What's wrong with a bit of global warming?

In summary, global warming is not a bad thing, in fact it may well be a good thing. The ice caps are melting, so we will gain land in the north pole, CO2 will aid crop growth, and the Earth will become warmer. The only bad thing is that some regions may become like the Sahara, but that is not a great loss.
  • #36
Andre said:
Furthermore, melting glaciers, stronger hurricanes or not, droughts or floodings, rising sea levels and what have you are not proof of global warming, it's proof of chaotically changing conditions.

Just to enquire, isn't chaotically changing climate due to global warming?
 
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  • #37
Well to put things a bit in perspective, you might like taking some time to take note of this:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/ispm.html

This is how the Summary for policy makers would have been written by many of the contributing scientists:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/ISPM.pdf

See also:

http://www.heartland.org/pdf/22835.pdf
 
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  • #38
Phy6explorer said:
Just to enquire, isn't chaotically changing climate due to global warming?
No. Chaos is the natural order of weather and climate. This is what many (most) climatic Chicken Littles don't get.

BTW, chaos is a specific term with a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory" [Broken].
 
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  • #39
latecommer said:
It is very egocentric to even think that we can stop a climate change.

It is very egocentric to think that we can have six+ billion humans on the planet consuming resources and not have to deal with the consequences.

Nature has a way of restoring balance to life. It's a four step program called famine, pestilence, war, and death. Call me egocentric, but I think humanity can do better then this.
 
  • #40
Algr said:
It is very egocentric to think that we can have six+ billion humans on the planet consuming resources and not have to deal with the consequences.

Nature has a way of restoring balance to life. It's a four step program called famine, pestilence, war, and death. Call me egocentric, but I think humanity can do better then this.

I don't understand the logic. Could you please explain what that has to do with mankinds ability to alter climate or not?
 
  • #41
Overpopulation is not something that humans invented, it is literally older then breathing. So is the natural response to when an organism grows beyond it's environment's ability to support it. If a species has no predators, it will grow in population until it exhausts it's food supply. Then the population will crash to far below what could have been maintained had other controls been in place - sometimes leading to total extinction.

Humans are in no way exempt. On Easter Island, humans took what was once a forest, and turned it permanently into a grassland that could support far fewer people. The idea that we could respond to this with "well, maybe we'll all move to other cities" is just denial. If we can't stop climate change, then most of humanity is doomed. Why give up on the starting line?
 
  • #42
Again there is a logical disconnect. Warmer means better if you are considering food supply, and especially when compared to cold and the need to burn far more fossile fuels.
Still there is no proven way that humans effect climate at present and while I agree it would be nice to set the Earth's climate like we do a thermostat, there is no way to do that at present.
One thing that has no bearing on climate change is CO2. Only the removal of all CO2 could effect the climate... to the colder. Additional CO2 will not make it appreciably warmer due to its logrithmic effect on IR absorbtion.
Its ability to absorb energy has reached a limit where doubling has less than 7 hundreth of a degree C effect.
I agree that nature will balance out our population when we reach beyond our ability to support ourselves, but I strongly disagree that "most of humanity" is doomed. There is no magic tipping point that would start an irreversable extinction. Why would we sink much below the level of maximum supportable population? As resources deminish so will population, unless replacement technology takes it's place. We will then stabilze at a sustainable level. Unless external forces, such as astroid type events take place, there is no "doom" in sight.
 
  • #43
Phy6,
I am happy that you took no offense because none was meant. Teh one degree thing threw me a bit because that was obviously wrong.
I, like Andre, do not use Wikipidea as a source, because I have seen submitted materials that counter the moderator of that site's opinion removed. It is very clearly a reflection of the site owners personal views and in many ways unscientific. What confuses people is that they think some sort of "equlity' of all views is represented. It is not.

I have opened Andre's suggested sites and learned from them...I hope you will do the same.

Vanesch

Would you please point out statements I made that I di not back up? I would like the opportunity to do so.
 
