Climate Change, Deux

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by 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.

Actually, the cooling effect of even a large volcanic eruption lasts only a few years. But I can understand why this type of discussion might put you out of your depth.

What will really happen when the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts?

Most volcanic activity in Yellowstone would not qualify as "super eruptions," in which 1,000 km3 or more material is ejected from a volcano. Lowenstern told io9 that supervolcanoes are "very large, single eruptions" that usually last for about a week. But, unlike what you'll see in certain television specials and Hollywood films, even a super eruption at Yellowstone wouldn't endanger the whole United States. It also wouldn't cause the kind catastrophe you might expect…

Most of the real damage comes from ejecta that's airborne. But it's not fiery death from above. Instead, most damage would come from "cold ash" and pumice borne on the wind. Lowenstern and his colleagues consider it "disastrous" when enough ash rains down that it creates a layer of 10 or more centimeters on the ground — and that would happen in a radius of about 500 miles or so. This ash might reach so far that you'd see a fine dusting of it on your car in New York…

After the vents released their gasses and the ground collapsed, it's likely that we'd see a global effect on temperatures. "Any big eruption causes a cooling of the atmoshpere[sic], especially especially with that much ash," said Lowenstern. In 1812, the Mount Tambora super volcano eruption in Indonesia lowered global temperatures. A caldera-forming eruption in Yellowstone would be bigger than the one in Tambora, so climate change would almost certainly follow. The cooling, however, would only last for a few years.

Lowenstern said there's no reason to expect that we'll have an eruption of this size any time soon, especially because the caldera has gone through many regular eruptions that release pressure. "It may be done, or it may move on to another area," he said. "In a couple million years, [the volcano] might start in the northeast." As continental plates shift, so too do volcanoes — so the Yellowstone supervolcano might not go off until it's far beyond the area we call Yellowstone today. "A more likely eruption is going to be a lava flow, a small event," Lowenstern said…

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Delfin

...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...

You might wish to review the drought projections implied in the maps in post #1.

Positives and negatives of global warming

Here’s a list of cause and effect relationships, showing that most climate change impacts will confer few or no benefits, but may do great harm at considerable cost.

Agriculture

While CO2 is essential for plant growth, all agriculture depends also on steady water supplies, and climate change is likely to disrupt those supplies through floods and droughts. It has been suggested that higher latitudes – Siberia, for example – may become productive due to global warming, but the soil in Arctic and bordering territories is very poor, and the amount of sunlight reaching the ground in summer will not change because it is governed by the tilt of the earth. Agriculture can also be disrupted by wildfires and changes in seasonal periodicity, which is already taking place, and changes to grasslands and water supplies could impact grazing and welfare of domestic livestock. Increased warming may also have a greater effect on countries whose climate is already near or at a temperature limit over which yields reduce or crops fail – in the tropics or sub-Sahara, for example.

Health

Warmer winters would mean fewer deaths, particularly among vulnerable groups like the aged. However, the same groups are also vulnerable to additional heat, and deaths attributable to heatwaves are expected to be approximately five times as great as winter deaths prevented. It is widely believed that warmer climes will encourage migration of disease-bearing insects like mosquitoes and malaria is already appearing in places it hasn’t been seen before.

Polar Melting

While the opening of a year-round ice free Arctic passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans would confer some commercial benefits, these are considerably outweighed by the negatives. Detrimental effects include loss of polar bear habitat and increased mobile ice hazards to shipping. The loss of ice albedo (the reflection of heat), causing the ocean to absorb more heat, is also a positive feedback; the warming waters increase glacier and Greenland ice cap melt, as well as raising the temperature of Arctic tundra, which then releases methane, a very potent greenhouse gas (methane is also released from the sea-bed, where it is trapped in ice-crystals called clathrates). Melting of the Antarctic ice shelves is predicted to add further to sea-level rise with no benefits accruing.

Ocean Acidification

A cause for considerable concern, there appear to be no benefits to the change in pH of the oceans. This process is caused by additional CO2 being absorbed in the water, and may have severe destabilising effects on the entire oceanic food-chain.

