Global Warming???

[1jrp1]

Boy, you are just hittin them out of the park tonight.

Let’s think this through:

If there were no sun, Venus would be much much colder. Atmospheric pressure by itself has nothing to do with it. Instead, Venus is hot because it has lots and lots of CO2 which just love to absorb the sun’s energy.

And BTW:

An increase in CO2 can easily trigger another ice age … if the increased freshening of the north atlantic caused by meltwater runnoff shuts down the thermohaline circulation (“the gulfstream”). No concept could be simpler, but extremely difficult to predict precisely. The point is that we are whacking our life support system (e.g. climate system) with a sledgehammer. There are a lot of things that could go seriously wrong. Generally, climate scientists try to focus on quantifying the most predictable outcome (steady CO2 rise leads to steady temperature rise). But there are many extreme positive and negative feedbacks that could be triggered if we reach a tipping point. We could trigger an ice age, or if the large permafrost carbon resevoirs of the permafrost and the methane hydrates are released we could be back in dino-climate (crocodiles in greenland).

When you don’t understand the consequences of your actions, it is best to slow down and be cautious. But heck, let’s just burn up all that coal and oil anyhow.

[kewp]

“I should have been clearer. Greenland always had glaciation, but the amount of non-iced over land during 1000-1200 enabled Vikings to settle it and grow food. The cooling that occurred afterward (The Maunder Minimum) forced the Vikings to flee. The point here is that there are dramatic changes in climate that happens on a sub-century scale, and to believe that the one happening now *has* to be man-made seems to gloss over historical parallels.”

Yes, not surprisingly there have been localized climate trends throughout history. However, the emphasis needs to be on ‘localized’. There is currently no evidence this, or the ensuing ‘little ice age’ was a global phenomenon.

Unfortunately, the warming we are observing currently *is* global in nature.

“Sunlight. There are two other minor factors that come to mind: geothermal energy, and energy absorbed and reemitted as infrared radiation by greenhouse gasses (yes, that’s what you guys are going to jump on).”

Wrong again! You missed a real biggie, surface area!

More dark water (versus white ice) mean more absorbed radiation and more warming. One of those nasty feed-forward mechanisms you will hear about more in the future.

Here, read about it !

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article312997.ece

Or is this more hippie propaganda?

[FutureSDguy]

You sure have this obsession with “wrong!” There are lots of feedback mechanisms to be sure. I was merely listing the top energy inputs into the ocean surface itself.

[drunkle]

Submitted by FutureSDguy on February 19, 2007 – 6:54pm.

No, it would be at a different pressure due to different densities, and as a consequence, a different temperature.

that should be a simple calculation given the known pressure of venus and the density of co2…

why sources like wikipedia and nasa state the greenhouse effect as the primary cause of the temp is beyond anyone’s guess (except the hyperintelligent agw naysayers?). nasa must have crappy maths.

“In general, I see how aghast some of you are that I dare challenge “scientific establishment.” ”

you’re not a hero for standing up to the “science facists”. beating down a bunch of nerds is easy; pelt them with slurpees as they ride their bikes to work.

“My point was that in the past 120 years, CO2 has risen monotonically, but temperature has not; most of the temperature rise occurred before the bulk of CO2 occurred. This greatly weakens AGW, and the best hand-wave that you can do about it is to say “well, it’s a delayed action.” This is not hard evidence. I find it funny how AGW supporters choose time frames that suit them. Give them 8000 years of cycical evidence (that what is happening today happened before), they reject it. Give them 30 years of cyclical evidence (it got cooler then), they reject it. But how about exactly since 1942, now they’re convinced that man is the culprit.”

how convenient; experimental (edit: empirical) science is simply handwaving while opinionated defense contractors with zero data are intellectual heros. is this Bizarro World?