  • #44
Phy6
When you speak of "holes" in the ozone layer you must be careful. It is really an inaccurate way of saying a thinning of some degree of the ozone. It is a very loaded term that implies to the uniformed a total lack of ozone. Indeed a real lack of ozone (a real hole) would have very unpleasent effects, but a thinning would bring on effects only of it's degree of thinning.
Do you not agree?
Words must mean something if we expect to pass our thoughts on to others. Use of inaccurate or loaded words is counter to that.
If I may, I suggest that you look at the works of William Kininmonth. I consider him one of the clearest thinkers and writers on these subjects, and on others related to climate.
 
  • #45
An interesting paper by Timo Niroma:

For those of you unfamiliar with Dr. Niroma, he is highly respected Finnish climatologist who has been linking solar activity with temperature in a series of many papers.
His latest is done on the weather station located in Uppsala, Finland. This is a site with data going back at least to 1739.
He postulates that there has been a steady but uneven rise in temperature since the end of the last glaciation (accepted by most climatologists)
He has done a study of temperature trends from this data and published his analysis as "Are there any signs of global warming in Uppsala tempertures in 1739 -1999?"
The exact time of the end of the Maunder minimum is debateable, but he chooses 1739 and attempts to justify that date in this paper. He breaks down the temperature trends in smaller units as follows:

1739 -1801
The regression is 4.92 + 0.0063
which is a rise of 0.063 degrees C per decade, or 0.63 degrees per century

1801 -1816 (Dalton Minimum)

regression is 5.00 - 0.034
which is a fall of 0.34 degrees C per decade, or 3.4 degrees per century

1816 - 1867

regression is 5.30 - 0.011
which is a fall of 0.11 degrees per decade or 1.1 degree per century

1867 -1930 (period of greatest rise after the Maunder Minimum)

regression is 4.47 + 0.011
which is a rise of 0.11 degrees per decade or 1.1degrees per century

1930 - 1999 (warming trend only one quarter of what is was in the previous 63 year period)
regression is 5.36 + 0.0029
which is a rise of 0.029 degrees per decade or 0.29 degrees per century.

The three warmest sub sets in this data were, in order: (1) 1930's, (2) 1990's, and (3)1770's
It appears to be difficult to correlate this with CO2 measurements which have been steadly rising in recent years.

However, it does correlate well with sunspot activity (a common proxie for solar activity) with a rise of 1.0 Wolfs per decade across this time period.
The breakdown includes a rise in solar activity 1930 -1999 of 3.4 wolfs per decade.

Dr. Niroma notes elsewhere that the Sun has recently been in one of its most active stages since the end of the Maunder Minimum (Little Ice Age), but appears to be decreasing in the last decade. He like many other climatologists warns of a potential cooling due to recent reduced solar activity.
 
  • #46
latecommer said:
Vanesch

Would you please point out statements I made that I di not back up? I would like the opportunity to do so.

Well, others here know that I also think that the IPCC makes statements of which the scientific certainty is actually below the claimed certainty, but when you say:

I fear you are buying an unproven and unprovable hypothesis, and rejecting the primary source of energy that has always been the source of all our heating and cooling.

then that's unproven too. We don't know whether the ONLY parameter affecting Earth's climate is the sun, which is what you claim here ; in fact, there are many indications that atmospheric composition DOES play a role (and not only as a feedback variable).

Also, although you correctly indicate the weak point in the AGW hypothesis, namely the "vapor and cloud reaction", what you advance:
Nature has very efficient ways of coping with changes in green house gases, ie. more heat creates more water vapor, more water vapor creates more precipitation, more precipitatiopn creates more cooling...and more CO2 creates more terrestrial plant and plankton growth which absorbs more CO2.

is not necessarily true either: in fact, one doesn't know the exact vapor and cloud reaction to heating, which is the main "feedback" mechanism, which can just as well be positive as negative. Precipitation btw doesn't create cooling. What creates cooling is cloud formation, up to a certain extend, and as far as I understand, this is one of the most un-understood aspects.

I think that the honest situation is that we don't know what the increased CO2 content of the atmosphere will do. It could very well lead to a global warming (but this is less "logically inevitable" as the IPCC claims IMO), it could do something else, and the intensity of the potential change is probably difficult to assess.

