Scientists say that man-made CO2 causes the recent global warming. But climate skeptics insist that water vapor is responsible for most of the warming. Here is why both assumptions are true.

Here are the perfect ingredients for a conspiracy theory: water vapor is the most important factor influencing the greenhouse effect but doesn’t feature on the UN’s list of greenhouse gases responsible for anthropogenic global warming.

Critics of the idea of man-made global warming love this simple fact and have turned it into one of their most potent arguments to sabotage decisive climate action.

So why doesn’t the UN’s climate body the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) list water vapor as a greenhouse gas? It’s because water vapor does not by itself increase temperatures. It amplifies already occurring warming.

Short-term effect
Water vapor’s role in the Earth’s climate system is defined by the very short time it remains in the atmosphere and actively traps heat. While additional CO2 from factories or airplanes can remain in the atmosphere for centuries, extra water vapor will only remain a few days before raining down as water.

The concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is in equilibrium. The atmosphere can only hold more water vapor if overall temperatures increase. So a small warming effect caused by human CO2 emissions will increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.

http://knowledge.allianz.com/climate/science/?626/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas-global-warming-carbon

Mr Smeed, who described himself as a "grudging [stingy, ungenerous] Liberal [conservative]", said he did not expect to have to personally shoulder too much of the burden.

"The way I explained it to my beloved wife was, 'it's what you would have thrown away [if we took] an overseas trip' - that's the sort of stake," he said.

"That sort of money is the sort of thing that you'd spend and that's what's at stake if everything went pear-shaped."

Mr Smeed said he believed the issue was more about politics than science.

"I'm not qualified to make learned statements about climate science at all," he said.

"But this has got nothing to do with science - it has to do with power and politics."

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/retirees-foot-the-bill-for-controversial-lords-visit-20100126-mvy7.html

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Gus: Mr Smeed — who paid for Lord Monckton visit to Australia — is prepared to shell out $50,000 + to that silly venture while it seems he cannot afford to pay an increase of energy cost due to the carbon tax on carbon based energy suppliers — increase that will be fully refunded by the government's rebate... All this while he's got no idea about the real cost of global warming — including that of increase storm activity and strength... Yes, Mr Smeed, your attitude is grudgingly political without an ounce of understanding. We cannot expect anymore from you, except perhaps being at the rally where Tony made a clever dork of himself. May be you were one of the persons with one of the offensive placards.

Ocean wind speeds and wave heights around the world have increased significantly over the past quarter of a century, according to Australian research that has given scientists their first global glimpse of the world's rising winds and waves.

Published in the journal Science today, the research – the most comprehensive of its kind ever undertaken – used satellite data collected from 1985 to 2008.

It shows the extreme wave height off the coast of south-west Australia today is six metres on average, more than a metre higher than in 1985.

"That has all sorts of implications for coastal engineering, navigation and erosion processes," said Alex Babanin, an oceanographer at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, and co-author of the paper.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/scientists-find-waves-are-getting-bigger-20110325-1c97e.html

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"Rubbish" would say Alan Jones... "No-one can prove that I love to say the word "rubbish..."

Gus: for the life of me I thought the blue rinse set and yellow beehive protest behind Tony Abbott had been "frothed up" by Alan Jones. Wrong! Thus, I stand corrected... It was apparently organised by a certain Chris Smith... on the same radio network as Alan... I am prepared to believe though that Jones' denialist ramblings on climate warming prepared the crowd, like one tenderise old meat before cooking by bashing it with a pronged hammer:

Does Abbott agree with that idiocy? By comparison, the signs reading ''JuLiar Bob Browns [sic] Bitch'' and ''Ditch The Witch'' seemed almost moderate.

The shock jock behind this farce was one Chris Smith, a minor afternoon talk presenter on 2GB, but a man best known in the media trade for his disgusting social habits. Hard to forget that sozzled lunch in the Channel Nine boardroom a decade or so ago, where Smith - then working for A Current Affair - unzipped his pants and produced his penis to some startled women guests.

His big difficulty at Nine, though, came in 1994 when he was found guilty of forging a signature to have a prisoner released from the Mulawa Detention Centre for an interview. That got him a two-year good behaviour bond.

A slow learner, in 2009 he was suspended by 2GB after he was outed as ''the mystery groper'' who had pawed three women at a station Christmas party. ''Alcohol issues,'' he explained later.