[Anonymous]

Remember, it wasn’t long ago when the favorite scare was that there was going to be another ice age due to CO2

Maybe among sensationalists, but there was nowhere near the current scientific consensus, and in fact the mainstream scientific opinion back then was not at all convinced that any large scale accelerating global cooling was imminent. There was *1* damaging and irresponsible article in Newsweek. Now there are thousands of serious peer-reviewed scientific articles and the consensus of every climatological and geophysical scientific society on the planet and large conferences discussing the matter. Even back in 1979 the JASON panel estimated climate change from the greenhouse effect and predicted a temperature rise and sensitivity which is still remarkably consistent with the most modern evidence. Why? The laws of physics were the same then as now and even unmodeled complexity cannot overcome the overarching basic physics of the problem.

The global cooling myth

And yes maybe in 10,000 or 50,000 years the orbital effects will change more to the cooling side (as in previous ice ages). Let’s cross that bridge when we get there, and try to make it through the next 200 years.

“Yes, very solid in favor of temperature rising before CO2 does. This supports the theory that the ocean is absorbing less of it due to temperature.”

OK, sure, do you understand this is a feed FORWARD which will amplify any external perturbation which increases temperature?

If this mechanism were at all comprehensive to fully explain the current situation you would need to demonstrate, experimentally, the following:

1) an external mechanistic source of warming distinct from the greenhouse effect sufficient to explain present situation
2) that the CO2 increase in atmosphere is a result from emission of dissolved oceanic CO2
3) the combustion products from human fossil fuels are not emitted in the atmosphere

In truth there is no answer for (1), and (2) and (3) are contradicted by experimental results.

How much of the recent CO2 increase is due to human activities?

Give them 8000 years of cycical evidence (that what is happening today happened before), they reject it.

Give them 30 years of cyclical evidence (it got cooler then), they reject it. But how about exactly since 1942, now they’re convinced that man is the culprit.

Well, for one there’s the fact that CO2 concentrations are well above history for thousands of years.

You misunderstand the obvious point. The existence of natural fluctuations (with their own causal influences) in historical time does absolutely nothing to disprove the underlying physical phenomenon, as well as the obvious experimental facts that both greenhouse gases, and now temperatures are growing well above the bounds of natural fluctuations for the last thousands of years.

The question is quantitative magnitude and this requires hard-core science and observations: at what level of exogeneous fossil CO2 will the climate delta induced be at least of the same magnitude as natural variability sufficient to distinguish it. We have found it. Human influences are added to usual variation. You can have CO2 rising monotonically (with yearly cycles) but until the effect is sufficiently large it may not be easily visible, and could be subsumed under other effects (like aerosol smog {human induced} and volcanism {natural}) until it does become sufficiently large. The climate modelers do not at all forget about other influences.

The paleological record does nothing to refute the GW consensus, but it critical in supporting it.

Finally it must be remembered that even in past times natural climate fluctuations had their own physical causal influences. If we had modern instrumentation then we could have said most likely why things were going as they were. We can do so now, and of course current observations are more reliable than proxy paleoclimate estimations. And the answer is that there is NO explanation consistent with all facts without including human-emitted greenhouse gases, and that the contribution of human greenhouse gases is significant.

Remember. The change in greenhouse gas concentrations is an experimental result. The increase of IR emissivity is an experimental result. The oceans receive energy from the Sun in the visible plus the IR from the upper atmosphere. The latter has been increasing. The former hasn’t, but it does seem to oscillate.

How is it possible to assert that this will NOT have an effect on climate? If you say that it will but it is small, now you’re starting to finally be in the realm of accepting modern quantitative physical science, and if you follow that thread comprehensively and seriously you end up at the mainstream estimate of climate sensitivity.

Even if you ignore my words, please read the links at RealClimate.

[Anonymous]

This is a side-commentary on the physics of the greenhouse effect and some “popular” ideas and words which don’t quite get at the actual physics of the problem.

First of all, temperature does not increase with greater greenhouse effect because “less heat gets out”, at least not in the sense that people intuitively believe. That is, it isn’t really as if extra solar heat is being “stored” somewhere (though oceans will take some) and that’s why it’s hotter.