Melting Glaciers

The effects of glaciers melting are largely detrimental, the principle impact being that many millions of people (one-sixth of the world’s population) depend on fresh water supplied each year by natural spring melt and regrowth cycles and those water supplies – drinking water, agriculture – may fail.

Sea Level Rise

Many parts of the world are low-lying and will be severely affected by modest sea rises. Rice paddies are being inundated with salt water, which destroys the crops. Seawater is contaminating rivers as it mixes with fresh water further upstream, and aquifers are becoming polluted. Given that the IPCC did not include melt-water from the Greenland and Antarctic ice-caps due to uncertainties at that time, estimates of sea-level rise are feared to considerably underestimate the scale of the problem. There are no proposed benefits to sea-level rise.

Environmental

Positive effects of climate change may include greener rainforests and enhanced plant growth in the Amazon, increased vegitation in northern latitudes and possible increases in plankton biomass in some parts of the ocean. Negative responses may include further growth of oxygen poor ocean zones, contamination or exhaustion of fresh water, increased incidence of natural fires, extensive vegetation die-off due to droughts, increased risk of coral extinction, decline in global photoplankton, changes in migration patterns of birds and animals, changes in seasonal periodicity, disruption to food chains and species loss.

Economic

The economic impacts of climate change may be catastrophic, while there have been very few benefits projected at all. The Stern report made clear the overall pattern of economic distress, and while the specific numbers may be contested, the costs of climate change were far in excess of the costs of preventing it. Certain scenarios projected in the IPCC AR4 report would witness massive migration as low-lying countries were flooded. Disruptions to global trade, transport, energy supplies and labour markets, banking and finance, investment and insurance, would all wreak havoc on the stability of both developed and developing nations. Markets would endure increased volatility and institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies would experience considerable difficulty.

Developing countries, some of which are already embroiled in military conflict, may be drawn into larger and more protracted disputes over water, energy supplies or food, all of which may disrupt economic growth at a time when developing countries are beset by more egregious manifestations of climate change. It is widely accepted that the detrimental effects of climate change will be visited largely on the countries least equipped to adapt, socially or economically.

[David_Old_Jersey]

Originally Posted by SailOar

My preference is that responses be based on science, not just personal opinions plucked off the top of one's head. I'm not a climate scientist, and as such I consider my personal opinion worthless. But I do respect the work of those who have spent a great deal of time and public resources carefully studying a very complex system, and who are warning us in ever increasing numbers and with a greater sense of urgency, that humanity may be facing an unprecedented challenge -- albeit, a slow-motion one.

Oh, the irony

Frog Fable Brought to Boil | Conservation

Frog being slow boiled and not noticing the change is not true.

Either?

[The Garbone]

At least with Amway you end up with a bunch of soaps and detergents.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Delfin

...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.
Not so. See following

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...

Bogus statement. Please provide reputable references...

Historically, temperatures first started to rise due to cyclical solar/earth patterns. But once the warming started CO2 levels rapidly increased and drove the warming process. Currently, the CO2 levels have been artificially elevated by the burning of fossil fuels to well above historic normal levels, and the both expectation and observation is that global warming will follow suit.

CO2 lags temperature - what does it mean?

Over the last half million years, our climate has experienced long ice ages regularly punctuated by brief warm periods called interglacials. Atmospheric carbon dioxide closely matches the cycle, increasing by around 80 to 100 parts per million as Antarctic temperatures warm up to 10°C. However, when you look closer, CO2 actually lags Antarctic temperature changes by around 1,000 years. While this result was predicted two decades ago (Lorius 1990), it still surprises and confuses many. Does warming cause CO2 rise or the other way around? In actuality, the answer is both.


Figure 1: Vostok Antarctic ice core records for carbon dioxide concentration (Petit 2000) and temperature change (Barnola 2003).

Interglacials come along approximately every 100,000 years. This is called the Milankovitch cycle, brought on by changes in the Earth's orbit. There are three main changes to the earth's orbit. The shape of the Earth's orbit around the sun (eccentricity) varies between an ellipse to a more circular shape. The earth's axis is tilted relative to the sun at around 23°. This tilt oscillates between 22.5° and 24.5° (oblithis quity). As the earth spins around it's axis, the axis wobbles from pointing towards the North Star to pointing at the star Vega (precession).


