Climate Change, Deux

[Travelnik]

[Delfin]

Anyone who begins a thread on AGW by quoting Rolling Stone as their go-to source for science pretty much raises the 'ignore me' flag from the outset.

I'm ready to set my hair on fire and build a dike around the hill I live on once the following is established:

1. The earth is, in fact, warming. Hasn't been for a couple of decades, but maybe. According to folks trying to navigate the NW passage this year, water temps are 5 degrees colder than last year. The ice pack in Antarctica is setting records. Maybe we're warming, but there is sure a lot of evidence to the contrary.

2. If we are warming, it's bad. Hmmm....certainly bad for the Seychelles, but maybe not so bad for Manitoba. I don't think I have ever seen an analysis of the economic and social impacts of warming vs. not warming, but I'm open to the argument.

3. If we are warming, and it's bad, we can point to CO2 emissions as the culprit. While increases in CO2 are certainly correlated to warming, they usually lag or at most are contemporaneous with warming. Proving that CO2 is a cause rather than effect of warming hasn't happened. Further, a great many scientists are becoming convinced we are starting into a significant cooling cycle, similar to what was experienced during the last solar minimum. If these scientists are correct, and CO2 warms the planet, then we better all increase our carbon footprints, not decrease them.

4. If we are warming, and it's bad, and CO2 causes it, manmade CO2 emissions are what we have to control to save ourselves. Since humans contribute less than 4% of atmospheric CO2, and since the most we might be able to impact with the most draconian suggestions for reduction of carbon emissions is perhaps 1%, I have a hard time buying the argument that we should spend the $ required to impact 1% of the problem.

5. The AGW fanatics get another spokesperson than that fat fraud Al Gore.

Only when all of the above are settled (well maybe not the 5th - I just threw that in because Mr. Gore is so odious), should we entertain spending trillions solving a problem which may not exist, or if it does exist, can't be impacted by spending those trillions.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by zeehag

as earth normally experiences cyclic patterns of weather-- one must take into account that el nino and la nina affect the entire worlds climatology. the stat and graphs p-resented represent el and la nina years...

Pacific Ocean Cools, Flattening Global Warming | USA TODAY

…The flattening over the past 15 years of a rise in the world's average surface temperature springs from a natural cooling pattern in the eastern Pacific Ocean, climate scientists reported Wednesday…

"Our results strongly confirm the role that (man-made) emissions are having on the climate," says climate scientist Shang-Ping Xie, senior author on the Nature journal study. "At one point over the long term, the effect we are seeing in the Pacific will stop. I'm confident the bigger increases in warming will resume…"

"Our results show that Pacific cooling has indeed pulled down the average global surface increases seen from global warming," Xie says. Essentially, a persistent La Niña-like weather pattern across the tropical eastern Pacific, an area covering about 8.2% of the globe, has created a "cool spot," he says. That has balanced out temperature increases manifested elsewhere in continuing melting of the Arctic, rising sea levels and record summer heat waves across continents, he says…


Global surface temperatures since 1880. Lower chart depicts ElNino activity in the Pacific Ocean.(Photo: NASA)

MIT's Susan Solomon is more skeptical of the Pacific Ocean cooling as an explanation for the flattening, saying "a chicken vs. egg problem" dogs the finding. "Did the sea surface temperatures cool on their own, or were they forced to do so by, for example, changes in volcanic or pollution aerosols, or something else? This paper can't answer that question."