In as much as being cock-sure like the IPCC is probably not entirely scientific, being cock-sure of the opposite is just as un-scientific.
 
  • #47
vanesch said:
In as much as being cock-sure like the IPCC is probably not entirely scientific, being cock-sure of the opposite is just as un-scientific.

How c.. -sure are we that aether does not exist, or phlogiston? Isn't science all about eliminating options that proved to be wrong? The IPCC has done predictions of which we are witnessing how (in)-correct those are. Model predicted radiation fingerprints were proven wrong with factual data (see Miskolsczi's greenhouse thread). How many black swans are required to face that the all-swans-are-white hypothesis is false?
 
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  • #48
Your point is well taken Vanesch, but if you re-read you will see I did not use an exclusive in terming the Sun as the "primary" driver of climate. I believe that it is... beyond doubt ,since nearly all our energy originates in the Sun.
Even the IPCC accepts this with the caveat that what has always been the case (the Sun as driver) is not now the case.
I believe the IPCC did a good job considering it's mandate was based on the (fact) that human emissions are the cause of global warming. But they, or anyone else have failed to prove that this foundational fact is true. They have taken it as a given, and unless or until they can put some proof behind that statement the rest of what they say is pure opinion, and not even close to science.
To put their unproven hypothesis on the same level as time tested ideas of the Sun as driver is wrong. As Andre implied, a hypothesis is proposed, tested by empirical evidence, and, if falsified... is dismissed. With the billions of dollars spent and the hundreds if not thousands of scientists working to prove this hypothesis coming up with a very large NIL, I consider it dismissed.
I can agree with you that we still don't know exactly how climate is driven, but I think the premise that it is human caused is pretty much bankrupt. I am unaware of any (even a small) piece of proof empirically observed that indicates CO2 or any other human based activity has an influence on the climate greater than the noise of natural variation.
On to more promising theories.

I don't agree with you that heating can create less water vapor. As far as I know there are no physics which support this idea. As heating occures in water more vapor is released...
The models used by the IPCC, as you probably know, do not take into account cloud cover or its causes. There are quite strong hypothesis being tested at CERN based around the increase in galactic influence caused by a diminishing Sun on the atmosphere. If this proves true, it may well be one more leg of the two legged stool knocked out from under the modelers at IPCC.
I suspect you have read the Report (No.4) and you will have found, as I did, that claims made by the true believers are far more radical than by the scientists who wrote the report. I believe that is partly the responsibility of those that wrote the summery for policy makers... a group primarily made up by political apointees and not scientists. They knew , I believe, how they had to hype the subject to create the desired results.
Some, today, go even beyond that to the increadulous.
 
  • #49
latecommer said:
An interesting paper by Timo Niroma:

For those of you unfamiliar with Dr. Niroma, he is highly respected Finnish climatologist who has been linking solar activity with temperature in a series of many papers.
His latest is done on the weather station located in Uppsala, Finland. This is a site with data going back at least to 1739.
He postulates that there has been a steady but uneven rise in temperature since the end of the last glaciation (accepted by most climatologists)
He has done a study of temperature trends from this data and published his analysis as "Are there any signs of global warming in Uppsala tempertures in 1739 -1999?"
The exact time of the end of the Maunder minimum is debateable, but he chooses 1739 and attempts to justify that date in this paper. He breaks down the temperature trends in smaller units as follows:
Please furnish the link to this paper. When referring to research or an article, you must provide a link to this information so that others can read the paper in it's entirety.
 
  • #50
Sorry

As I have it:

http://www.kolumbus.fi/tilmari/gwuppsala.htm

hope this works for you
 
  • #51
Andre said:
How c.. -sure are we that aether does not exist, or phlogiston? Isn't science all about eliminating options that proved to be wrong? The IPCC has done predictions of which we are witnessing how (in)-correct those are. Model predicted radiation fingerprints were proven wrong with factual data (see Miskolsczi's greenhouse thread).

