News The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

[edward]

The Bush administration estimated that it would cost $400 billion to the U.S. economy and that 5 million jobs would be lost.

http://www.globalization101.org/index.php?file=news1&id=66

This is a bargain compared to the cost of the war in Iraq. With the $400 billion in changes to the way we use energy, we wouldn't have needed the Iraqi oil. And we would have saved putting billions tons of CO2
into the atmosphere.

As for the 5 million jobs being lost, I seriously doubt that figure. A lot of new jobs would have been created. And it surely would have helped if we hadn't imported 12 million illegals and given them jobs.

 

[edward]

You ask about Siberia --- I talk about Siberia.

Thanks and BTW I do appreciate the knowledge that you have shared.

No, they have the science --- they do NOT have the data --- they are four or five orders of magnitude short in the size of data body necessary to reach conclusions of a global scale.

What kind of time frame are we looking at to gather that data? It seems like we are moving at a snails pace.

What's going on? The entropy of the universe is increasing. Little more detail? The Earth is intercepting 4.5x10^-10 of the sun's radiated energy, reflecting some, absorbing the rest and reradiating it to space. More? The absorbed energy is distributed about the surface of the planet by a combination of convective, conductive, and radiative heat transfer processes. Something quantitative? Be a while --- bundle of heat reservoirs and convective processes to identify, and a whole lotta measurements to be made.

Arctic pack ice thaws, open Arctic radiates heat at 200 + W/m², Atlantic conveyor speeds up, N. Atl. (equator to Arctic Circle) cools, conveyor slows, Arctic pack ice reforms, N. Canada dumps 1000 km³/a fresh water under ice pack forming insulating layer (no convective heat transfer from deeper Atl. water), heat builds up under pack, pack melts, and around and around we go.

WOW thanks you should have made me look that up.

This doesn't make sense after I fix the typo --- these are "tipping point, runaway" arguments?

This is what I keep reading in numerous scientific journals. They keep mentioning things like GW is an "18 wheeler rolling down hill" and "run away train scenarios." It is difficult to believe that all of them can be wrong.

I'm talking about the damage resulting from committing the global economy to actions based on conclusions drawn from inconclusive data.

I see your point on that, but since fossil fuels are limited anyway, I see no harm in getting a head start on making energy use changes. Or at least we should put more money into alternative energy technology so that we could make a more sudden change if necessary. We could even use the high tech jobs right now. Bush did allow $2 or $3 billion for research, but that is a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to what is needed.

And we seem to be locked into a situation where the large fossil fuel suppliers have waaay too much influence on the federal government.

 

[Skyhunter]

I heard today that we burn one million years worth of fossil fuels in a singe year!

This is such a selfish society.

1,000,000 = 1

And with all that wealth and technological power at our disposal, at this unique time in the history of civilization, are we truly prepared to just consume as much as we can in our pitifully short lives and possibly wreck the world for future life and civilizations?

People in the first world, because we are the ones with the power, need to take the initiative and change our lifestyles and consumption habits. People in a first world democracy have many times the political power of third world people. Even greater than their rights of suffrage however is their $$$$. If enough common people started making better consumption choices, voting with their $$$$ as it were, the markets will respond.

If consumers demand it, some smart capitalist will deliver it.

We the privileged owe it to those with no power. That is our noblis oblige.

 

[Bystander]

Thanks and BTW I do appreciate the knowledge that you have shared.

Welcome. I ain't guaranteeing I've covered all factors, interactions, and possibilities.

What kind of time frame are we looking at to gather that data? It seems like we are moving at a snails pace.

Scripps, Woods Hole, Lamont-Doherty, TAMU, U. of Del., and maybe a dozen other institutes of oceanography in the U. S. plus maybe a couple dozen others word-wide, averaging maybe two weeks to a month of cruising time a year? Gonna be a while --- your guess is as good as mine, and NSF can "turn on a dime" as far as where the money goes from one year to the next. I wasn't kidding about the Navy --- forty years of CW games with the submariners playing "blind man's bluff" with each other and the opposition, probably 20-40 boats at sea at all times, got to be a lot of depth-T-position data. Jaques and Calypso? Ballard? Kinda doubt the amateurs have accumulated much useful --- might be some decent qualitative observations for other people to follow up.

WOW thanks you should have made me look that up.

The WHOI link you posted put that together --- I was sort of aware of the freshwater lens, but never really thought about its consequences in the heat transfer and circulation problem before. The fine details ain't going to be quite as cut and dried, and this is one totally "off the cuff" alternative to think about --- there have to be more.