This scungy past has never stopped Smith ranting about the perceived sins of others, though. He was one of those who led the charge against the photographer Bill Henson and his pictures of naked children two years ago. Wednesday's rally was his latest lunge for the limelight.

by Mike carlton

From wikipedia

Axial tilt
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To understand axial tilt, consider blue solenoid in right hand grip rule as rotational axis of earth, counter-clockwise direction of magnetic field as 'orbital plane' of Earth and direction of thumb pointing toward north pole of Earth. In this figure 'axial tilt' is zero degree because the rotational axis is perpendicular to orbital plane. If this blue solenoid (rotational axis) is tilted while orbital plane remains fixed, then it is called axial tilt of planet or any celestial body.
In astronomy, axial tilt (also called obliquity) is the angle between an object's rotational axis, and a line perpendicular to its orbital plane. It differs from inclination.

Earth's axial tilt is 23.44°.[2]

In the solar system, the Earth's orbital plane is known as the ecliptic plane, and so the Earth's axial tilt is officially called the obliquity of the ecliptic. It is denoted by the Greek letter ε.

The Earth currently has an axial tilt of about 23.4°.[2] The axis remains tilted in the same direction towards the stars throughout a year and this means that when a hemisphere (a northern or southern half of the earth) is pointing away from the Sun at one point in the orbit then half an orbit later (half a year later) this hemisphere will be pointing towards the Sun. This effect is the main cause of the seasons (see effect of sun angle on climate). Whichever hemisphere is currently tilted toward the Sun experiences more hours of sunlight each day, and the sunlight at midday also strikes the ground at an angle nearer the vertical and thus delivers more energy per unit surface area.

Lower obliquity causes polar regions to receive less seasonally contrasting solar radiation, producing conditions more favorable to glaciation. Like changes in precession and eccentricity, changes in tilt influence the relative strength of the seasons, but the effects of the tilt cycle are particularly pronounced in the high latitudes where the great ice ages began.[3] Obliquity is a major factor in glacial/interglacial fluctuations (see Milankovitch cycles).

The obliquity of the ecliptic is not a fixed quantity but changing over time in a cycle with a period of 41,000 years. It is a very slow effect known as nutation, and at the level of accuracy at which astronomers work, does need to be taken into account on a daily basis. Note that the obliquity and the precession of the equinoxes are calculated from the same theory and are thus related to each other. A smaller ε means a larger p (precession in longitude) and vice versa. Yet the two movements act independent from each other, going in mutually perpendicular directions.

]Measurement
Knowledge of the obliquity of the ecliptic (ε) is critical for astronomical calculations and observations from the surface of the earth (earth-based, positional astronomy).

To quickly grasp an idea of its numerical value one can look at how the sun's angle above the horizon varies with the seasons. The measured difference between the angles of the Sun above the horizon at noon on the longest and shortest days of the year gives twice the obliquity.

To an observer on the equator standing all year long looking above, the sun will be directly overhead at noon on the March Equinox, then swing north until it is over the Tropic of Cancer, 23° 26’ away from the equator on the Northern Solstice. On the September Equinox it will be back overhead, then swing south until it is over the Tropic of Capricorn, 23° 26’ away from the equator on the Southern Solstice.

Example: an observer at 50° latitude (either north or south) will see the Sun 63° 26’ above the horizon at noon on the longest day of the year, but only 16° 34’ on the shortest day. The difference is 2ε = 46° 52’, and so ε = 23° 26’.

(90° - 50°) + 23.4394° = 63.4394° when measuring angles from the horizon (90° - 50°) - 23.4394° = 16.5606°

At the Equator, this would be 90° + 23.4394° = 113.4394° and 90° - 23.4394° = 66.5606° (measuring always from the southern horizon).

Values
The Earth's axial tilt varies between 22.1° and 24.5° (but see below), with a 42,000 year period, and at present, the tilt is decreasing. In addition to this steady decrease there are much smaller short term (18.6 years) variations, known as nutation, mainly due to the changing plane of the moon's orbit. This can shift the Earth's axial tilt by plus or minus 0.005 degree.

Simon Newcomb's calculation at the end of the nineteenth century for the obliquity of the ecliptic gave a value of 23° 27’ 8.26” (epoch of 1900), and this was generally accepted until improved telescopes allowed more accurate observations, and electronic computers permitted more elaborate models to be calculated. Lieske developed an updated model in 1976 with ε equal to 23° 26’ 21.448” (epoch of 2000), which is part of the approximation formula recommended by the International Astronomical Union in 2000:

ε = 84381.448 − 46.84024T − (59 × 10−5)T2 + (1.813 × 10−3)T3, measured in seconds of arc, with T being the time in Julian centuries (that is, 36,525 days) since the ephemeris epoch of 2000 (which occurred on Julian day 2,451,545.0). A straight application of this formula to 1900 (T=-1) returns 23° 27’ 8.29”, which is very close to Newcomb's value.