The total amount of outgoing energy from the Earth is extremely well balanced by the total ingoing energy to the Earth from the Sun (plus a tiny bit from the cosmic background), and this stays so even with a greater greenhouse effect. The notion of “trapping heat” is thus somewhat imprecise.

What is happening is that with greater greenhouse gases some of the radiation reflected from the Earth’s surface hits the upper atmosphere, excites some molecules, which then re-emits in a random direction, which half the time is back down, which of course will be partially aborbed, reflected and re-emitted. This continues the cascade until you again reach equilibrium in the total energy in equals total energy out. (ignoring ocean heat capacity).

A hotter surface does of course radiate back out MORE energy.

However, the equilibrium temperature is higher when there is more greenhouse gas.

The best way to think about it is this:

Without greenhouse gases, looking up from the Earth’s surface your source is the energy from the Sun, principally in visible frequencies. With the greenhouse effect, you add in another source in the infrared. Increase the greenhouse gases and this second source gets more important.

This is not exactly how a real ordinary gardener’s greenhouse works (completely)—there a significant effect is that you insulate your plants from strong heat losses from convection of air.

[csr_sd]

After a long weekend of G-N-Ts and staying dry, I think I will bail on this post. Although I will copy all of these as I think they will be useful to dissect at a later point.

To the naysayers, it is unfortunate that there is so much crappola in Science and Nature, it is also problematic that the IPCC has had the issues that it has had. There is good data out there. It is not hard to find.

To the true believers, there was a time in the past that we were in for an ice age.

Climate science is neither exact, nor infallible. But we all need to think very hard about what constitutes an appropriate response to climate variability.

I personally believe that the flying spaghetti monster created all this confusion, and it is time that we gave Him his due.

Alternatively, we could believe that scientists are not trying to sell climate change, as there are so many other things to study. And, that they are trying very hard to understand the ramifications of more than 6 billion people tryng have have mcmansions all around the world.

[FutureSDguy]

Long thread. I think it has at least served to get people to talk about what they truely believe and challenge each other on those beliefs.

This morning, I read an interesting blog post where US temperatures might not have risen after all, if subsequent changes to temperature record are faulty.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1142

According to the raw (“uncorrected”) data, US temperatures in the 1930’s were warmer than the present. This happens to coincide with the “dustbowl” climate which contributed to the great depression.

The comments are very interesting. In that thread, someone laments on how the IPCC summary has been released to the public (Summary for Policy Makers), before the public has a chance to scrutize the underlying science. I agree with that objection. To me this seems like a classic case of propaganda: solidify public opinion on the matter, making the actual scientific data secondary, and when rebuttals are made on the release data in May, they won’t make the headlines because public sentiment has already been “fixed” (i.e. it’s too late to roll back the wave).

[sdnativeson]

This is an interesting addendum to the discussion,

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0220/p03s01-ussc.html

[kewp]

“You sure have this obsession with “wrong!””

Moi? You’ve made it a lifestyle!

[cr]

Longest post ever?

I apologize if this has already been mentioned but National Geographic had a special on the poles shifting as a cause of “Global Warming.”

Here is some info from NASA on it-

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/29dec_magneticfield.htm

If Democrats take the White House in ’08 who will Gore blame then?

[Anonymous]

To the true believers, there was a time in the past that we were in for an ice age.

Indeed, if it weren’t for anthropogenic global warming, we would still be in for an ice age, maybe within 5,000 to 50,000 years. If we ever get to that point, we can do something about it then, probably pretty easily using some CFCs.

The physics of that has not been disputed or overturned; the question then was which influences would likely be stronger in the short term. Now, after significant effort and experimentation, we now know.

Summary: mainstream science was right then (which did certainly NOT predict an ice age within 100 years with any certainty!!), and still is.

