Yes, all the time. There are numerous ways to re-construct past climates. Pollen "fossils" are one.

April 9, 1977 issue.

Matt - sorry if you feel I insulted you (post 46?) but claims that global warming is not happening are indeed delusional - still open to the proposal I floated once you cool down (or should I say 'chill')

jd - How about we use technology to solve or mitigate the problem? Are you ok with that?

And BTW I sure hope Lindzen is right about the effects being mild, but other scientists do not think so. Some of his (mechanistic) claims have been tested and found wrong, tho he has argued they could still operate.

You can roughly estimate the effect of methane as 1/4 that of CO2 re warming. Climate change also includes ocean acidification and "CO2 happy" plants out-competing other plants, and methane has little effect for those issues. A further complication is that fracking HELPS with CO2 emissions but can elevate CH4 emissions if not done properly. Also, the dwell time of CO2 in the atmosphere is much longer than for CH4. All effects need to be quantified.

How about Time from 1974:

From the Jun 24, 1974, Time Magazine, entitled: "Another Ice Age?"

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example.

Newsweek had something similar the next year. Funny they mention the circumpolar vortex in the article.

Gotta specific plan in mind? I though mine was looking pretty good.

I mean, if you want to go hi-tech, I'd be all over more nuke plants. That's like free energy. Plus, we could lob a few bad ones at China and put all of those nasty coal fires out. I'm more worried about air pollution from those *******s than I am global warming.

It's okay if one accidently goes a little long and to the left. Just make sure Dennis R. is back home safe and sound first. I'd hate to lose him; he's a national treasure.

JR

I think we have to go nuclear. Unh, maybe a bad choice of word's eh...

I also favor fracking the fk out of those morons in Oklahoma

I'm fine, wore my big boy panties today.

I don't argue the measured temperature changes over the last 100-ish years by modern science. That is fact. What I am not convinced is why the climate is changing. We live on a planet with a history of climactic oscillations, and the small amount of data that we have represents an mere blip in time when compared to the age of the Earth. How can we know that the measured temperature changes aren't simply part of the natural cycle of the Earth? What supports the claims that measured climate changes are the result of man's activity? Those are my perpetual questions on this topic.

Ooops! I meant to write: I also favor careful and judicious development of our methane resources via fracking and other methods to replace coal and serve as a transitional energy source while we further lower the cost curve on PV solar, and work on biofuels, etc.

Matt - human based inputs of atmospheric CO2 have increased by huge amounts. Right?

CO2 is a GHG. RIght?

Before that CO2 sources were fairly balanced with CO2 sinks. RIght?

Thus, we would expect warming. Scientists have shown a close match of the magnitude of warming with expectations from GHG inputs.

The blip notion is indeed a conflating of time scales. What we are concerned about is the next few decades and a few centuries. Without doubt the sun will go out, continents will float around on the plates (changing ocean circulations and regional if not global climates) & etc. THose are interesting to geologists planetologists and biologists, but are not issues of concern for planning.

The real questions now are how bad it will get, and where. (and what to do about it - DoD has some ideas to handle the expected increase of instability in desertified regions - it will not be pretty)

Now, now. Let's not make it personal. Raise your hand if you've ever fracked a well.

SmileWavy

Let me know when you do, okay? Then you can tell me all about it.

We've fracked the crap out of Oklahoma and, last I looked, we're all still here. If you don't want any more of our gasoline, let us know and we'll sell your share to someone else. You've got all those bikes, get busy pedaling.

JR

And water vapor?

................a growing number of scientists is not equal to a 97% consensus.

Talk about a lame attempt to change history.

When the gulf stream slows down enough to freeze northern Europe (via ice caps dumping cold water in the gulf stream), the naysayers here in the US will just say it's Europe's problem and stick their heads in the frozen sand.

The British military has already identified this as the most dangerous thing they will face in the next 100 years. I have a link to the report posted somewhere in the forum from a couple of years ago.

Just get the whole warming/cooling thing out of your head. This is about rapid irreversible change, with extreme weather patterns (storm/droughts) taking center stage.

In regards to quantitative data I totally believe you, these are measurable things. But my biggest question still remains - how can it be proven that the climactic changes observed would not have happened anyway, in the absence of man? Not the individual measurable changes to atmospheric elements such as CO2 (which are but one piece of the puzzle), but the actual shifts to the climate?

So.......you're saying I should buy those carbon credits now?

I might show this post to my wife, maybe it will justify purchasing more ammo.

Do you really think there is a chance they will tax the carbon footprint of a bullet or shotgun shell?

I think they would tax farts first.

Lot of hot air in here.

I was responding to Randy's inquiry about when the scientist were worried about global cooling.

Don't give Al Gore any ideas.

At what level of accuracy and are all the data points determined the same way?

Broadly speaking, it is the same with any system on which we have a mechanistic understanding. Recall tho that we had a good understanding of thermodynamics long before the rise of statistical mechanics (but I digress). We know many of the factors, maybe all, that can cause global temperatures to rise. We know some of them have not changed, or have not changed enough to cause the observed rise in temperatures. We also know that certain inputs have changed, and we know these are forcing factors (similar to everyone's favorite example the forced harmonic oscillator and its drag queen friend, the damped harmonic oscillator) should result in the observed phenomena.