Yes, and now models are proposed that correct for this. I agree that post-false-prediction-corrections-to-make-them-fit is often the beginning of the end, but the *actual* prediction, which is that upon CO2 doubling, we will get between what is it, 1.5 and 6 degrees average global warming in about 100 years, has not been falsified yet, for the simple reason that we haven't been waiting yet for 100 years.
In complex modeling, it can happen that the finer details are wrong. This can indicate that the whole thing is misguided. It can also indicate that the general idea is right, but that the finer details are not understood.

I still take it as not entirely proven beyond reasonable doubt that a significant CO2 change is totally neutral concerning temperatures in 100 years from now.
 
  • #52
vanesch said:
Yes, and now models are proposed that correct for this. I agree that post-false-prediction-corrections-to-make-them-fit is often the beginning of the end,

Now where did I read that before? Ah http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/articles/col-1984quotes.htm [Broken]:

1984 said:
Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; ..."

Vanesch said:
but the *actual* prediction, which is that upon CO2 doubling, we will get between what is it, 1.5 and 6 degrees average global warming in about 100 years, has not been falsified yet, for the simple reason that we haven't been waiting yet for 100 years.

Do we need to? An actual last prediction is 0.2 degrees per decade. but how would that compare to the graph attached to that post? How about the start of the very first decade?

Vanesch said:
In complex modeling, it can happen that the finer details are wrong. This can indicate that the whole thing is misguided. It can also indicate that the general idea is right, but that the finer details are not understood.

Could it be that the general idea is wrong? Urging to look into the Miskolczi thread once more. The general idea about absorbtion of long wave Infra Red by greenhouse gasses heating the atmosphere is well known but until now real time data seem not to be supporting it, according to http://smsc.cnes.fr/documentation/IASI/Publications/LBL_EX.pdf.

But there is also Douglass et al 2007 and http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/PolarMet/PMGFulldocs/2007GL032630.pdf [Broken] struggling with model ideas and refractory reality. So the question is, if the outcome of your calculations does not match the solutions in the back of your algebra book, are your assumptions and calculations correct?
 
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  • #53
Andre said:
Could it be that the general idea is wrong? Urging to look into the Miskolczi thread once more.

In as much as I understand this (gave it only a diagonal look), the claim is that the radiation transport problem in 1 dimension is erroneously solved as of today ? I couldn't quickly figure out if this was some nitpicking about the best suited ideal boundary conditions of the radiation transport problem, or a fundamental mistake that people make today. I would think - but I know that this can be wrong - that such an elementary error would have been already spotted since quite some time, no ? After all, radiation transport in 1 dimension is not an insurmountably difficult problem !
 
  • #54
Andre said:
Do we need to? An actual last prediction is 0.2 degrees per decade. but how would that compare to the graph attached to that post? How about the start of the very first decade?

It is not impossible that a long-term trend is invisible for shorter time lapses simply because several oscillatory phenomena superpose upon it. I will be the first to agree with you that current modeling is far from perfect, and is way too much oversold. But in order to prove to me that no serious heating (or cooling for that matter) is happening when the CO2 contents doubles, you would JUST AS WELL need to provide me with detailed models that show me that the effect is NOT there. So as long as we don't have extremely reliable climate models, we cannot claim either way with certainty. I repeat, it was surely an error by the IPCC and the fearmongerers to say that there was any form of scientific certainty about AGW. But that fact by itself is in no way an argument that proves the "no" answer.

In other words, to the question: "a doubling of CO2, will it affect seriously the global climate ?", it would need a serious scientific effort and progress before an affirmative answer can be given with any form of certainty. But it would take just as much effort to give a negative answer to that question. It is not because a certain attempt at answering prematurely "yes" to the question failed, that this is a proof that it is "no".

What is falsified by current observations is only the *specific models* that the IPCC claimed were very sure and on which they based their "certainty" for the prediction of AGW. But it is not because this particular argumentation has been falsified that AGW by itself, independent of any modeling and claims, has been definitively shown absent either.
 