[FutureSDguy]

I think people give humans too much credit for its ability to affect the climate. First, I am yet to see a completely definitive reason for ice ages: is it due to Milankovich cycles, or a combination of things? Second, whatever the cause, I’m extremely skeptical that man can do anything about it, unless he really wants to mess up the environment.

There is a book coming out called Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change, that talks about cosmic rays and the suns magnetic fields as the primary cause of this century’s global warming. Ever since I started digging for a more sensible explanation for GW, the sunspot cycle has always occured to me as the most meaningful piece of evidence. Who knows, this could be the nail in the coffin? I fully expect a lot of heated discussions about this, and I’m sure the authors are going to undergo unfair and unprofessional treatment. That’s truly unfortunate, since the best science comes from evaluating ALL possible theories with professionalism and neutrality.

Antarctic ice is another big area of debate that I believe will become clearer over time. While calving of ice off of its shores has occurred at a higher rate, thermometers inland show colder temperatures. In 2009, hopefully the second attempt in putting up CyroSat (CyroSat 1’s launcher crashed) which will measure the thickness of the ice with high accuracy.

DrChaos, I’m very much impressed with your ability to cover the GW topic, but I also do get the impression that you’re trying to overwhelm the audience with science-talk as a means for validation, either consciously or subconsciously. Most things in science actually do have simple explanations–feedbacks, forcings, and the arcane physics of atmospheric CO2 might help in a more accurate model of climate, but I suspect the longer-term cycles ultimately must have extra-terrestial causes. The impact of man-made CO2 has been dutifully argued by AGW skeptics as negligible. But I’m content with it being a continued topic of debate–but I do think it’s distracting resources from the ultimate resolution of the puzzle.

Hmmm, what else. Oh yes, I think this issue of CO2-induced GW is to many just a proxy for the ongoing battle against burning fossil fuels, hence the heightened vitriol. I’m for reduction in pollutants (including CFC’s), but I think people are ultimately better off with impartiality and cold-objectivity (no pun intended) in science, which is most lacking in climate science. This is so that real workable solutions can be obtained, regardless of the social agendas going into characterizing the problems.

I hope that this IPCC fiasco falls flat on its face for the sake of separating science from politics. It’s a extremely toxic combination that (in my skeptic opinion) is causing the wrong steps to be made. Its attitude that “the science is settled” is insulting to scientists who oppose. This is not unlike what happened to Galileo when it came to characterizations of the solar system.

My view of AGW in no way unique, so continuing character attacks upon me and calling me ignorant needs to come to a rest. Those who think the majority of scientists is in agreement in AGW (either sincerely, or just joining in on the lie) need to look again and start reading the views from the other side. Not only is consensus science bad science, but in the case of AGW, the consensus is illusory anyway: it is a result of cherry-picking, unequal research funding allocation, intimidation, and fear of skeptic climatologists from speaking up (just look at the treatment of people like me in this thread). Furthermore, there is sufficient evidence of data tampering and misrepresentation within the works of IPCC that would make most scientists cringe. I believe that scientific results that are tainted should be thrown away and completely started over by someone else.

My final question that I find worth asking, if at least rhetorical: if AGW is obviously true, then why isn’t the IPCC acting with the same routine scientific integrity expected of any science body? In science, results are supposed to speak for themselves.

[kewp]

“To me this seems like a classic case of propaganda: solidify public opinion on the matter, making the actual scientific data secondary, and when rebuttals are made on the release data in May, they won’t make the headlines because public sentiment has already been “fixed” (i.e. it’s too late to roll back the wave).”

Oh, so we should discard the peer-review process in favor of a mass appeal to popularity? Keep in mind this is the same public the elected George W. Bush.

Twice.

This article reminds me of the mentality of the cult of denialsim…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2016049,00.html

[FutureSDguy]

“Oh, so we should discard the peer-review process in favor of a mass appeal to popularity?”

Congratulations, you’ve just described IPCC!

[Author]

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