Climate change expert sentenced to 32 months for fraud

a reply to: bronco73

The point was that in the 70's they were screaming that the globe was going to be cooling, substantially at that and that we were metaphorically going to be living on an ice cube within decades.

Yes. As I said, a few scientists were and the media jumped all over it. But as I recall the timeframe went out to a couple of hundred years.

Also, as I said, there were far more scientists who were concerned about warming, even back then.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: bronco73

The point was that in the 70's they were screaming that the globe was going to be cooling, substantially at that and that we were metaphorically going to be living on an ice cube within decades.

Yes. As I said, a few scientists were and the media jumped all over it. But as I recall the timeframe went out to a couple of hundred years.

Also, as I said, there were far more scientists who were concerned about warming, even back then.

Got any evidence to that? As I recall (and by the links posted), all the rage at the time was that cold was coming, not warm.

a reply to: bronco73

Got any evidence to that?

Yes.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Harvard gets a lot of fundations!!

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: bronco73

Got any evidence to that?

Yes.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

1st link ignored as it was from the 80's not 70's

2nd link is not warning of global warming due to man, it is discussing climate change due to solar variations

3d link is discussing global cooling, not global warming: "The computed thermal structure of the stratosphere and the stratospheric cooling rates are in excellent agreement with previous studies. "

4th link doesn't even mentioning a warming of anything.

I'm not going to continue going through them. Suffice it to say that this hardly demonstrates a massive warning from scientists of a danger of global warming. That is not what happened in the seventies, the general script was warning of global cooling, not warming.

a reply to: bronco73

Suffice it to say that this hardly demonstrates a massive warning from scientists of a danger of global warming. That is not what happened in the seventies, the general script was warning of global cooling, not warming.

Who said there was a massive warning?
I agree that the media jumped on the cooling bandwagon. Didn't I say that?
Silly, fickle media.

originally posted by: Nathan-D

Calculating the radiative forcing from CO2 (as it's generally done by the IPCC) isn't actually that hard. If anyone is interested I'll just give a quick run-down and you can use it in future debates.

The change in radiative forcing from changes in CO2 is often calculated with the following formula:

deltaRF = In(C1/CO)x5.35 (see the 'Radiative Forcing' Wikipedia page).

Where In is the natural logarithm of, C1 is the final CO2 concentration, CO is the initial CO2 concentration and RF is the change in radiative forcing.

A good online calculator to use in my opinion is the 'Web 2.0 Scientific Calculator' (Note: The natural logarithm or In in the formula on the Web 2.0 Scientific Calculator appears when you hover over the Log symbol. Don't just write In. You have to actually click on the ln symbol on the calculator).

So all you would need to do is this:

ln(400/280)x5.35

= 1.9 W/sq.m of radiative forcing (The / is divide by the way).

The study you mentioned said they found an increase of 0.20 W/sq.m in radiative forcing between 2000-2010 from CO2 which coincided with a 22ppmv increase. The CO2 level in 2000 was about 368ppmv and by 2010 it was about 390ppmv (i.e. a 22ppmv increase). So the formula above gives us:

ln(390/368)x5.35 = 0.17 W/sq.m which is close enough to their supposedly measured value of 0.20W/sq.m. In which case, the formula underestimates the radiative forcing from CO2 by a tiny bit.

To convert their value of 0.20W/sq.m into a temperature increase we can apply the Stefan-Boltzmann law re-arranged into the following formula:

deltaT = (T^4+deltaRF/0.000000056704)^0.25-T

Where deltaT is the temperature change, deltaRF is the increment of radiative forcing, T is the absolute temperature of the body in Kelvin to the 4th-power and 0.000000056704 is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. The average surface temperature of Earth is 288K (T) although the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) temperature of 255K is often used instead.

So we get:

(288^4+0.20/0.000000056704)^0.25-288

You can basically just copy-and-paste that into the Web 2.0 Calculator and you'll get 0.037K of warming. That would be the warming from CO2 at the surface without feedbacks from the 0.20 W/sq.m of radiative forcing. Using the TOA temperature instead gives us slightly more warming.

To find out the temperature increase from the feedbacks you just need to multiply the amount of radiative forcing from CO2 by 0.8 (see the 'Climate Sensitivity' page on Wikipedia). So 0.20x08 would give us the temperature increase from CO2 after all the feebacks (i.e. slow and fast feedbacks).

Hope you found that somewhat useful. If you're going to believe in something you may as well fact-check it independently for yourself.

Very nice.

One thing I have learned is our atmosphere is a dynamic fluid, with a mind boggling amount of variables one needs to account for to make an accurate weather forecast. It is not easy and not accounting for important variables and feedbacks will make a huge difference in the results.

I understand global cooling was hyped in the 1970's, however the majority of earth scientists did not jump on that bandwagon. Correct me if I am wrong, but Carl Sagan in the 1960's was concerned about the increasing CO2 and the effect it will have on the world's climate.

I am not a diehard global warming believer like most would suggest, however with the information I have given I have to believe that we are on a warming trend as a result of human activity. That said, we have other ecological and environment issues as a result of human 'progress' that is a far greater threat to humanity and this planet in general.

"Climate change expert", I'd call that an oxymoron. Scientists these days are the same as politicians, they say whatever the $$$ tells them to say.