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  • #55
vanesch said:
In as much as I understand this (gave it only a diagonal look), the claim is that the radiation transport problem in 1 dimension is erroneously solved as of today ? I couldn't quickly figure out if this was some nitpicking about the best suited ideal boundary conditions of the radiation transport problem, or a fundamental mistake that people make today. I would think - but I know that this can be wrong - that such an elementary error would have been already spotted since quite some time, no ? After all, radiation transport in 1 dimension is not an insurmountably difficult problem !

Well perhaps this thread and this thread are worth another look, especially the last post of Charles, which seems to make some sense.
 
  • #56
vanesch said:
...
In other words, to the question: "a doubling of CO2, will it affect seriously the global climate ?", it would need a serious scientific effort and progress before an affirmative answer can be given with any form of certainty. But it would take just as much effort to give a negative answer to that question. It is not because a certain attempt at answering prematurely "yes" to the question failed, that this is a proof that it is "no".
...

I don't know, are we moving the goal poles out of the realm of the scientific method? What is "affect seriously the global climate"? For instance, it may be recalled that the warmest period in the Holocene was termed "Holocene Thermal Optimum", and by no means "Holocene Thermal Disaster", when the trees grew on the Arctic coasts of Siberia (http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/634/269.pdf). Why would we think that a warmer climate would be disastrous in the first place? But anyway.

As far as I recall, the IPCC calls for a 1.5-6 degrees global temperature increase for doubling CO2, while the (MODTRAN HITRAN) models (see former post) get to about a dry one degree per doubling. The difference is explained by positive feedback. As stated previously Rizzi et al 2002, Douglass et al 2007 and Monaghan et al 2008 cannot produce results based on the models, but there is also a problem with that positive feedback (http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/2001JD002024u.pdf, http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/cejpokfin.pdf, http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/E-Ac-Sci-07.pdf and this thread).

Finally Miskolczi, using empirical evidence gets himself an idea that is close to zero degrees for doubling CO2, which would might make sense IMO if the emission of the absorbed IR is instantaneous without "exchanging heat" with other molecules, then a maximum of half of the IR emission would be reflected and half would escape to space, basically independent of the concentration of the greenhouse gas.

So what is it? And would any temperature change due to greenhouse effect be hazardous, indifferent or benificial to the climate?

Apparantly 20 years after the Hansen alert and umpty billion$ later, we are again at the basic questions.
 
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  • #57
Andre said:
I d
As far as I recall, the IPCC calls for a 1.5-6 degrees global temperature increase for doubling CO2, while the (MODTRAN HITRAN) models (see former post) get to about a dry one degree per doubling. The difference is explained by positive feedback. As stated previously Rizzi et al 2002, Douglass et al 2007 and Monaghan et al 2008 cannot produce results based on the models, but there is also a problem with that positive feedback (http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/2001JD002024u.pdf, http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/cejpokfin.pdf, http://www.aai.ee/~olavi/E-Ac-Sci-07.pdf and this thread).

Again, that only means that we haven't yet a correct modeling (and maybe that our empirical observations are also not totally clean, I don't know). And if we don't have a correct modeling, we can't know what will happen, or even if something will happen. But that doesn't mean that we are now sure that nothing will happen. In order to be able to be sure about that, we would need to have a working model that shows us that nothing is going to happen, and we don't have that either.

So what is it? And would any temperature change due to greenhouse effect be hazardous, indifferent or benificial to the climate?

By definition, any human-induced change is hazardous, and any natural change is beneficial according to the currently political correct thinking. :rolleyes:

Apparantly 20 years after the Hansen alert and umpty billion$ later, we are again at the basic questions.

Right. And it will probably still take several decades before we will find out a bit more, as we are talking about very slow processes. Now, if we could shake a bit the CO2 atmospheric content (making it rise, then making it fall etc...) we might probably find out better what is its exact function. But it is a world-wide experiment that will last for more than a century and will cost a lot of money.
 
  • #58
vanesch said:
Again, that only means that we haven't yet a correct modeling (and maybe that our empirical observations are also not totally clean, I don't know).

Well, isn't that called error margin? An wasn't there something about reproduceability? If several research teams, using several methods but getting consistent results, wouldn't that generate some confidence?

