An interesting video put together by NASA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuY7GnmabfA

Here's the original nasa.gov link as well which includes a bit more details.

http://www.nasa.gov/.../features/2011-temps.html

I totally posted this a few weeks ago in another climate change thread.

Expect the same crickets from the deniers.

neato, we've had space travel since the 1880's. learn something new every day. knew it was all a government cover up.

We've had weather records for the last 100+ years. Why do you need space travel to measure ground temperatures?

not sure that i need space travel for anything, except maybe to get off the planet before y'all start shooting at each other again.

Beat me to pointing out his troll fail.

Anyways

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/.../1987_Hansen_Lebedeff.pdf

Page 2 shows that by 1900 there was good global coverage of weather records. (At 1870 there is much less complete coverage and they don't show a figure for 1880 coverage)

Part of this is simply due to the plane of the ecliptic, eccentricity and solar radiation.. Which all correlate together to make this nice little chart of Earth's global temperature fluctuating from a glacial period (which were are in now) and an interglacial period..

But there are several feedbacks which accelerate or decelerate these processes... Such as ice albedo feedback or vegetation feedback.. Furthermore, you need to take into account that CO2 emissions are 4 to 6 times its normal rate, and keeps climbing.. Also the increase of rice farming and cattle farming, methane rates have also sky rocketed which has also factored into the increase of global temperatures

Basically its no big deal if we swap back in forth between glacial and interglacial, its happened hundreds of times before, its simply the added stress that is throwing everything outta whack

LOL

My issue with 'global climate change' is that a 100 years worth of temperature data seems like far too small of a sample size given how long how earth's processes take.

We have like 400,000 years of global temperature data, due to isotope ratios in ice cores. We only have like 100 years of detailed local/regional coverage.

And I feel like what you said doesn't make sense - you say you are skeptical because there are very long natural processes, but the changes we see are very extreme and very abrupt. That should, by your reasoning, indicate that the climate changes are unnatural. =P

True. That is why scientists also use ice core samples, which go back hundreds of thousands of years.

400,000 years ago in Antartica, but there are no ice cores older than 50,000 years in the northern hemisphere;)

if the heat source remains constant does the water heat up faster as the ice mass gets smaller?

Yes, less ice = less albedo = more heat reaching earth.. Ice albedo feedback ;)

Fake

What a compelling argument!

Problem?

oh there you go, you just had to bring science into it!

i guess my thought is that with the ice cores, you can probably see the temperature changes over a good period of time... like you can see the change from 400,000 to 399,000 years ago - who knows if 100 year spikes/dips took place within those 1000 years. (edit: dunno if that makes sense to anyone else, but im sleepy)

but now trying to put how i feel about GW into words makes me feel like i'm just putting my head in the sand on this subject. hrm.

whatever. titty sprinkles!

is the temperature getting warmer at the top of the planet because heat rises? is that why?

As a non-scientist, I would assume that melting ice combined with lower base temperatures allow for a greater amount of temperature variation.

Perhaps someone can shed some more light on it?

Hardy speaks the truth, you forgot to mention that the oceans are the biggest CO2 deposits and with increased global temperatures CO2 emissions from water will increase thus catalyzing the effect further. If we get really lucky the permafrost in the tundras ends releaseing methane :)

Antartica ice cores, due to low snowfall, will dish out information in intervals of a few centuries.. At the North Pole, on the other hand, since it snows much more, the data are in intervals of about 50 years.. The problem is the deeper you go, the less accurate the information is.. naturally..

And XiQter, you are right about the Oceans.. And regarding the permafrost freezing, it has already begun.. Methane bubbles are pouring out of bogs near Alaska and Yukon...

The Earth has regulators which, despite how much fluff we cause to the planet, will eventually bring itself back to equilibrium.. The problem is we are inputting more CO2 than these stabilizers can actually remove... I mean the planet recovered in a short time (if you consider the Earth is 4.6billion years old) when that meteor hit and killed off all the dinosaurs..

Just wait until Yellowstone erupts again, then you can really see the effects of global warming.. Most of the US will be covered in volcanic ash, Pierce Brosman Volcano-style =/.. Only this time the dog won't make it :(

We are already seeing Ocean acidification increase due to CO2 absorption, which decreases the further amount it can store.

bonus spam. nothing to see here.

the ocean is still absorbing the CO2? hmmm, interesting...
what's the volume of the oceans?

The world's ocean volume is approximately 1.3 billion cubic kilometres. Our annual CO2 production is approximately 29.9 billion tonnes. Approximately a third of the global CO2 emissions are absorbed by the oceans (it was 32-33% for most of the century, now it's around 29%). So 6.7g of CO2 per cubic metre water and falling.

any chance you could normalize those measurements so that i don't have to grab a calculator and my mathematics dictionary in order to do all the conversions?

Woah woah wait wait.

So how long until Jesus comes back? There are things I need to do with my life!

what's the rush? you'll have at least 1,000 years of peace after he gets here. if you can't do it in 1,000 years why bother trying...

Damn, imagine what will happen in a minute.

Interesting.

The only people for whom "global warming" is in doubt are the people who don't look at data.

If every single scientist [even Richard Muller, whose examination of the facts was paid for by Faux News] is in agreement that GW is not a fraud but a term used to describe an actual thing..

Then perhaps it's worthy of your respect.

not in this day and age.

bonus

Not enough people interested in the environment in this game :P

we just need callipygian to lead us into the new age of fudged data so that we may see the light.

Global warming is a hoax! My fridge/freezer is still cold!