Xie acknowledges the criticism, saying some evidence suggests global warming has transferred a portion of that heat to the ocean depths, which may explain the cooling of Pacific waters at the surface…

[zeehag]

too much co2--plant more trees. geez is easy. stop burning down rain forests and make oxygen instead of yapping noisily that nothing can be done--plant a freeking tree or more than one. shoot make it a hedge. wouldnt that be a novel idea....might make the noise pollution a little less obnoxious as well..... lol
grow a garden.... that is how to reduce co2--,]make plant life use it for creating food and oxygen. eachoif us can do this--even lawn grass makes oxygen from co2 an d sunshine .used to be everyone was taught this in school..now they have to listen to some boring yet greedily inventive polytishun squawk about how his way is so great--not how we can do stuff in a positive manner but how one man can make all the money in a greedy and corrupt fashion.....
dig up that parking lot and plant vegetation.......dig up that concrete front yard and make it really grass instead of green cement..lol
what a novel concept.....that fence dividing you from neighbors could well be made into a hedge instead--is what my parents did------
unless you are willing to keep planting trees and plants, there is not much can be done about co2. of course folks could well fall into some scam made up by a polytishun in the name of keeping the world allegedly free, as he pockets your hard earned dough...

[The Garbone]

Tedious.

The entire thing is similar to listening to a 4 year old trying to tell a story. Every time someone points out a hole in the plot they come up with a fanciful reason why it fits.

[Sailor_Hutch]

Originally Posted by sneuman

I hope you have a better understanding of navigation than you do of the scientific method. We apparently share the Chesapeake, after all.

I have no problem, in general, with the scientific method. But, we don't always adequately cover all the lurking variables, don't always understand the variables we do recognize, and don't always ask the appropriate questions to start with (the last item being the most important). The "method" doesn't always give us the correct answer ... right away. But, subsequently, with more experiment, we usually get to something that passes the test of time ... until it doesn't. What really proofs an idea are the related studies that mesh with the existing one in a tangential way, thus forming a sort of spreadsheet accountant's cross check, adding up to the same number down and across.

Some still existing "respected journals" contain articles which were used, subsequently, in the production of scholastic textbooks, and describing a "scientific method" proof determining that indeed, the universe does rotate around the earth.

[Delfin]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Pacific Ocean Cools, Flattening Global Warming | USA TODAY

Given that the earth has been warming since the late 1600's, (before the invention of the SUV, if memory serves) and if the warming continues how exactly does that indicate that manmade carbon reduction schemes have any merit worthy of turning the economy upside down?

Carbon 14 trapped in ice core gas is a good surrogate for solar sun spot activity, which has a material effect on solar flux. The more carbon 14, the more sunspots and the warmer the earth was. The lower the value for carbon 14, the colder the earth has been. Can you see the any change in sun spot activity during the last 100 years in the graph below, and does this increase mean anything to you with respect to providing an explanation of why the earth might be warming? And if it means something to you, can you explain exactly how erecting wind generators in Indio will affect the sun?

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Delfin

Anyone who begins a thread on AGW by quoting Rolling Stone as their go-to source for science pretty much raises the 'ignore me' flag from the outset...

Ad hominem attacks are far, far below the general quality of your posts here on CF. The data and maps came from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a major national research facility.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Delfin

...1. The earth is, in fact, warming. Hasn't been for a couple of decades, but maybe. According to folks trying to navigate the NW passage this year, water temps are 5 degrees colder than last year. The ice pack in Antarctica is setting records. Maybe we're warming, but there is sure a lot of evidence to the contrary...

Why Antarctic Sea Ice Is Growing in a Warmer World? | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

August 16, 2010
Satellite data show that, over the past 30 years, Arctic sea ice has declined while Antarctic sea ice has mysteriously expanded, according to study leader Jiping Liu, a research scientist at Georgia Tech in Atlanta…

The new analyses are based on climate models and sea-surface temperature and precipitation observations from 1950 to 2009. They show that, in the 20th century, ocean warming boosted precipitation in the upper atmosphere over the Antarctic region, which fell as snow. More snow made the top layers of the ocean less salty and thus less dense. These layers became more stable, preventing warm, density-driven currents in the deep ocean from rising and melting sea ice…

As increasing greenhouse gases continue to warm the oceans off Antarctica, more Antarctic precipitation will turn to rain, which rapidly melts snow and ice, according to the study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The more the ice melts, the more the sun's rays are absorbed into the dark ocean instead of being reflected back into the atmosphere, according to the study. This will further warm the ocean and melt even more sea ice.