Figure 2: The three main orbital variations. Eccentricity: changes in the shape of the Earth’s orbit.Obliquity: changes in the tilt of the Earth’s rotational axis. Precession: wobbles in the Earth’s rotational axis.

The combined effect of these orbital cycles causes long term changes in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth at different seasons, particularly at high latitudes. For example, the orbital cycles triggered warming at high latitutdes approximately 19,000 years ago, causing large amounts of ice to melt, flooding the oceans with fresh water. This influx of fresh water then disrupted the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), in turn causing a seesawing of heat between the hemispheres (Shakun 2012). The Southern Hemisphere and its oceans warmed first, starting about 18,000 years ago. As the Southern Ocean warms, the solubility of CO2 in water falls (Martin 2005). This causes the oceans to give up more CO2, emitting it into the atmosphere. The exact mechanism of how the deep ocean gives up its CO2 is not fully understood but believed to be related to vertical ocean mixing (Toggweiler 1999).

The outgassing of CO2 from the ocean has several effects. The increased CO2 in the atmosphere amplifies the original warming. The relatively weak forcing from Milankovitch cycles is insufficient to cause the dramatic temperature change taking our climate out of an ice age (this period is called a deglaciation). However, the amplifying effect of CO2 is consistent with the observed warming.

CO2 from the Southern Ocean also mixes through the atmosphere, spreading the warming north (Cuffey 2001). Tropical marine sediments record warming in the tropics around 1000 years after Antarctic warming, around the same time as the CO2 rise (Stott 2007). Ice cores in Greenland find that warming in the Northern Hemisphere lags the Antarctic CO2 rise (Caillon 2003).

To claim that the CO2 lag disproves the warming effect of CO2 displays a lack of understanding of the processes that drive Milankovitch cycles. A review of the peer reviewed research into past periods of deglaciation tells us several things:

• Deglaciation is not initiated by CO2 but by orbital cycles
• CO2 amplifies the warming which cannot be explained by orbital cycles alone
• CO2 spreads warming throughout the planet

Overall, more than 90% of the glacial-interglacial warming occurs after the atmospheric CO2 increase (Figure 3).

Figure 3: The global proxy temperature stack (blue) as deviations from the early Holocene (11.5–6.5 kyr ago) mean, an Antarctic ice-core composite temperature record (red), and atmospheric CO2 concentration (yellow dots). The Holocene, Younger Dryas (YD), Bølling–Allerød (B–A), Oldest Dryas (OD) and Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) intervals are indicated. Error bars, 1-sigma; p.p.m.v. = parts per million by volume. Shakun et al. Figure 2a.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Delfin

...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.

How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?

The CO2 that nature emits (from the ocean and vegetation) is balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Therefore human emissions upset the natural balance, rising CO2 to levels not seen in at least 800,000 years. In fact, human emit 26 gigatonnes of CO2 per year while CO2 in the atmosphere is rising by only 15 gigatonnes per year - much of human CO2 emissions is being absorbed by natural sinks.


Manmade CO2 emissions are much smaller than natural emissions. Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 gigatonnes. The ocean releases about 332 gigatonnes. In contrast, when you combine the effect of fossil fuel burning and changes in land use, human CO2 emissions are only around 29 gigatonnes per year. However, natural CO2 emissions (from the ocean and vegetation) are balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Land plants absorb about 450 gigatonnes of CO2 per year and the ocean absorbs about 338 gigatonnes. This keeps atmospheric CO2 levels in rough balance. Human CO2 emissions upsets the natural balance.



Figure 1: Global carbon cycle. Numbers represent flux of carbon dioxide in gigatonnes (Source: Figure 7.3, IPCC AR4).

About 40% of human CO2 emissions are being absorbed, mostly by vegetation and the oceans. The rest remains in the atmosphere. As a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years (Tripati 2009). A natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20.000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years.


Additional confirmation that rising CO2 levels are due to human activity comes from examining the ratio of carbon isotopes (eg ? carbon atoms with differing numbers of neutrons) found in the atmosphere. Carbon 12 has 6 neutrons, carbon 13 has 7 neutrons. Plants have a lower C13/C12 ratio than in the atmosphere. If rising atmospheric CO2 comes from fossil fuels, the C13/C12 should be falling. Indeed this is what is occurring (Ghosh 2003). The C13/C12 ratio correlates with the trend in global emissions.



