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Yes. The satellite data shows a global cooling trend since 1998.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
During this same time, the amount of CO2 production increased as never before. But there's a link between CO2 and temperature. At least that's what they say.
- yan 18y ago
  If there's no immediate, overtly measurable change in temperature, then obviously the tons of CO2 aren't doing anything negative. Also, the scientists working on climate change should just stop wasting their time; can't they see that all of their results and research can just be countered with a witty remark and an observation any seven year old can make? They obviously have an agenda. Anyway, I find it impossible to have these conversations as they are more ideology than facts. Once a political movement hijacks an idea, it stops being scientific and starts being a conviction shared by all those in the movement.
  - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
    Arguably there can be a relation. We have 140 years of somewhat-quality data, and the last decade shows a counter-indication to a correlation. One could argue an increasing base with variance based on sunspot cycles. Or one could argue just sunspot cycles as the cause of change. Or carrier pigeons. It's an interesting area of study, precisely because there are so many unknowns, sarcasm or not.
    - jerf 18y ago
      "It's an interesting area of study, precisely because there are so many unknowns, sarcasm or not." Actually, that's why I've become a AGW skeptic. Remember, the AGW religion is not that "mankind has an effect on climate". Chaos theory guarantees that everything has an effect on climate. The AGW hysteria is that mankind's contribution dominates everything else and that we're looking at massive (2C+) warming on a relatively short timescale. Admitting that mankind's signal can be masked by natural variations already means that mankind's signal, rather than dominating, is merely one of many other signals that have an effect, and that already logically means two things: It caps the effect our signal can be having, and it means that thanks to the fact that there are "so many unknowns", it means that the hypothesis that we're hardly having any effect at all remains at a significant probability of being true. Even admitting that our signal can be masked takes out the worst-case hysteria. "Mankind has less effect on the climate than natural vulcanism by an order of magnitude" hardly says "spend trillions of dollars and break your economies to prevent that effect" to me. "Watts up with That" earlier this year posted the predictions made by the IPCC from a few years ago, and showed that we're on the verge of falling off the bottom of their confidence interval this year, and if next year is even flat (let alone cooler) we will. If we do fall off the bottom next year, that doesn't mean that "natural variations are masking the global warming signal". It means "You guys didn't predict these variations, therefore your models are just plain wrong, and therefore your models may not be referenced for the purposes of extracting a putative 'global warming signal'." Wrong models = wrong science. It does not equal "science that's still right if you just look hard enough". If climate scientists ten years ago couldn't predict a cooling event, then they are in absolutely no position to be predicting 100 years in advance, no matter how much they babble on. That's not just common sense, it's science too, no matter how many words they throw at you. Truthfully, judging science from the outside isn't that hard if you stick to "Did your predictions come true?" "Predictions are hard!" isn't a defense when your predictions fail; they still failed. Keep an eye out over the next couple of years. If they stay cold or get colder, write AGW off until they radically, radically improve their science. The uncertainty will simply be too low to worry about when we have plenty of real problems (like the Pacific dead zone or overfishing or...) to worry about. If AGW is false, it is actively harming the environment with opportunity cost.
      - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
        Great reply. I don't know if you've played around with complex Cellular Automata models, like those used in climate modeling, but the default behavior most of the time is the runaway condition. I can't help but wonder if some really smart people aren't playing games with CA where they don't understand the nature of the beast they are working with. That would explain why every model predicts wildly increasing temps. It's an artifact of the modeling technique.

During this same time, the amount of CO2 production increased as never before. But there's a link between CO2 and temperature. At least that's what they say.

yan 18y ago
If there's no immediate, overtly measurable change in temperature, then obviously the tons of CO2 aren't doing anything negative. Also, the scientists working on climate change should just stop wasting their time; can't they see that all of their results and research can just be countered with a witty remark and an observation any seven year old can make? They obviously have an agenda. Anyway, I find it impossible to have these conversations as they are more ideology than facts. Once a political movement hijacks an idea, it stops being scientific and starts being a conviction shared by all those in the movement.
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  Arguably there can be a relation. We have 140 years of somewhat-quality data, and the last decade shows a counter-indication to a correlation. One could argue an increasing base with variance based on sunspot cycles. Or one could argue just sunspot cycles as the cause of change. Or carrier pigeons. It's an interesting area of study, precisely because there are so many unknowns, sarcasm or not.
  - jerf 18y ago
    "It's an interesting area of study, precisely because there are so many unknowns, sarcasm or not." Actually, that's why I've become a AGW skeptic. Remember, the AGW religion is not that "mankind has an effect on climate". Chaos theory guarantees that everything has an effect on climate. The AGW hysteria is that mankind's contribution dominates everything else and that we're looking at massive (2C+) warming on a relatively short timescale. Admitting that mankind's signal can be masked by natural variations already means that mankind's signal, rather than dominating, is merely one of many other signals that have an effect, and that already logically means two things: It caps the effect our signal can be having, and it means that thanks to the fact that there are "so many unknowns", it means that the hypothesis that we're hardly having any effect at all remains at a significant probability of being true. Even admitting that our signal can be masked takes out the worst-case hysteria. "Mankind has less effect on the climate than natural vulcanism by an order of magnitude" hardly says "spend trillions of dollars and break your economies to prevent that effect" to me. "Watts up with That" earlier this year posted the predictions made by the IPCC from a few years ago, and showed that we're on the verge of falling off the bottom of their confidence interval this year, and if next year is even flat (let alone cooler) we will. If we do fall off the bottom next year, that doesn't mean that "natural variations are masking the global warming signal". It means "You guys didn't predict these variations, therefore your models are just plain wrong, and therefore your models may not be referenced for the purposes of extracting a putative 'global warming signal'." Wrong models = wrong science. It does not equal "science that's still right if you just look hard enough". If climate scientists ten years ago couldn't predict a cooling event, then they are in absolutely no position to be predicting 100 years in advance, no matter how much they babble on. That's not just common sense, it's science too, no matter how many words they throw at you. Truthfully, judging science from the outside isn't that hard if you stick to "Did your predictions come true?" "Predictions are hard!" isn't a defense when your predictions fail; they still failed. Keep an eye out over the next couple of years. If they stay cold or get colder, write AGW off until they radically, radically improve their science. The uncertainty will simply be too low to worry about when we have plenty of real problems (like the Pacific dead zone or overfishing or...) to worry about. If AGW is false, it is actively harming the environment with opportunity cost.
    - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
      Great reply. I don't know if you've played around with complex Cellular Automata models, like those used in climate modeling, but the default behavior most of the time is the runaway condition. I can't help but wonder if some really smart people aren't playing games with CA where they don't understand the nature of the beast they are working with. That would explain why every model predicts wildly increasing temps. It's an artifact of the modeling technique.