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OT: Moorabal/Lal Lal wind farm 10-Jun-2009 At 9:04:14 PM R James

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On 10/06/2009 harold wrote:
>I don't think that anyone doubts that temperatures have increased, the
>skeptics question is over how significant these increases are historically
>and what is causing them. CO2/methane verses solar activity/natural variation/recovery
>from little ice age.
>>The link between CO2 and it's ability to store energy has been known
>for
>>a very long time. Any compound with those covalent bonds will store bucketloads
>>of energy.
>Again, no one doubts that CO2 stores energy/effect temperature/is a greenhouse
>gas, the keyword above is 'significantly'. The skeptics hypothesis is
>that CO2 has only a minor contribution to temperature changes compare to
>other influences.
>
>What would be cool would be some sort of deadline to end the debate.
>So the last 10 years is too short to base any conclusions on. How long?
>How about 2020, is that long enough?

You're exactly right. There has been warming for the past 160 years, but none for the past 10 years. I don't dispute that, although the reliability of surface measuring stations, leaves much to be desired (89% in the USA don't meet basic location specifications). Just because CO2 has also increased in this period (which is expected based on ocean solubility), there's no reason to believe CO2 has caused the increase - more the other way around.

For climate trends, it's generally accepted that 30 years is the minimum for proving any trend. Therefore, the current cooling or stability needs to go until about 2028 until it can be regarded as a climate trend. However, after 10 years of no warming, despite increasing CO2, we know that there are stronger forces at work. It certainly doesn't create confidence that the politicians are on the right track with this.