The paper also helps to dispel a common misconception—that the strong decline in Arctic ice and increase in Antarctic ice causes a net zero effect, Meier said. That's not the case, because the two polar ecosystems are so different, he said. Arctic ice is multiyear, persisting through the seasons, while Antarctic ice forms and melts each year and has always been governed more by wind and ocean circulation than air temperatures, he said…

But Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the Boulder, Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research, said that the paper has a major omission: the influence of the hole in the ozone layer. Bright summertime clouds spurred by the hole have acted as shields against global warming, scientists say. Recent research suggests the hole may finally be closing, following the phase-out of ozone-depleting chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons. And as the sun-reflecting clouds dissipate, temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere may rise faster than currently predicted by models…

Is Antarctica losing or gaining ice? | SKEPTICAL SCIENCE.COM

Skeptic arguments that Antarctica is gaining ice frequently hinge on an error of omission, namely ignoring the difference between land ice and sea ice.

In glaciology and particularly with respect to Antarctic ice, not all things are created equal. Let us consider the following differences. Antarctic land ice is the ice which has accumulated over thousands of years on the Antarctica landmass itself through snowfall. This land ice therefore is actually stored ocean water that once fell as precipitation. Sea ice in Antarctica is quite different as it is generally considered to be ice which forms in salt water primarily during the winter months.

In Antarctica, sea ice grows quite extensively during winter but nearly completely melts away during the summer (Figure 1). That is where the important difference between antarctic and arctic sea ice exists. Arctic sea ice lasts all the year round, there are increases during the winter months and decreases during the summer months but an ice cover does in fact remain in the North which includes quite a bit of ice from previous years (Figure 1). Essentially Arctic sea ice is more important for the earth's energy balance because when it melts, more sunlight is absorbed by the oceans whereas Antarctic sea ice normally melts each summer leaving the earth's energy balance largely unchanged.

Figure 1: Coverage of sea ice in both the Arctic (Top) and Antarctica (Bottom) for both summer minimums and winter maximums
Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center

One must also be careful how you interpret trends in Antarctic sea ice. Currently this ice is increasing and has been for years but is this the smoking gun against climate change? Not quite. Antarctic sea ice is gaining because of many different reasons but the most accepted recent explanations are listed below:

i) Ozone levels over Antarctica have dropped causing stratospheric cooling and increasing winds which lead to more areas of open water that can be frozen (Gillet 2003, Thompson 2002, Turner 2009).

and

ii) The Southern Ocean is freshening because of increased rain, glacial run-off and snowfall. This changes the composition of the different layers in the ocean there causing less mixing between warm and cold layers and thus less melted sea ice (Zhang 2007).

All the sea ice talk aside, it is quite clear that really when it comes to Antarctic ice, sea ice is not the most important thing to measure. In Antarctica, the most important ice mass is the land ice sitting on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Therefore, how is Antarctic Land-ice doing?

Figure 2: Estimates of Total Antarctic Land Ice Changes and approximate sea level contributions using many different measurement techniques. Adapted from The Copenhagen Diagnosis. (CH= Chen et al. 2006, WH= Wingham et al. 2006, R= Rignot et al. 2008b, CZ= Cazenave et al. 2009 and V=Velicogna 2009)

Estimates of recent changes in Antarctic land ice (Figure 2) range from losing 100 Gt/year to over 300 Gt/year. Because 360 Gt/year represents an annual sea level rise of 1 mm/year, recent estimates indicate a contribution of between 0.27 mm/year and 0.83 mm/year coming from Antarctica. There is of course uncertainty in the estimations methods but multiple different types of measurement techniques (explained here) all show the same thing, Antarctica is losing land ice as a whole, and these losses are accelerating quickly.