This is what I keep reading in numerous scientific journals. They keep mentioning things like GW is an "18 wheeler rolling down hill" and "run away train scenarios." It is difficult to believe that all of them can be wrong.

The system's been around four billion years, been subjected to numerous upset conditions, and not turned "runaway" --- stable? No new factors have been introduced, same mass, same chemistry, same illumination, same geometry (excluding tectonic rearrangements of land and ocean areas), same environment to radiate to --- temperature's going to wiggle around as I tectonically rearrange the furniture at the poles, and adjust the "feng shui" of the oceanic circulation, but without introducing some new factor it's tough to see it running away now.

I see your point on that, but since fossil fuels are limited anyway, I see no harm in getting a head start on making energy use changes. Or at least we should put more money into alternative energy technology so that we could make a more sudden change if necessary. We could even use the high tech jobs right now.

The energy problem and the GW question are two different things, and not "joined at the hip." The "OPECcers" price themselves out of business and the nuke and solar options move in --- the oil companies pick up their own nukes and start synthesizing their own "syncrude" from sewage, landfills, garbage, ag waste, whatever can be pipelined or barged to them and continue with the same liquid fuels market as ever --- no one's going to waste a whole lot of time peddling hydrogen. Who pays whom for delivering the garbage, or for hauling it off? Laissez faire capitalism is going to work as well for that as anything --- .

Bush did allow $2 or $3 billion for research, but that is a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to what is needed.

Energy research has always been the last thing funded, and first cut --- 'tain't just George. Turning bio-materials into chemical feedstocks is going to take a little "cut and try," but isn't going to require Manhattan Project scale funding.

And we seem to be locked into a situation where the large fossil fuel suppliers have waaay too much influence on the federal government.

Wish I had bought the book --- can't even remember the title now --- came out couple years back --- "Where the Money Is (or Goes)," something along those lines --- one of those NYT bestseller non-fiction items on the bookstore shelves --- that vanish without a sale or a trace --- all I saw was one review, and didn't even have sense to hang on to that --- 10-15% of the nation's GNP/GDP, or salaried income, is from/in primary production (mining, timber, agriculture, refining, manufacturing) and transportation (trucking, railways, air freight --- NO passenger service), another 15% from/in government (federal, state, and local), 30% in financial (banks, stock market, insurance, real estate(?)), and the rest in "service" industries (health care, restaurants, legal). Bottom line is that the lobbying power of these various sectors is proportionate to their finances --- who's got the bigger chokehold on congress ain't the traditional "large caps" of the pre-WW II era --- just about all of those have been buried by the likes of Microsoft (service sector?), and the banking and financial stocks --- railroads, steel, chemical companies are all in the small and mid-cap range as far as "market capitalization." Getting way off topic.

 

[Skyhunter]

The Bering Strait is shallow (averages 50m depth), and currents through it are not fully developed in the sense that there is a boundary layer effect from the shallow bottom; water velocity at the bottom is zero, and increases as the surface is approached. Increasing the depth of water by the 10-20 cm cited for increased sea level increases the flow rate through the strait, and as a result, the heat transport, without any increase in the temperature of the N. Pac.. The same argument does not apply to the Atlantic conveyor; the water depth, 2-3 km, is such that there is no boundary layer effect, drag, and, increased sea level has no effect on the flow rate. Increased heat transport to the West Arctic areas around the Chukchi is then a natural consequence of increased sea level.

This graph shows a warming trend in the Bering Sea.

http://www.beringclimate.noaa.gov/bering_status_overview.html

Ocean temperatures for the previous decade (Fig 3) from an oceanographic mooring (M2, Fig.4) show a shift toward warmer temperature of 2 deg C around 2000. Of particular importance is that recent winter temperatures are above the freezing point, indicating no or little sea ice in the southeastern Bering Sea for the previous four years (Fig 2 (b)).

The Bering Sea is warming, so increased sea level as well as warmer waters in the Bering Sea is contributing to the Arctic thaw. Open sea absorbs heat while ice reflects it.

I posted this http://www.fou.uib.no/fd/1997/f/406001/ earlier in the thread. Perhaps you missed it but I would like to hear your comments Bystander.

The temperature of deep water temperatures show a pronounced warming in recent years. The major exchange of water with the Arctic is from the Atlantic. Since the deep waters in the Norwegian and Greenland seas are warming is that not indicative of Arctic warming in general?

 

[Futobingoro]

This graph shows a warming trend in the Bering Sea.