Figure 2: Annual global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning and cement manufacture in GtC yr?1 (black), annual averages of the 13C/12C ratio measured in atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa from 1981 to 2002 (red). ). The isotope data are expressed as ?13C(CO2) ‰ (per mil) deviation from a calibration standard. Note that this scale is inverted to improve clarity. (IPCC AR4)

[zeehag]

i love how no one gave a ruddy ratones culo before algore spewed all his crap and bluster about a topic which no one can do anything about, yet one man(algore) wanted to exploit--is why he wanted to exploit it, guys--because nothing can really be done about it but buy the greedy prick's carbon dweebies..that was all about world control, not climate. ... now the sensationalist pricks lil idea went bananas and we are discussing that which no one can cure;..an dthu which our planet and probably humanity in a different form will thrive----why worry.....you will die earlier, this how the practical joke is on you--you worry yourself into a grave=-=whose fault is that--no one but yours----

as i see it here--one can discus and worry and stress on this crap until you prematurely die or one can be alive and enjoy living. being alive and enjoying living also has a responsibility--that of not crapping on your own front stoop.

hay...when i was in 4th grade they told us about the rising oceans--wtf is so new about this concept--is something the earth goes thru every so often. is called a cycle. repetitive cycles are actually called history. i would love to be able to see louisiana's bayous with water in em, and everglades as they were made before man befouled the hell out of em and dewatered e,m...bring it on--i wanna go to apalach and i have a deep keel......
i am looking forward to it---i want to be able to glide my deep keel over the top of the tortugas with room to spare....fort jeff will not ever look as good.
man has never created anything as awesomely beautiful as that which we have been given to enjoy as we live thru all earth's changes.
it is a shame to forget this and become so deeply involved in stressing conditions you can really do nothing significant to change
what are your numbers and graphs going to do to help those who follow
will they even see em because your computer is so wet from you not noticing the water rising as you rant on cf about the potential rising of the water--hell i am ready. bring it on.
i will even give that snake a ride . doj and his goat also. mebbe some few others..

[Wrong]

Too bad if the oceans do actually rise and many popular cruising destinations drown, leaving their inhabitants homeless, requiring that other minimally affected countries take them in.

Imprudent to do nothing toward reducing possible sources of human activity that may be contributing to the alleged global warming. Better sooner than later.

[Teknav]

Hiya Folks! It's time for some laughter and forgetting the climate, for a change...

An old hillbilly farmer had a wife who nagged him unmercifully. From morning til night (and sometimes later), she was always complaining about something. The only time he got any relief was when he was out plowing with his old mule. He tried to plow a lot.

One day, when he was out plowing, his wife brought him lunch in the field. He drove the old mule into the shade, sat down on a stump, and began to eat his lunch. Immediately, his wife began haranguing him again. Complain, nag, nag; it just went on and on.

All of a sudden, the old mule didn't like the wife's badgering so it lashed out with both hind feet; caught her smack in the back of the head. Killed her dead on the spot.

At the funeral several days later, the minister noticed something rather odd. When a woman mourner would approach the old farmer, he would listen for a minute, then nod his head in agreement; but when a man mourner approached him, he would listen for a minute, then shake his head in disagreement.

This was so consistent, the minister decided to ask the old farmer about it. So after the funeral, the minister spoke to the old farmer, and asked him why he nodded his head and agreed with the women, but always shook his head and disagreed with all the men.

The old farmer said, "Well, the women would come up and say something about how nice my wife looked, or how pretty her dress was, so I'd nod my head in agreement."

"And what about the men?" the minister asked.

"They wanted to know if the mule was for sale."

Mauritz
The mule is NOT for sale!

[The Garbone]

Ehhh, one thing about that carbon cycle thing.. It is entirely possible and I personally think likely that the Natural balance is in fact not truelly ballanced but a self regulating cycle. The issue being that our referances are too small. We have less than 100 years of really good quantitative data and the rest is more long term and geological in nature with a much lower sample rate, so to say. Give it a few 100 more years and we can talk about it...

