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Human contributions less than previously described

  1. Oct 14, 2005 #1
    Human contributions "less than previously described"

    I chose that title because someone on Politics made the claim that human contributions were less than previously thought, but I never saw a reference provided for the claim (although I asked for one). I believe I was the recipient of a diatribe in response to my request.

    Below, is a reference for the claim.

    The linked report was in Science Daily in 2003. I am glad to see a group looking at the Pacific Decadal Oscillation - Something that I have maintained was a good candidate to be largely responsible for the cooling trend seen between ~1949 - 1973. This cooling trend has been cited by climate change skeptics as reason to be skeptical of the larger "global warming" issue. I have never seen it to be a good reason to be skeptical of warming - we ought to be able to identify factors that contribute to climate and assign a rough percentage of total warming to each factor. naturally there will be cycles - Yearly cycles such as summer winter, and decadla cycles, such as the oceanic oscillations, and longer cycles as well. We ought to be able to measure our effect on the environment with the knowledge of what the natural cycles are.

    This 2003 report indicates that perhaps half of warming is due to the PDO oscillation. The other half is due to other factors and the authors maintain that human activity is one of them.

    I would *still* like to see a paper that describes all the oceanic oscillations together - Primarily because even though the PDO is entering a cooling phase at present, the North Atlantic Oscillation is warming up. Simplistically it seems to me that the two should balance out, and if the researchers only looked at the PDO they may be coming up with the wrong answer.

    In any event, here is the link and the title of the paper:


    Pacific Ocean Temperature Changes Point To Natural Climate Variability
  2. jcsd
  3. Oct 15, 2005 #2
    I second that, the Southern Oscilation Index plays a major role as does the North Atlantic Oscillation. Iceman here has made a comprehensive study of climate oscillations. May be interesting.

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