[meteorite-list] Global Warming - 'Facts'

[Treiman, Allan]

Hi, meteorite-lovers – 

    Too much heat and not enough fact on global warming!
 
     Your politics are your own, but I want to correct a 
few fact issues in Harlan Trammel’s email. Not to dump on 
Harlan – at least he went beyond name-calling and based 
his letter on data as he understands them. 

    Harlan has four ‘facts’ at the bottom of his email, 
and they are incorrect or incomplete. 


#1 “There is no unequivocal evidence that the Earth is warming …” 
There is clear, unequivocal evidence from many sources that the 
Earth’s climate has warmed, overall, about 1.5 degrees C in the 
last two centuries. And the rate of change is faster since about 
1930 or so. Here are links to three graphics, first with 
multiple lines of evidence (my favorite being borehole temperatures), 
second with average air temperatures, and the third (from my wife) 
showing that gardening planting zones have moved north because of 
higher temperatures. 
 
 1a. http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/temperatures-over-previous-centuries-from-various-proxy-records

1b. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/

1c. http://www.arborday.org/media/zones.cfm & http://www.arborday.org/media/map_change.cfm 


#2. “There is NO evidence that carbon dioxide is a primary cause,
or driver, of climate change. Period. Not now. Not ever.” 
In fact, human emissions of carbon dioxide track the atmosphere’s 
increase in carbon dioxide pretty well, and both track the change 
in global temperatures pretty well. See the graphs above and these 
two.

2a. http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/co2_emissions_in_the_world_and_in_latin_america_and_the_caribbean 

2b. http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/07.htm 

  These graphs show a correlation between carbon dioxide and 
temperature, and greenhouse warming is a known mechanism that
relates the two. Primary cause - who can say? Some reasonable people
would say the correlation showing cause.


#3. “There is even less evidence that man-made carbon dioxide,
a tiny fraction of the carbon dioxide total, is climatically 
significant in any way.” 
   Graph 2b show that, before the industrial era, CO2 levels in 
the atmosphere were near 280 ppm. Now, they are 370 ppm. This is 
an increase of 25% -  hardly a ‘tiny fraction’ – and graph 2a shows 
that this increase is comparable in time and proprtion with human 
produced carbon dioxide.  

#4. “Nevertheless, Climate does change.” 
Absolutely true, and ice cores give a record of temperature an 
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere going back at least 400,000 years. 
In that time, the earth has been much colder and somewhat hotter 
than it is now. Temperature and atmosphere CO2 change together, but 
does one cause the other? FWIW, the the CO2 level in the atmosphere 
now is far above what it ever was in the last 400,000 years. 

4a. http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/02.htm 




Allan Treiman