And if we don't have a correct modeling, we can't know what will happen, or even if something will happen. But that doesn't mean that we are now sure that nothing will happen. In order to be able to be sure about that, we would need to have a working model that shows us that nothing is going to happen, and we don't have that either.

Is this still about greenhouse effect? Will there be ever models that can predict what will happen? But I guess, you're thinking about http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm having done quite spectacular things, which looked so easy to be solved with the greenhouse effect. Point here is that the reconstruction of that climate is a multitude of affirming-the-consequent fallacies, (not a reproach, there is simply no other way). But when things don't add up, some of those hypotheses are definitely wrong. The http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WPN-4S563X9-1&_user=10&_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2008&_alid=743566400&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=6995&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=2&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f01eff708f7c0b7ec2c7f31cb8e4e107 for instance is a major token of things not adding up. There is something very wrong out there. There is no way of modelling anything if you don't have the finger behind that.

By definition, any human-induced change is hazardous, and any natural change is beneficial according to the currently political correct thinking. :rolleyes:

Nice challenge, is there anything benificial that only mankind could have done for nature? How about recovering all those fossil biomasses for burning, increasing the available carbon for the short carbon cycles and hence increasing the total biomass?

And it will probably still take several decades before we will find out a bit more, as we are talking about very slow processes. Now, if we could shake a bit the CO2 atmospheric content (making it rise, then making it fall etc...) we might probably find out better what is its exact function. But it is a world-wide experiment that will last for more than a century and will cost a lot of money.

Therefore perhaps it's better to sit back, make inventory and tick off the symptoms of scientific crisis as proposed by http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/Kuhn.html. If it all matches, perhaps we should face reality and start from scratch, challenging all basic ideas.
 
  • #59
The solid evidence of temperature lag relative to CO2 at all time scales (as indicated by Gerlich/Tscheuschner, Jaworowski, Idso, Beck, and others). Indicates to me that even up and down movements of CO2 levels will be very difficult to analyse no matter how caused.
I would think that long term observations could best contribute to a solution of this question.
 
  • #60
Andre said:
Therefore perhaps it's better to sit back, make inventory and tick off the symptoms of scientific crisis as proposed by http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/Kuhn.html. If it all matches, perhaps we should face reality and start from scratch, challenging all basic ideas.

Isn't it more a symptom of oversold science than of a scientific crisis ? If you make 20 guesses as hypotheses, put all that in some model, and turn the crank, should you really be surprised that some things don't fit ? But again, it is not because a model that makes two predictions and one of it is falsified, that this means that the other prediction is wrong too. What is correct, is that the *argument* for that other prediction now has a problem. But not necessarily the outcome.

Let's take a silly example: my theory is "if it is hot, it is bigger". I see that this works with an iron bar. I see that it works with water. So I make the prediction: summer days are hot, so they are longer than winter days. But then people show me wrong. They find hot stars that are smaller than cooler stars. They find hot girls that are smaller than cool girls... etc...

So my modeling that was based upon "if it is hot, it is bigger" has been falsified. A more careful analysis shows me that my theory only works for material objects, not for things such as days or girls. Also, I should compare identical material structures, and the only difference should be temperature. And even then it doesn't always work (some materials shrink upon heating). In other words, my theory that predicted "in summer, days are longer than in winter" is totally erroneous.

But that doesn't stop summer days to be *actually* longer than winter days. It is not because the theory that led to that prediction has been falsified that, as a fact, it became wrong too.

So it is not because some models of the IPCC are falsified in some of their predictions, and in some of their starting hypotheses, that the actual prediction of AGW itself is going to be false.
 
  • #61
Or it was on purpose or you have no idea how dead on that example is. Bigger (as in heavier) is not necesarely hotter. Exactly! We're talking the bigger water isotopes now (dD and d18O). More later.
 
  • #62
Andre said:
What is "affect seriously the global climate"? For instance, it may be recalled that the warmest period in the Holocene was termed "Holocene Thermal Optimum", and by no means "Holocene Thermal Disaster", when the trees grew on the Arctic coasts of Siberia (http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/634/269.pdf). Why would we think that a warmer climate would be disastrous in the first place? But anyway.