East Antarctic glaciers could be much more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought | SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

Glacier retreat (red) and advance (blue) in the East Antarctic from 1974-2010

The warming, melting and potential contributions to sea level rise from glaciers in Greenland and West Antarctica in the face of climate change has long since been a serious concern. The behavior of the much larger East Antarctic ice sheet has been much more uncertain and until now has been thought to be relatively insensitive to climate change.

Now an important paper in Nature from Durham University and the University of Zurich has examined a large number of satellite observations of the East Antarctic ice sheet over the last forty years. The authors find that although there is considerable variability in individual glacier advance and retreat, there is a clear overall trend of advance and retreat that tracks well with warming and cooling periods between 1974 and 2010. Glacier movement is thus much more sensitive to climate trends than previously thought. The work casts serious doubt on reassurances about the stability of the East Antarctic ice sheet…

In spite of this complexity, the three trends in glacier advance and retreat since the 70s explicitly stand out and are consistent with measures of warming and cooling since then. The study does make it clear that the East Antarctic glaciers, which were thought to be relatively impervious to climate change, are likely as or more sensitive to global warming and other climate change effects as the better understood West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets…

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Group9

Are you going to get upset if anyone posts any opposing viewpoints or is this just a "get on the bandwagon or else" kind of thing?

Perfect!

[Delfin]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Ad hominem attacks are far, far below the general quality of your posts here on CF. The data and maps came from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a major national research facility.

Fair enough, my apologies. The problem with using popular sources for scientific references is that they are designed to sell copy. You sell copy by telling people that the world is ending. You also get grant money promising to study why the world is ending.

The study referenced is based on computer models that have consistently failed to predict what turns out happening. Usually when that occurs, scientists throw the model out and start over again since their assumptions are clearly flawed. Not so with 'Climate Change', the new euphemism for man made global warming because it is a political movement, not a scientific one. If this weren't the case, then opposing views by hundreds of climatologists to these models wouldn't be greeted with the ad hominem attacks you deplore. Guaranteed if this thread continues, an AGW fan will refer to contrary science as corrupted by oil companies and disseminated by 'deniers' (just like those Holocaust deniers.) Rather, a scientific case that the models were accurate would be produced, but that hasn't happened. As a result, 'Climate Change' seems increasingly the domain of political hacks and scientists looking to dip into the public purse for grant money in order to add support to a political objective of those hacks - increasing government control over human activities.

[Kenomac]

If a single volcano blows it's top..... back to global cooling. Then what? We start all over again?

These global warming alert threads always seem to max out my B.S. depth gauge.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Delfin

Given that the earth has been warming since the late 1600's, (before the invention of the SUV, if memory serves) and if the warming continues how exactly does that indicate that manmade carbon reduction schemes have any merit worthy of turning the economy upside down?

Carbon 14 trapped in ice core gas is a good surrogate for solar sun spot activity, which has a material effect on solar flux. The more carbon 14, the more sunspots and the warmer the earth was. The lower the value for carbon 14, the colder the earth has been. Can you see the any change in sun spot activity during the last 100 years in the graph below, and does this increase mean anything to you with respect to providing an explanation of why the earth might be warming? And if it means something to you, can you explain exactly how erecting wind generators in Indio will affect the sun?

Your chart is interesting, but notice that the last few decades are not shown. Wonder why? It’s because in the last few decades the apparent relationship between sunspot activity and global temperatures has broken down.

Solar activity & climate: is the sun causing global warming? | SKEPTICAL SCIENCE

As supplier of almost all the energy in Earth's climate, the sun has a strong influence on climate. A comparison of sun and climate over the past 1150 years found temperatures closely match solar activity (Usoskin 2005). However, after 1975, temperatures rose while solar activity showed little to no long-term trend. This led the study to conclude, "...during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source."

