Interesting climate change study

http://phys.org/news/2013-05-global-chlorofluorocarbons-carbon-dioxide.html

Interesting.

well, not a political site.....still, I'm going with "in before the lock" as my reply. SOMEBODY is going to flounder this

You can't flounder science!

Well.... I hope it is true.

These sort of studies are a lot like many of the medical studies (e.g. X causes Cancer), there are a LOT of confounding variables.

In reply to aircooled:

This. Correlation does not equal causation. That being said the data for CFCs does seem to match up to the temperature data better than the CO2. The projected "cooling" data smacks of a WAG to me.

Temperatures go in cycles. 84 years ago it was in the '90's. Today it was 90.

Very interesting. I think we'll know which answer is right in another ~5 years.

That would fit in well with the record cold snap we had about a week ago - although of course, the cold snap is just one data point.

But as Javelin noted, it could be a lot clearer if this is right if temperatures don't climb much for the next 5 years.

It would be nice if this is true, as the CO2 driven global warming models are, well... not much you can do to stop them if they're right.

bgkast wrote: In reply to aircooled: This. Correlation does not equal causation.

I think you mean "association does not equal causation". Because correlation does :)

Great article, thought - thanks!

As a footnote, is it possible that BOTH CFCs and CO2 could be at fault?

I don't want to get into a global warming political discussion either, but weather definitely runs in cycles. My dad, ever the engineer, started plotting weather as a hobby 30 years ago. He has graphs from as far back as he can get data and updates it constantly. If you look at the graphs, we really aren't warming that much as we go up and down through the cycles. Granted most of this is air temps and not earth temps, but even so, the cycles date far before we could be producing some of the claimed causes.

Personally, I'm all for taking care of our planet, but I think we really have no clues at all as to the causes, if any, are attributable to this. In truth, a couple of hundred years is almost no data at all in the search for true answers. This is really a study where people are claiming to know it all, but both sides are infants in their ability to interpret the few facts they have.

I look at it this way. Global warming may indeed be natural, but we sure are not helping matters any. The cleaner we can keep our enviroment, the healthier we will all be.

Sitting on a couple of sailing forums, I still find it amazing that people bitch that they cannot just pump their E36 M3 overboard. Maybe they do not remember it, but I certainly can remember when marinas smelled like cesspools.

Who is to blame for the global warming that caused the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago? Cave man building fires?

a climatologist told me I was wrong ... but the theory still makes sense to me (doesn't mean it's accurate, just that it makes sense to me)

as the climate warms, and the Arctic ice pack melts, the cold water (from the melting ice) tends to flow south. as it reaches the southern tip of Florida it gets caught up in the gulf stream, cooling the gulf stream as it travels north east towards England and the North Sea. this would in turn slowly chill England and the surrounding areas. eventually it would chill the area enough that ice would start to reform .. viola ... back to where we were ...

I don't remember why he said I was wrong ...but it still makes sense

I imagine someone on here can come up with whatever is wrong with my "theory"

That's a really interesting statistical match if nothing else. I also attended Waterloo for one semester and enjoyed it, so that adds to my belief that this is solid research.

Interesting, but I'm on the fence when it comes to asserting "the" major factor in climate change is human activities.

In fact, I fall very quickly to the opposite side when berkeleyers like this have a public forum. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NmxDouhAgNo

Let's face it, they have no real clue as to what's going on yet.

wbjones wrote: a climatologist told me I was wrong ... but the theory still makes sense to me (doesn't mean it's accurate, just that it makes sense to me) as the climate warms, and the Arctic ice pack melts, the cold water (from the melting ice) tends to flow south. as it reaches the southern tip of Florida it gets caught up in the gulf stream, cooling the gulf stream as it travels north east towards England and the North Sea. this would in turn slowly chill England and the surrounding areas. eventually it would chill the area enough that ice would start to reform .. viola ... back to where we were ... I don't remember why he said I was wrong ...but it still makes sense I imagine someone on here can come up with whatever is wrong with my "theory"

Because energy is only added to the system. The water going north is still above freezing.

That is like saying that if you have a big block of ice in a tub of water and you melt the ice some with a hair dryer, you can refreaze it just by stirring the tub.

Here is my goofy global warming theory: we are not adding any new heat, co2, etc. We are only releasing energy and compounds originally stored by plants aeons ago. Ultimately 99.99% of energy we use originated from the sun.

The only thing we could actually do to genuinely warm up the earth is synthesize atmospheric chemicals that hold more energy in the atmosphere than normally radiate back into space.

that may be true, Baron. but those compounds that were stored millenia ago will trap solar heat inside the atmosphere.

When they first started talking about global warming, I thought, "Its about berkeleying time. Screw Los Angeles. I didn't like it that much anyway."

There are a few million uninhabitable acres not very far north of me. Come on up...

I'm pretty sure the volcanoes are to blame for this......in a few minutes of one eruption they can release more crap in to the atmosphere that we can in a decade. Honestly the only real effect we have had is the urban areas cooking off retarded heat thanks to the buildings, roads, etc retaining that heat.

yamaha wrote: I'm pretty sure the volcanoes are to blame for this......in a few minutes of one eruption they can release more crap in to the atmosphere that we can in a decade. Honestly the only real effect we have had is the urban areas cooking off retarded heat thanks to the buildings, roads, etc retaining that heat.

And deforestation decreasing how much crap is taken back up.

In reply to Beer Baron:

I was under the impression that we are better off tree wise than we were 100 years ago. I have no data to back that up, that was just what I had been led to believe.

FWIW .. another idea/theory of mine is that global warming has been going on for a LONG LONG time .... I've read somewhere that as recently as 10,000 yrs ago there were glaciers as far south as Roanoke, Va.

something, certainly not coal fired power stations/IC automobiles .... in my naivety I tend to believe we are exacerbating the situation .... not causing it

seems I've read that there have been several "ice ages" over the eons ... and that there have been tropical fern fossils found as far north as Canada ... we can probably slow it down some, but I don't see how it can be stopped

Because timecube. http://www.timecube.com/