Get in your car, go to the expressway, and drive 60 mph. It's great to have transportation, isn't it? Now stand in front of a moving train, and have IT accelerate you to 60 mph instantly. Is that Optimum or Disaster?

Natural climate change happens over tens of thousands of years, giving biology time to adapt. CO2 in the atmosphere has shot up like a rocket this century - it's a rate of change unlike anything the Earth has ever experienced. How fast do you think those arctic trees can move?

And as for CO2's effects, why do you think that Venus is so much hotter then Mercury?
 
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  • #63
Someone told me, (not sure if I believe them, please correct if you can) that volcanos have had greater impacts on CO2 levels in the past than we can make. Is this true.

I am guessing that some of them may release more in a small chunk of time compared to fossil fuels, but that we continuously burn carbon while volcanos are periodical.
 
  • #64
vanesch said:
Isn't it more a symptom of oversold science than of a scientific crisis ? If you make 20 guesses as hypotheses, put all that in some model, and turn the crank, should you really be surprised that some things don't fit ? But again, it is not because a model that makes two predictions and one of it is falsified, that this means that the other prediction is wrong too. What is correct, is that the *argument* for that other prediction now has a problem. But not necessarily the outcome.

In a nutshell, remember that the theoretical increase in temp for doubling value for CO2 is around one degree celsius. No more, the reason that the IPCC expect ~2-4 is the perception of paleo temperatures during the Pleistocene having allegedly fluctuated 10 degrees sometimes as quickly as within a decade (Dansgaard Oeschger events). Why? Because of 'water' isotope ratios in the ice cores http://www.iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk/about_centre/history/. So here is the vital affirming-the-consequent fallacy: if it's warm, the isotopes are heavy, the isotopes are heavy, hence it is warm. ( "if it is hot, it is bigger".) Again this is the main basis of the IPCC assumption as well as for the complete geology - paleo climatology. See Alley 2000

Now suppose that we were to discover that isotopes can be heavy without it being warm and that the well known isotope cycles in the ice core have a different cause. Also,
given the evidence for negative feedback from the Karner publications cited earlier, then there is no reason whatsoever to assume the enhanced sensitivity >1 C/2xCO2. Would that generate a Kuhn-type scientific crisis? It's not that fundamental physical laws have to be changed, it's just about erroneous interpretations.

And of course if Miskolczi is on the right track despite his error about the total energy of the atmosphere, and the real sensitivity is even a lot less, then some other theories are down the drain too.
 
  • #65
Vanesch

I can agree with the logic you follow when you say that proving a modal wrong does not prove the assumption wrong, But if you will, can you lay out the evidence that the assumption has merit?
As far as I am aware there has been very little if any confirmation of this basic assumption (human caused change to the atmosphere)

I believe it is accepted by nearly all that we have liberated a portion of the carbon cycle embedded in fossile fuels, and a measure of that has entered the atmoshpere.

Where the disagreement centers is... does this effect anything significantly?

So my concern is this: 1. What is the influence? 2. Is this influence, if any can be quantified, detrimental?
And why, if we can't difinitively answer these questions, are we embarking on global programs that have the potential of being a cure worse than the disease.

This is, IMO, the result of the overhyped "science" being sold to the public by and through their governments... an attempt to appear as if someone is doing something (so typical of our leaders)
 
  • #66
Why melting ice caps are bad?

It would open up mineral exploration in the north pole, causing a new cold war era to usher in between russia and the usa. This will lead to a new space race but this time dominated by asthmatic nerdlings at NASA instead of the jarheadjocks of yor, the russians end up sending men to Mars before we can decide whether global warming is real or not.
 
  • #67
The only effect that increases in CO2 can have is to reduce the amount of radiation reaching the Earth's surface. However over the past 60 years there has been a steady decrease in humidity http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/GlobalRelativeHumidity300_700mb.jpg which would lead to increased radiation reaching the Earth and increasing temperatures. There has been some levelling off in the past decade or so at lower levels of the atmosphere.

