Global Warming

[Toad]

For Laz and you other naysayers. It's Mark Steyn.

I don't think you believers should bother with this though.

What's so hot about fickle science?

And, if you really don't like the global weather, wait half-a-millennium. A thousand years ago, the Arctic was warmer than it is now. Circa 982, Erik the Red and a bunch of other Vikings landed in Greenland and thought, "Wow! This land really is green! Who knew?" So they started farming it, and were living it up for a couple of centuries. Then the Little Ice Age showed up, and they all died. A terrible warning to us all about "unsustainable development": If a few hundred Vikings doing a little light hunter-gathering can totally unbalance the environment, imagine the havoc John Edwards' new house must be wreaking.

[EagleDNY]

Originally posted by Angus
What?
Dead simple. Quadruple co2 while even anything else would stay static (Including methane, water and forests) and you WILL get a warming effect.
While the princip is known,it got debated, then the effect then the connection, then what next?
What else does it perhaps "seem" to be?

Since the planet's climate ISN'T static (and never has been), what does that prove?  Also - quadruple CO2 in the presence of plants that take in sunlight and CO2 to make oxygen and you will get a correcting factor in the environment to take the CO2 levels back down.  Anyone that has ever fed CO2 to plants in a greenhouse can tell you about the increase in growth factors.

Just as an FYI - CO2 isn't the biggest greenhouse gas - water vapor is, and 70% of this little planet is covered with water.  Pardon me if I don't panic when the global CO2 goes from .036% to .040% over a 30 year period.

Realize also that this planet used to be a lot hotter than it is now.  Siberia wasn't always permafrost folks, and a quick check of the fossil record shows a lot of things used to live there that only live in much warmer climates than exist there now.  

I'm a lot more worried about chemicals being dumped into the water than I am about a (maybe) 1-2 degree rise in temperature over a century.  Worry less about junk like the Kyoto treaty and more about how we keep third world countries from dumping raw sewage into the rivers.  

EagleDNY
$.02

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by Angus
What else does it perhaps "seem" to be?

Herr Barlett has been in the hands of the Gestapo for some weeks and you only have "reason to believe?" -- Col Von Luger

[bustr]

Summary for Policymakers: The Science of Climate Change - IPCC Working Group I

This paper is saying alot and nothing at the same time. If you look at the last bullit point or concluding paragraph in all 6 sections, it's an out right kester covering for each topic  incase the planet or the sun don't go along with the agenda. It's a beautifuly constructed bit of PR aiming at the faithful who won't read very closely but wave it under the noses of the unbeleiving heritics as a new 10 commandments from "G@D"(U.N.). Section 5 gives the best way out if the planet or the sun dosent cooperate  by projecting a time table of 100-200 years before the bad something happens or goes away. Everyone batteling this today will be dead before then....

This kind of paper is for the convienence of Lobbyists, grassroots groups, corporations, petty local governments and big time politicians to use in their efforts to gain donations,  legitimise money grabs(taxation), power grabs, and forced changes of human life styles.

The U.N. was very smart by not suggesting a global warming tax as an interim stop gap measure. This paper is testing the water before version II which may have a foot note with a quiet suggestion for some form of creative funding. If this rediculous  thread is a mild indication of the extream positions of the protaganistic camps in the professional world, paper II may be very tame.

[lazs2]

LOL.... angus trots out yet another precise scientific term  global warming is  "influenced" by man...  this fits in well with previous terms that were just as precise and didn't panic anyone either.

ITS THE SUN STUPID..

The sun is warming up the planet...  as humans..  we may have some small effect in speeding the warming that, as of yet, can't be measured.   In any case... it is minute compared to the suns effects and....  no matter what we do...

WE CAN'T CHANGE ANYTHING.

because... well, for any part of the global warming that really matters...

ITS THE SUN STUPID.

For angus.. that would be the big brite ball you see most days and that your mom said not to stare at...  see... it isn't controlled by man and, while it is pretty reliable as an energy source... it doesn't always send out the same amount of energy.   Right now... it seems to be sending a little more than we need..

We like to call the effect of this.... "global warming"  the sun getting hotter makes us and our planet hotter.   It is hoped that before we fry to a crisp that the sun will go back to a cooler cycle but...  no one knows.

lazs

[bustr]

Laz,

If you read that U.N. paper it mentions slight global cooling around 1991 due to Mt. Pinitubu erupting. All the ash and particualte matter caused less of the sun's energy to warm the planet. With that admition to a known and predictable natural earth based pehnominon, I have an idea how to cool the planet.