With the linear term in T being negative, at present the obliquity is slowly decreasing. It is implicit that this expression gives only an approximate value for ε and is only valid for a certain range of values of T. If not, ε would approach infinity as T approaches infinity. Computations based on a numerical model of the solar system show that ε has a period of about 41,000 years, the same as the constants of the precession p of the equinoxes (although not of the precession itself).

Other theoretical models may come with values for ε expressed with higher powers of T, but since no (finite) polynomial can ever represent a periodic function, they all go to either positive or negative infinity for large enough T. In that respect one can understand the decision of the International Astronomical Union to choose the simplest equation which agrees with most models. For up to 5,000 years in the past and the future all formulas agree, and up to 9,000 years in the past and the future, most agree to reasonable accuracy. For eras farther out discrepancies get too large.

Long period variations
See also: Orbit of the Moon (Tidal evolution of the lunar orbit)
Nevertheless extrapolation of the average polynomials gives a fit to a sine curve with a period of 41,013 years, which, according to Wittmann, is equal to:

ε = A + B sin(C(T + D)); with A = 23.496932° ± 0.001200°, B = − 0.860° ± 0.005°, C = 0.01532 ± 0.0009 radians/Julian century, D = 4.40 ± 0.10 Julian centuries, and T, the time in centuries from the epoch of 2000 as above.

This means a range of the obliquity from 22° 38’ to 24° 21’, the last maximum was reached in 8700 BC, the mean value occurred around 1550 and the next minimum will be in 11800. This formula should give a reasonable approximation for the previous and next million years or so. Yet it remains an approximation in which the amplitude of the wave remains the same, while in reality, as seen from the results of the Milankovitch cycles, irregular variations occur. The quoted range for the obliquity is from 21° 30’ to 24° 30’, but the low value may have been a one-time overshot of the normal 22° 30’

Over the last 5 million years, the obliquity of the ecliptic (or more accurately, the obliquity of the Equator on the moving ecliptic of date) has varied from 22.0425° to 24.5044°, but for the next one million years, the range will be only from 22.2289° to 24.3472°.[citation needed]

Other planets may have a variable obliquity, too; for example, on Mars, the range is believed to be between 11° and 49° as a result of gravitational perturbations from other planets.[4] The relatively small range for the Earth is due to the stabilizing influence of the Moon, but it will not remain so. According to W.R. Ward, the orbit of the Moon (which is continuously increasing due to tidal effects) will have gone from the current 60 to approximately 66.5 Earth radii in about 1.5 billion years. Once this occurs, a resonance from planetary effects will follow, causing swings of the obliquity between 22° and 38°. Further, in approximately 2 billion years, when the Moon reaches a distance of 68 Earth radii, another resonance will cause even greater oscillations, between 27° and 60°. This would have extreme effects on climate.

-----------------------------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Milankovitch Theory describes the collective effects of changes in the Earth's movements upon its climate, named after Serbian civil engineer and mathematician Milutin Milanković, who worked on it during First World War internment. Milanković mathematically theorised that variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit determined climatic patterns on Earth.

The Earth's axis completes one full cycle of precession approximately every 26,000 years. At the same time the elliptical orbit rotates more slowly. The combined effect of the two precessions leads to a 21,000-year period between the seasons and the orbit. In addition, the angle between Earth's rotational axis and the normal to the plane of its orbit, obliquity, moves from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees and back again on a 41,000-year cycle; currently, this angle is 23.44 degrees and is decreasing.

Other astronomical theories were advanced by Joseph Adhemar, James Croll and others, but verification was difficult due to the absence of reliably dated evidence and doubts as to exactly which periods were important. Not until the advent of deep-ocean cores and a seminal paper by Hays, Imbrie, and Shackleton, "Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages", in Science (1976)[1] did the theory attain its present state.

...

The transition problem refers to the switch in the frequency of climate variations 1 million years ago. From 1–3 million years, climate had a dominant mode matching the 41ka cycle in obliquity. After 1 million years ago, this switchd to a 100ka variation matching eccentricity, for which no reason has been established.

Identifying dominant factor
Milankovich himself believed that reductions in summer insolation in northern high latitudes was the dominant factor leading to glaciation, which led to him (incorrectly) deducing a 41ish-kyr period for ice ages.[12] Subsequent research has shown that the 100kyr eccentricity cycle is more important, resulting in 100,000-year ice age cycles of the Quaternary glaciation over the last few million years.

