1940, and only those from INDUSTRIAL activities entered the atmosphere largely thereafter.
==== No 1870 CO2 spike ====
:::(William M. Connolley 21:23 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)) who wrote that nonsense? We have pretty good CO2 records that cover 1870-1890 and there is no big spike for this period, ergo no big (by modern industrial emission standards) CO2 release.
==== More Data, Please ====
:::(SEWilco 16:20, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
replies: text:  (William M. Connolley 18:32, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  1870 plowing gas release 

message: :::(SEWilco 16:20, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
replies: text:  (William M. Connolley 18:32, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  More Data, Please 

message: (William M. Connolley 09:28, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: The actual figure quote above should be +0.07C per decade, which was the "corrected" value for satellite temperatures put forth by Wentz, et al, taking into account orbital decay of the satellites in question. However, others (Spencer of NASA) have said that the trend is still cooling if you apply Wentz's correction and others, like accounting for precession of orbits. Not quite sure what the state of the art is on this... In 2003, Wentz, et al, put out another paper re-analyzing the original satellite raw data and claimed a 0.1C per decade warming. Not sure where they published... their 1998 paper is in Nature, Feb 23rd I think. Graft 18:54, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
replies: text:  (William M. Connolley 22:20, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  WMC-Ed clarifications 

message: I added headers and a horizontal line or two so as to make discussions easier to find and follow. Edit whatever subjects I misinterpreted in your favorite sections; sometimes several topics are mixed together and a summary is difficult. -- SEWilco 15:57, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Structure added to Talk page 

message: Thank you for your quick and courteous replies, Dr. Connolley. Actually you do have to explain the difference between 'qualitative' and 'quantitative' in this context. The article is for laymen (non-scientists like me). I'm confident that you're making a critically important distinction there, but I'm failing to grasp it. (It's kind of like the 'internal' and 'external' factors thing -- and what's that other climate buzzword? 'radiative forcing' -- these terms mean nothing to our readers).
One place where we have always agreed, is that when advocates like Daly "don't tell us" something crucial, that "something" needs to go into the article. I don't want any one-sided argumentation in Wikipedia's science articles -- not even if it supports "my" POV :-)
(I will address your other points later - I'm in the middle of something that's dividing my attention, but I wanted to start acknowledging our points of agreement right away ^_^
--Uncle Ed 19:26, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Difference between Qualitative and Quantitative 

message: So, no doubt you're all aware of this already, but there's a new NASA satellite study out on arctic warming , purporting to show that warming in the Arctic has been eight times higher than that recorded by ground measurements. Rapid ice retreat, etc., also documented. Bully for them. Meanwhile, I must suffer in Boston through near-record-low temperatures. Mrrghrrfrggrggg... Graft 17:19, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, Graft. Now all we need is an article on the North Atlantic Oscillation. --Uncle Ed 21:43, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  NASA on 8x Arctic warming 

message: So, to all you pro- and anti-global-warming types, while I appreciate the back-and-forth and think it probably results in a more robust spread of ideas and counterpoints, it also means the article is going to look like shit if people keep inserting arguments randomly into the mix. Can people try to think about the structure of the article and finagle new information into it in a non-cut-and-paste fashion? If this article is choppy and unreadable it's no help to anybody. And I think it's safe to say no magic day when everything is "settled" is going to arrive, so we need to be keeping the house tidy as we go, hey? Graft 04:30, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Messy article structure 

message: (SEWilco 05:21, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: (William M. Connolley 13:40, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Qual/Quant yet again 

message: I think some of you are confusing politics in this.
Here are too things not to forget. Global Warming is 2 words. Global, and warming. If the globe is warming, then global warming is true. Global warming is an *undeniable* fact and I can give you about 100 links to international science magazines and *SCIENCE* journals. The *human causes* of global warming are in dispute, not the warming itself. The globe warms and cools naturally to *a far* greater extent than what is happening now. The greatest cause of global warming can be proven to be simply normal climatic change.
There are some who believe that humans are *accelerating* warming. I will not go into their theories, but it's simple as that.
(William M. Connolley 18:01, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bizzare talk. 

message: Climate researcher Stephen Schneider, who thought in the 1970s that aerosols might lead to global cooling, has become a strong proponent of the global warming hypothesis. Atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen and Harvard astronomer Sallie Baliunas oppose the theory.
:Two theories are mentioned. Which one do Lindzen and Baliumas oppose? GreatWhiteNortherner 12:08, Feb 3, 2004 (UTC)
::L and B oppose GW (William M. Connolley 18:45, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opposing Theory