In fact, a number of independent measurements of solar activity indicate the sun has shown a slight cooling trend since 1960, over the same period that global temperatures have been warming. Over the last 35 years of global warming, sun and climate have been moving in opposite directions. An analysis of solar trends concluded that the sun has actually contributed a slight cooling influence in recent decades…


Figure 1: Annual global temperature change (thin light red) with 11 year moving average of temperature (thick dark red). Temperature from NASAGISS. Annual Total Solar Irradiance (thin light blue) with 11 year moving average of TSI (thick dark blue). TSI from 1880 to 1978 from Krivova et al 2007 (data). TSI from 1979 to 2009 from PMOD.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Delfin

Fair enough, my apologies. The problem with using popular sources for scientific references is that they are designed to sell copy. You sell copy by telling people that the world is ending. You also get grant money promising to study why the world is ending.

The study referenced is based on computer models that have consistently failed to predict what turns out happening. Usually when that occurs, scientists throw the model out and start over again since their assumptions are clearly flawed. Not so with 'Climate Change', the new euphemism for man made global warming because it is a political movement, not a scientific one. If this weren't the case, then opposing views by hundreds of climatologists to these models wouldn't be greeted with the ad hominem attacks you deplore. Guaranteed if this thread continues, an AGW fan will refer to contrary science as corrupted by oil companies and disseminated by 'deniers' (just like those Holocaust deniers.) Rather, a scientific case that the models were accurate would be produced, but that hasn't happened. As a result, 'Climate Change' seems increasingly the domain of political hacks and scientists looking to dip into the public purse for grant money in order to add support to a political objective of those hacks - increasing government control over human activities.

It is a common mistake made by AGW skeptics to say that computer climate models “consistently failed to predict what turns out happening.” They are actually remarkably accurate, or even conservative, and as more data comes in they are getting better and better. For instance, notice that the Arctic Sea Ice is melting faster than modeled. Very scary. I hope to make some posts on why a warming Arctic could be a major concern.

How reliable are climate models? | SKEPTICAL SCIENCE

Figure 1: Comparison of climate results with observations. (a) represents simulations done with only natural forcings: solar variation and volcanic activity. (b) represents simulations done with anthropogenic forcings: greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols. (c) was done with both natural and anthropogenic forcings (IPCC).



Figure 2: Global surface temperature computed for scenarios A, B, and C, compared with two analyses of observational data (Hansen 2006).



Figure 4: Sea level change. Tide gauge data are indicated in red and satellite data in blue. The grey band shows the projections of the IPCC Third Assessment report (Copenhagen Diagnosis 2009).



Figure 5: Observed (red line) and modeled September Arctic sea ice extent in millions of square kilometres. Solid black line gives the average of 13 IPCC AR4 models while dashed black lines represent their range. The 2009 minimum has recently been calculated at 5.10 million km2, the third lowest year on record and still well below the IPCC worst case scenario (Copenhagen Diagnosis 2009).

[zeehag]

ok for allof you folks so worried about this planet imploding, expolding, reploding, deroading-wtf----in exactly what way is this going to affect humanity which will already have adapted to the impending implosion/explosion/watering/wtf of this earth.

so we sit around a fire and argue about the earth and what is happening to it and why. is this going to feed humanity...is this going to make any kind of difference or it is merely sitting around at 0300 discussing the price of butter in holland with a bunch of college students in london---or writing about it on a forum.....
what do you intend to gain from the worry about something you can do minimal if anything to prevent or change.... this earth s gonna do its thing with or without us.
how long do you want to live--300 years????----wont that be a lil inconvenient???
no one loves wrinkles that much and where is the benefit of living that long anyway.....
worry is one thing that causes lil stuff like heart attacks and losing ones wits.
if you live at wits end, where is the fun in life and living.....ye know what----omg they call worrying about stuff you can do minimal to nothing about STRESS!!!!!!!

GET AWAY FROM THE TELEVISION AND GO SAILING.




personally, i am looking forward to the actualization of high water by 2025---i can visit in floriduh and mebbe bahamas with this boat then......

with love from me, blissful in pair a dice with a deep keel