It is absurd to use ten years of data to predict climate trends. Let me show you what I mean:

http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/9419/timelinewithline3il.png

The timeline is 722 pixels tall and it represents 2 billion years of history. One pixel is therefore about 2.8 million years of time. That red line is one pixel wide. Does that put things in perspective?

A graph may look like this:

http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/Temp_0-400k_yrs.gif

...but when it is put on our two billion year timeline, it looks like this:

http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/1581/bluepixel4od.png

Can you see it? It is the same blue line as the graph above, but put on the same scale as the two billion year timeline (and I am even being generous with one pixel, it should be about 1/7th of a pixel). The Earth's recent timeline may show abrupt changes in climate, but in the grand scheme of things - millions and billions of years - abrupt changes in climate are only microscopic deviations from a very well-defined curve.

Now, I am not ruling out the possibility that human emissions are to blame for observed warming trends, I have no way to make an absolute judgment. This is why I am so disturbed when a person makes a statement of fact one way or the other.

And on a less serious note:

Looking at http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image160.gif one can see that, 10,000 years ago, uncivilized man's SUVs, coal power plants, aggressive deforestation and campfires were enough to cause drastic climate change over a short time.

 

[edward]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skyhunter
This graph shows a warming trend in the Bering Sea.

It is absurd to use ten years of data to predict climate trends. Let me show you what I mean:

http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/941...ithline3il.png

The timeline is 722 pixels tall and it represents 2 billion years of history. One pixel is therefore about 2.8 million years of time. That red line is one pixel wide. Does that put things in perspective?

Your logic is flawed, Skyhunter was talking about more recent events in the bering sea. Two billion years ago the bering sea didn't even exist and neither did humans. And most likely it didn't exist in anything near it's present form 2.8 million years ago and neither did humans.

You are comparing new oranges and really old apples.

 

[Skyhunter]

Now, I am not ruling out the possibility that human emissions are to blame for observed warming trends, I have no way to make an absolute judgment. This is why I am so disturbed when a person makes a statement of fact one way or the other.

And on a less serious note:

Looking at http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image160.gif one can see that, 10,000 years ago, uncivilized man's SUVs, coal power plants, aggressive deforestation and campfires were enough to cause drastic climate change over a short time.

GHGs trap heat. Without the greenhouse effect we would live on a snowball earth.

We don't need to understand all the variables to know that GHGs are effecting the climate. We need more data, theories, and models to better understand what is happening, but to keep dismissing the evidence as part of a natural climate cycle is naive wishful thinking.

 

[Bystander]

This graph shows a warming trend in the Bering Sea.

96 to 99 1/2, cooling trend; discontinuity; 2000 to 2002 increase, 2002-4, decrease --- I would suspect the discontinuity has to do with buoy loss and/or relocation, but there's no note in the link. Could be looking at decadal variation in winds affecting surface water circulation --- few years cooling, stable, few years blowing in a warm patch, stable, few cooling, on an approximately ten year cycle --- little tough to say a whole lot more.

http://www.beringclimate.noaa.gov/bering_status_overview.html

The Bering Sea is warming, so increased sea level as well as warmer waters in the Bering Sea is contributing to the Arctic thaw.

Warmer water from where? Home grown, or increased flow from the N. Pac. to cover the increased flow through the Bering Strait?

Open sea absorbs heat while ice reflects it.

Summation of relative reflectances, transmittances, and absorbances (emissivities) of materials as functions of temperature, wavelength, and angle of incidence of radiation in simple statements is fine for political discussions (facts just get in the way); if understanding of processes is the goal of the discussion, a little education in transport processes is necessary, and I am NOT the person to be doing that. Get along okay on my own, but it's not something I can teach in 25 words or less on a forum.

I posted this http://www.fou.uib.no/fd/1997/f/406001/ earlier in the thread. Perhaps you missed it but I would like to hear your comments Bystander.

That's purty --- I'll take a couple more truckloads of that kind of temperature data.

The temperature of deep water temperatures show a pronounced warming in recent years. The major exchange of water with the Arctic is from the Atlantic. Since the deep waters in the Norwegian and Greenland seas are warming is that not indicative of Arctic warming in general?

It indicates that the water moving under "M" is warmer --- without knowing where that water's been, or what conditions it's been exposed to, can't say anything more. The map indicates some gaps in knowledge of locations and paths of bottom currents, and some pretty rough topography between the Greenland Sea and Norwegian Sea bottoms --- the gap where there are no "black arrows" and where the deep temperatures are being measured.