Set off nukes in dormant volcanos every year for the next say 12 years to cause eruptions to get more particulate matter to screen the sun. Sounds just as hit or miss as make everyone stop driving cars and get a bicycle tomorrow. Or the sky is falling do whatever we say to save the planet today but we can't tell you when it will happen but we know it will happen the U.N. says it will because of this position paper.........And we would only have computer models to tell us if the nukes would work and what might happen. But until the first nuke went off we wouldn't know watermelon from a monkey's booty.......

I remember one report that attributed cooler tempuraters due to a high level of volcanic activity in the last 5000 years or so.........Iceland has volcanos don't cha know .........

[Angus]

EAGLEDNY: I'll plonk a little text for you since you provoke questions to be answered.

Quadruple the co2 from one source (as an old static, every day we burn CO2 that it takes the globe some 2500 years to tie down, but I belive the authency of that can be doubted), - Anyway, quadruple the co2 in th atmosphere in some mere 200' years, and it's MASSIVE an impact on any scale. At the same time, mankind is doing it's best of nilling down the countering effect you happen to mention:
"Also - quadruple CO2 in the presence of plants that take in sunlight and CO2 to make oxygen and you will get a correcting factor in the environment to take the CO2 levels back down."
It would be if we weren't chopping down the correcting factor. Of course guys like Jacka1 would correct you there by telling you in a most informed manner thet plants create greenhouse gasses.
In this particular timeframe, nothing else explains it as well. So, enter sapiens with a punch, except may of the species don't live up to the burden of carrying the "sapiens". In one line:
"WE, H.S. Species, definately changed the atmosphere"
As for water vapour, the permafrost, the poles (icecaps), you seem to be a little bit on the tracks and yet not.
What now is the permafrost used to be a bog. And god knows what before that. At the same time you had cold areas elsewhere. The poles have shifted, the planet does that. Where I live near the Arctic, there was a clster of Islands with tropical temperature, millions of years ago. Only 100.000 years ago it was swamped under thick glacier. I look at hills which unveil sea polished cliffs some hundreds of feet high. I dig down only 12 feet to find an old seashore bed. So, you aren't telling a big headline statement when it goes to our terra firma going through changes.
The scaryest "doomsday" part of swift global warming, is that with our load on the scale, we will enable such a swift warming that we will experience a unique timeframe of minimal caps, permafrost and forest with the maximum amount of greenhouse gasses, - first comes CO2, then the permafrost releases the Methane, which makes our business day around the world look like a pinsalamander in comparison, - everything warmes, untill the formentioned 70% blue mass of the planets surface starts hitting stunning figures (that means gulf of Mexico temps in the Arctic, and near Florida, oops), - we get anything between bad and worse, - bad being hundreds or thousands of years of mad climates, worse is the accelerating boiling point, the vicious circle where our water will enclose our globe with a greenhouse effect strong enough to make a Venus atmosphere.
The globe has seen some highline stuff, but with us at the accelerator there may be a new record in sight. So factors are CO2, Methane, forests, and pollution as human affected, rest is not up to us. It's about navigating the roller coaster not propelling it.

Then on to merry old Lazs. Always full of wisdom. Okay:
"ITS THE SUN STUPID..

The sun is warming up the planet... as humans.. we may have some small effect in speeding the warming that, as of yet, can't be measured. In any case... it is minute compared to the suns effects and.... no matter what we do..."

FYI, (May I call you more stupid), without greenhouse effect, the globe would be a snowball. It works that way. With enough effect, Mars would be cosy, and with less, Venus might too. The error margin from snowball to BBQ is actually quite ... minute. Same goes with the sun, and the earth's orbital distance etc. But we can only do what we can do and in your surrender park that sounds like:
"WE CAN'T CHANGE ANYTHING."
And that's where you're absolutely wrong. We have already massively changed the terrain of the planet, and it's atmosphere. The changes that are human related in the last 200 years or so, are more than something like the rest we did from the beginning of mankind. but unlike that, what was happening 7000 years ago (okay, only 6000 years) could carry on with relatively little impact, while what we do now (the things that are easy and cheap) will never work as a whole on something as short as a 1000 years, even much much less.
So, we will be forced, one way or another to change our style.

And finally, John:
"angus is afraid his igloo is going to melt."

Maybe your tipi is going to go crusty and fall down? In my country we never lived in Igloos FYI. And we used the skins for writing books on, a thousand years ago.
(There are descriptions of landscapes and climates BTW)

[DREDIOCK]

Dont know if anyone mentioned this already or not.
But today on the radio I heard a guy talking about proof of global warming and he mentioned that

"10,000 years ago there was a glacier in my backyard.
Now its gone!!"