Gerlich has clearly shown that there is no "atmospheric greenhouse effect".
 
  • #68
adb said:
The only effect that increases in CO2 can have is to reduce the amount of radiation reaching the Earth's surface.

Have a look at the absorption spectrum for CO2. It is transparent to light with wavelengths below 2microns, and this is over 90% of the solar spectrum. It has a weak absorption band around 2 microns, and narrow but stronger absorption bands around 2.6 and 4 microns. It also has a wider bad around 13 to 20 microns.

Together, these bands align with only a few percent of the solar spectrum. No matter how much you increase CO2, it cannot absorb more solar radiation than this. It's effectively transparent.

However, the 13 to 20 micron band takes up nearly 30% of the spectrum of infrared radiation from the surface, and the bands at 2.6 and 4 microns are also well into the main part of terrestrial infrared radiation.

It's very basic physics with more CO2 you will increase the absorption of light from the surface, but have little effect on the absorption of solar radiation.

Cheers -- Sylas
 
  • #69
sylas said:
It's very basic physics with more CO2 you will increase the absorption of light from the surface, but have little effect on the absorption of solar radiation.

Quite true. However there can be no nett heat transfer from the atmosphere to the Earth's surface as suggested by greenhouse.
 
  • #70
adb said:
Quite true. However there can be no nett heat transfer from the atmosphere to the Earth's surface as suggested by greenhouse.

Greenhouse suggests no such thing. In fact, greenhouse requires the nett heat transfer in the OTHER direction, from the surface to the atmosphere.

It is fundamental to the basic physics of a greenhouse effect that an atmosphere is colder than the surface, and that most of the radiation out into space comes from the atmosphere, not from the surface.

The atmosphere, therefore, must be radiating out into space close to what is being received from the Sun, less any small quantity of radiation that gets through direct from the surface. It is in the atmosphere, then, where you find the kinds of temperatures characteristic of what is needed to radiate that amount of energy.

Without an atmosphere, this temperature would be expressed right at the surface.

With an atmosphere, the surface must be warmer than the atmosphere, in accord with the second law, because the surface is warming the atmosphere.

The surface, therefore, must be radiating more energy than is received from the Sun... because it is at a higher temperature than would would be needed to radiate only the solar radiation alone.

By the first law, the surface must be receiving that same amount of energy from somewhere. In fact, it gets most of the solar radiation directly (because the atmosphere is mostly transparent to visible light) and on top of that it gets radiation coming back down from the atmosphere.

Now of course, the amount of energy from the atmosphere to the surface has to be less than that from the surface to the atmosphere, because the effect only works with a net transfer from the surface up into the atmosphere. That's fine; it follows direct from the laws of physics and thermodynamics. But there IS a flow in both directions. In practice, a small amount of the flow from surface to the atmosphere is by conduction and latent heat. But most of the flow is radiant energy.

This is a simple and inevitable thermodynamic consequence of any atmosphere which is mostly transparent to solar radiation, but which absorbs most of the infra red radiation coming up from the surface. We call this effect "atmospheric greenhouse". It's really really basic physics, and it is the primary reason why average temperatures on the Earth are so much higher than average temperatures on the Moon.

Cheers -- Sylas

PS. In a another thread, you yourself provided this diagram of the greenhouse effect. https://www.msu.edu/course/isb/202/ebertmay/drivers/ipcc_greenhouse.jpg

Have a closer look at the diagram. There's a very large flow up from the surface into the atmosphere, and back down to the surface again. It's on the right hand side. But bleeding off from this large arrow there are two smaller arrows, one of which empties into the atmosphere. That is the excess: it is there because the NET flow in a greenhouse effect is from the surface to the atmosphere. Furthermore, over on the left, there's another arrow from the surface emptying into the atmosphere. The diagram doesn't say, but this is actually for conduction and latent heat. This transfer is also part of the overall balance and must be considered for application of the thermodynamic laws. But even without this, the atmospheric greenhouse is still involving a net transfer from surface to atmosphere, just as I have said.
 
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