Theory incomplete
The Milankovitch theory of climate change is not perfectly worked out; in particular, the greatest observed response is at the 100,000-year timescale, but the forcing is apparently small at this scale, in regard to the ice ages.[13] Various explanations for this discrepancy have been proposed, including frequency modulation[14] or various feedbacks (from carbon dioxide, cosmic rays, or from ice sheet dynamics).

--------------------------------

All this to say that present global warming observations have taken all this into account and that CO2 is the culprit. Our Extra CO2 coming from fossil fuels poured into the atmosphere is the guilty part.  We have to do something about it

The Federal Government's chief climate adviser Ross Garnaut has blamed "high-profile" commentators for spreading misinformation about global warming.

Admitting that climate science is complicated, Professor Garnaut says the debate must be grounded on sound information and logical analysis.

"The scientific evidence is clear that the Earth is warming, that humans are making a significant contribution to that," he said.

"The risks are high of serious disruption to our ways of life if there is no effective mitigation of the growth in emissions."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/04/05/3182866.htm?section=justin

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Gus: and just to name the "high profile" shock jocks : Alan Jones, Prue McSween, Andrew Bold (why is this fellow on "Insider-ABC" one does not know, but he is about to quit and go to ten if his pilot alla Glenn Beck sees daylight — why would channel ten bother with this clever ignoramus is beyond me...), Miranda Devine and a few others jocks who have the gift of the gab but are short of an entire shingle-roof when it comes to complicated sciences... see toon at top....

In the charged discussions about climate, the words skeptic and denier are often thrown around. But what do these words mean?

Consider the following definitions. Genuine skeptics consider all the evidence in their search for the truth. Deniers, on the other hand, refuse to accept any evidence that conflicts with their pre-determined views.

So here's one way to tell if you're a genuine skeptic or a climate denier.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2737050.html

Greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to safe levels all but out of reach, according to unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency.

The shock rise means the goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius – which scientists say is the threshold for potentially "dangerous climate change" – is likely to be just "a nice Utopia", according to Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA. It also shows the most serious global recession for 80 years has had only a minimal effect on emissions, contrary to some predictions.

Last year, a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel – a rise of 1.6Gt on 2009, according to estimates from the IEA regarded as the gold standard for emissions data.

"I am very worried. This is the worst news on emissions," Birol told the Guardian. "It is becoming extremely challenging to remain below 2 degrees. The prospect is getting bleaker. That is what the numbers say."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/29/carbon-emissions-nuclearpower

see toon at top and 2032

From Ross Cameron, former Liberal (conservative) MP

...

We have seen how that bullying, data manipulation and discrediting of dissenters scandalised East Anglia's climate research unit, which put together the historical temperature data on which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based its warming scenarios. The most damning revelation was why the manipulation was necessary: because the earth is refusing to warm at the rates the models required.

The biggest liar on carbon emissions is, you've guessed it, Alan Jones... With total disregard for scientific rigour, he spruiks ridiculous figures to his listeners who are being told the grandest of porkies with the assurances of a snake oil merchant.

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3230989.htm

see toon of rubbish at top...

The heat that's now being generated by the climate change debate in Australia seems truly amazing to an outsider.

Here are five myths that I've heard being repeated during my stay.

1. Climate change policymaking is driven primarily by tree huggers and socialists.

In fact, Mrs Thatcher was one of the first world leaders to call for urgent action more than 20 years ago. The three largest countries that already have a fully-fledged carbon price system in operation - Germany, France and the UK - all have centre right governments in power. And Arnold Schwarzenegger was a consistent champion of carbon pricing during his time as Republican governor of California.

So there is no reason why this should be treated as an ideological issue. The real question is about where you want to place your bets: alongside the vast majority of the world's climate scientists who say that man-made climate change is a significant threat, or with a handful of naysayers, often from Europe, who are as well qualified to talk about science as they are about Aussie rules football.

2. Since Australia only accounts for about 1.5 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, nothing that it does will make any practical difference to the Earth's atmosphere.

As the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases per head of the population, Australia has a vital part to play in the international debate. It will be much harder to persuade the big emerging economies of China and India to modify their behaviour if this country is unwilling to do anything itself. As a massive exporter of coal, it has a strong interest in being seen to play a responsible part in the fight against man-made climate change.

read more at: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2813856.html

Hopefully, we'll beat the ning nong spruikers into retreat: Alan is telling porkies and his listeners should be warned at the beginning, in the middle and the end of each programme: "Boys and girls, what I am going to talk about (I have been talking about) is (was) pure bullshit — opinions based on nothing but ignorance and should you believe what I say, get your head examined.

The same warming should applies to Andrew Bolt, of course.