AHHH HA!!

 

[EagleDNY]

Angus, I see your concerns, but run some numbers through the science and the predictions and you'll see a lot of it doesn't make sense.

First - you see from your own experience that there were tropical islands near where you are up in the arctic, and that Siberia was once warm enough that what is now permafrost was once a bog.  Run the numbers - how much of an increase in average global temperature is necessary to make Siberia a bog?  How much warmer must this planet have been in the past for Siberia to be a bog?  How much warmer for there to be tropical islands up near your latitude?
I wasn't trying to make a big headline statement, I was trying to get you to realize how much this planets climate has changed over the centuries when there was no possibility of human involvement in the process.

Second - you are right to doubt that the CO2 in the atmosphere we release today takes "2500 years" to tie down.  Science on that is spotty at best, and again it is an example of statistics-based evidence.  The CO2 I'm breathing out right now may be converted to O2 by my office plant in 20 minutes, or it may last 2,000,000 years.  I'd also love to see the scientific process that determines the average age of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere.  Somehow I doubt that there is a peer-reviewed replicable scientific experiment to determine the age of CO2.
While you are correct to be concerned about deforestation (especially in the rainforest) as possible loss of an important CO2 sink, you should know that the most important CO2 sink is the oceans themselves.   CO2 dissolves in H20, and the plankton in the oceans takes care of more CO2 than the rainforest ever will (another reason to take care what we dump in the oceans folks).  Also - I'm sure that the millions of acres of human planted crops going in around the world take care of quite a bit as well.  If you've ever driven by a 12 mile cornfield in Nebraska, you'll see that we make a few good CO2 sinks ourselves.

Third - that 70% of the world covered by H20 is also a HEAT SINK.  It acts as a moderator, along with the atmosphere itself to spread the energy we receive from the sun along in a survivable manner.  You are only half right when you say that the world would be a snowball without the greenhouse effect - half of it would be a snowball, the other half would be a burned to a crisp.  

Finally, I must disagree that "in this particular timeframe, nothing else explains is as well" - Lazs is right to point out the solar variation over the last 30 years.  There has been a measured, verifiable increase in solar radiation over the last 30 years - on average a .05% increase per decade.  Thats just what we know - what we don't know is how long (or even if) the increase was happening prior to the 1970s (when we put up the first satellites that could accurately measure it).  To my mind, a 0.15% increase in solar radiation over 30 years explains quite a bit, especially when you run the numbers.  FYI 0.20% of solar output is greater than all the combined energy man produces on this planet.

Yes, we need to take care of the planet in a responsible manner.  I just don't consider that the "consensus science" behind global warming hysteria to be very convincing evidence that man is the ultimate, or even the primary cause of global climate change, or that the change itself is significant enough to be hysterical about in the first place.

EagleDNY
$.02

[Angus]

Hey Eagle:
"Run the numbers - how much of an increase in average global temperature is necessary to make Siberia a bog?"
Actually you don't, if it occurs as has happened with the cap shifting.
As for the oceans being a heat sink, - YES! Since the mass is also much more than the one of our atmosphere, the changes measured there are massive, and big enough for the sea near the Northern cap to be able to consube the ice without cooling.
The sea is actually the big thing, and this is an absolute reality to those who work with it and live by it. A couple of weeks ago I was actually fishing at the arctic circle. There was no Ice, but now it's covered with small driftice due to western winds, - but there has been no proper ice for a long time now. Marine biologists were worried that this melting would knock out the Gulstream, but the newest word is that it will only reduce it a little, and atmospherical warming will more than make up that effect. So, the professionals who life of this have that shop talk, as with the farmers. Hardly any debate, for the things are already an accepted fact and being worked with on an every-day basis.
Planktum is also a big factor, and your worries about the chemical wastes in the sea are IMHO very very valid. Some things have been damaged beyond quick repair. I can mention mercury in the Baltic, - you don't eat fish liver from there, and fat-solluble components in the N-Atlantic, originating in American paper and bleaching industry, etc etc. (processing methods of cod liver oil had to be changed, there were too much poisoned materials than needed to be filtered out, which luckily could be done).
Anyway, planctum is a part of the chain, and that as a big chunk, and it does not always react well to heating. You'd be surprized how much there is in the cooler seas. Then there is good and "bad" planktum as well.
So, this made me stumble:
"I was trying to get you to realize how much this planets climate has changed over the centuries when there was no possibility of human involvement in the process"
IMHO, the headache is those who do NOT realize how much the planets climate has now changed because of human involvement, especially how FAST. In millions of years, and with hundreds of thousands of years of certain periods, the climate has been shifting around the planet, tropical and ice alike. But we're the ones causing the components in the atmosphere to change FASTER than known before, and rapidly approching records like CO2 peaks etc at absolute record speeds. And the best part is, (contrary to what Lazs claims) that it CAN be countered.