[Wrong]

Originally Posted by The Garbone

Ehhh, one thing about that carbon cycle thing.. It is entirely possible and I personally think likely that the Natural balance is in fact not truelly ballanced but a self regulating cycle. The issue being that our referances are too small. We have less than 100 years of really good quantitative data and the rest is more long term and geological in nature with a much lower sample rate, so to say. Give it a few 100 more years and we can talk about it...

Too late?

[sneuman]

Originally Posted by 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

Deniers try to have it both ways: First, they insist that the data is wrong, Al Gore and the scientists are in a vast global conspiracy to make themselves rich, yadda, yadda, yadda. But then, once they are shown incontrovertible evidence that climate change is occurring (evidence accepted by the 95+ percent of the world's climate scientists, politicians and actuaries, btw), their next strategy is to suggest that any given solution to the problem will leave us all poor and enslaved - or, alternately, that climate change is actually GOOD for us all.

This sophomoric diversionary tactic wouldn't pass muster on a middle school debate team.

[Luke_Y]

IDK, seems Group9 was on track here.

I am naturally skeptical of both sides of a debate when absolutely huge money, livelihoods, and cut throat dirty politics are in play. Add to that the fact that I have been hearing that the sky is falling since childhood and am now contemplating retirement but the sky seems same as it ever was...

But, I am willing to listen to both sides, as well as those with a viewpoint between the polar extremes.

I believe the scientists from both sides that tell us at the world we live on always has and always will cycle through significant climate changes with or without us. I believe the scientists that tell us that we really don't yet know how humanity factors into global climate change, or exactly what sort of change if anny is imediately uppon us because in the grand scheme of things humanity hasn't been variable for a significant amount of time, and we have been scientists for an even more insignificant period.

I personally think that life will evolve, adapt, or become extinct if the climate changes significantly just as always and see nothing to make me think otherwise. In the long, long term thinking of the earth as a permanent home is a recipe for extinction anyhow. I also think that we (the world) have more pressing timely concerns and could more effectively spend money to save lives or make the world a better place than we are with climate change $$.


Not everyone who does not fall in line with the "mainstream" view is a crackpot. There are some Nobel prizes and more than a few respected careers there as well.

Sixteen scientists who say the sky is not falling HERE

"Scientific suppression" and unethical behavior reported HERE

Over 600 international scientists dissent HERE

Lots of interesting quotes
HERE

The 97% "Consensus" is only 75 Self-Selected Climatologists ? What's that all about? HERE

Also, to the OP: I notice that while you have been a member for a good bit longer than I (long time lurker here), every single one of your 40+ posts is on the subject of climate change. Aren't there climate change blogs that would encourage more productive debate than a cruising forum? Or is there another reason you are compelled here? Perhaps a personal blog with the comments moderated or turned off altogether would be more satisfying?

Now I must go and find a sailing topic to post in, and resist further debate here, least it be pointed out that 33% of my posts are on the subject of climate change.

[zeehag]

i was in 4th grade either 1958 or 1959. this was before we started to befoul the environment so badly and we still ha d an economy and independence of our nation was secure. we only had one war front--korea. life was good. i read th ny telegram and sun daily in the evening and i saw and read this article about this water rising by 2025 yada yada and my interest was sparked.
the difference between then and now-- folks did NOT rise up in HORROR about the Potential wet world. nowadays it is OMG!! the HORROR!!!!!what will we do--life isnt this way, guys----reacting isnt gonna make earth stop it changes. it will only make your life unbearable and short.
get real and morph with us and enjoy living thi sshort life on this ever changing YOUNG planet.

[sneuman]

The point is:
1) Climate change either is occurring or isn't occurring
2) It's either our fault or it's not our fault
3) We either should or shouldn't do something about it

Most climate change "skeptics" (who are skeptics in the same way folks are skeptical about evolution or the moon landings) argue 1, 2 and 3 at the same time. But, if you can't get past 1, there's no need to argue 2 and only if you have an opinion on 2 does 3 become at all relevant.

The desire to argue all three at once is what proves climate "skeptics" are not at all about the science and everything about the politics of this issue.

In short, they don't like the implications (i.e., No. 3) of climate change, so they argue it isn't happening and/or that we aren't the cause.