[bozon]

Originally posted by EagleDNY
Second - you are right to doubt that the CO2 in the atmosphere we release today takes "2500 years" to tie down.  Science on that is spotty at best, and again it is an example of statistics-based evidence.  The CO2 I'm breathing out right now may be converted to O2 by my office plant in 20 minutes, or it may last 2,000,000 years.  I'd also love to see the scientific process that determines the average age of CO2 molecules in the atmosphere.  Somehow I doubt that there is a peer-reviewed replicable scientific experiment to determine the age of CO2.

actually there is data for the rate of CO2 recycling and absorption by the oceans. In Nuclear experiments large quantities of carbon 14 is produced. Since its half-life time is about 5700 years, it is easy to track the increase of C14 over a few years and where it goes.

In the 60's and 70's quite a lot of nuclear testing was going on and there are measurements of C14. From what I've been tol by an expert on the subject, the standard numerical calculations over estimate the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by a factor of 2. In other words the rate of absoprtion/convertion of atmospheric CO2 is faster than predicted by the models. The typical time scale for a global scale fluctuation of CO2 levels to reach equilibrium is estimated 20 years.

As you said corretly, most of the CO2 is in the oceans. Even if humans burn all the oil in the world, after a few years the atmospheric CO2 level will only increase by 5-15% at equilibrium.

[EagleDNY]

Originally posted by bozon
actually there is data for the rate of CO2 recycling and absorption by the oceans. In Nuclear experiments large quantities of carbon 14 is produced. Since its half-life time is about 5700 years, it is easy to track the increase of C14 over a few years and where it goes.

In the 60's and 70's quite a lot of nuclear testing was going on and there are measurements of C14. From what I've been tol by an expert on the subject, the standard numerical calculations over estimate the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by a factor of 2. In other words the rate of absoprtion/convertion of atmospheric CO2 is faster than predicted by the models. The typical time scale for a global scale fluctuation of CO2 levels to reach equilibrium is estimated 20 years.

As you said corretly, most of the CO2 is in the oceans. Even if humans burn all the oil in the world, after a few years the atmospheric CO2 level will only increase by 5-15% at equilibrium.

I didn't see anything about Carbon-14 in this paper, but here's a link to an interesting article on ocean CO2 absorbtion from Dr. Jarl Ahlbeck of Abo Akademi University in Finland.  

Increase of the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration due to Ocean Warming

The basic conclusion is that the increase in atmospheric CO2 cannot all be attributed to ocean temperature increase, but a good portion of it can.   Its an older paper, but the chemical reactions and formulas he cites are some good info for those that want to "run the numbers".

EagleDNY

[lazs2]

Uh oh...  angus has trumped "significant" with the even more precise scientific term of "massive".

ITS THE SUN STUPID

if the sun keeps increasing in temperature we will all fry and the oceans will release more co2.    If its activity slows or lessons we will go back to neutral or... it will get colder.

How do you propose we adjust the sun?  

So far...  no one has given me any reasons to send 10% of my pay to the EPA or the U.N. to save me.

Now, if these scientists figure out a way to regulate the sun... I might be in for a piece of that.

Angus, really... by now, if you have the brains gawd gave gophers...  you got to be feeling just a little bit like a SUCKER and just a tad betrayed.

When I make up my bumper stickers I will send you one...

ITS THE SUN STUPID


lazs

[bozon]

if the sun keeps increasing in temperature we will all fry and the oceans will release more co2. If its activity slows or lessons we will go back to neutral or... it will get colder.

The sun's temperature is not increasing. What affects our climate is solar coronal activity that eject plasma (ionized gas) in various forms of solar wind. What this does is scatter high energy cosmic particles that does affect earth by ionizing the atmosphere and creating verious reactions. The net effect is less cosmic radiation reduce global temepratures.

The correlation is an opposite one - more solar coronal activity leads to cooler earth. Btw, we are now around solar minimum. One theory explains global temperatures by the change in high energy particle flux due to changes in galactic solar neiborhood density. This happens every time one of the galactic spiral arms pass the solar system. The galactic arms are density waves traveling around the galaxy.

[lazs2]

so no matter what... it does boil down to....

ITS THE SUN STUPID

The ultimate "inconvienient truth".

Changes in sun activity are the cause of global cooling or warming.

lazs