Edward's WHOI link indicates an accumulation of "warm" Atlantic water in the Arctic, this map shows a counterclockwise circulation of bottom water in the Greenland Sea with branches south (something of a "roundabout"), and whether it's picking bits and pieces of the "warm" Atl. bubble out from the Arctic basin and sending them south from the "roundabout" would be anybody's guess.

Edit: just looking over the "purty" data some more --- surface water at the site is cooling over same period the deep water is warming --- they've got local downwelling --- drop dye markers over the side and pull up deep water samples --- they find dye, they found their heat source.

 

[Skyhunter]

Thanks bystander, you have given me some more food for thought.

 

[Bystander]

Some questions just nag, nag, nag atcha ---

(snip)This is what I keep reading in numerous scientific journals. They keep mentioning things like GW is an "18 wheeler rolling down hill" and "run away train scenarios." It is difficult to believe that all of them can be wrong.(snip)

To which I replied,

The system's been around four billion years, been subjected to numerous upset conditions, and not turned "runaway" --- stable? No new factors have been introduced, same mass, same chemistry, same illumination, same geometry (excluding tectonic rearrangements of land and ocean areas), same environment to radiate to --- temperature's going to wiggle around as I tectonically rearrange the furniture at the poles, and adjust the "feng shui" of the oceanic circulation, but without introducing some new factor it's tough to see it running away now.

Little lame --- let's see if we can get something a little more quantitative to think about: http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/venus/greenhouse.html ; and, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect .

It would become a runaway greenhouse effect if the rising temperature approached the boiling point of water, because then the oceans would begin to convert to water vapor, the water vapor would increase the effectiveness of heat trappingand accelerate the greenhouse effect, this would cause the temperature to rise further, thus causing the oceans to evaporate faster, etc., etc. (This type of runaway is also called a "positive feedback loop".)

"Scary!" Or, maybe not --- this is from the first link, and qualitatively almost complete and correct; few things got overstated, "trapping," and a few things got omitted, we have to insert, "with decreasing effects up to a limiting point," at the end of the "trapping" sentence. We'll use a few of the numbers from the Wiki link, plus a picture of the "5 micron" CO_2] band, "[URL ,[/URL] and look at one "pane" of the Greenhouse glazing.

Wiki, average Earth surface T is 288 K (15 C); PE site, "5 micron" band (2400-2270 cm^-1); Planck's black body (288 K, 2335 cm^-1), 3.38 W/cm³, times bandwidth, times 10⁴ is 0.8 W/m² being emitted by the Earth's surface at 288 K in the IR frequency (wavelength) range that can be absorbed by CO₂ to excite the "5 micron" band. From Rohsenow & Hartnett, 30-40% of everything emitted is absorbed by CO₂, and 3-4% of that is in the "5 micron band;" Earth at 288 K emits 390 W/m² if its a perfect black body; 3.5-6 W from R&H times black body --- oops --- can't guarantee the quality of my reading of R&H, nor of the data that went into it. If it's correct, the "5 micron" band has been thoroughly absorbed, and no additional amount of CO² in the atmosphere is going to have any effect. There's also water, other gases, and other CO₂ bands to be handled the same way --- with different results. Kinda surprising to find that band "saturated" --- all the 5 micron radiation done been et, and there ain't no more for the Greenhouse monster to eat.

Had there been just a 50% absorbance, it then follows that doubling the atmospheric concentration absorbs half of what was originally transmitted, addition of the next equivalent amount, half of that, and so on (Beer's Law). There is a natural limit rather than "runaway." To block other parts of the spectrum that haven't been absorbed, it's necessary to add new components to the atmosphere that absorb in those regions.

Other thing to keep in mind, looking at the solar black body profile in Wiki, the profile for Earth peaks at around 10 microns, is essentially zero at 1 (on the left following the same plot conventions), and trails off on the right to 100 microns, or so, before reaching insignificant power levels; everything, in terms of atmospheric greenhouse absorbtion, to the right of the peak can be regarded as transparent --- all vibrational and rotational transitions in that region are excited thermally simply as a consequence of being at the temperature at which the black body plot peaks --- the molecules are emitting all the time (with what quantum efficiency, is not too well known). Active "Greenhousing" takes place to the left of the peak, and whatever absorbtion bands happen to be relevant, have finite rather than "runaway" effects on whatever system one happens to examine.

That's the other thing --- almost forgot --- "trapping." Ain't no such effect; a more energetic photon, wave packet, whatever light model you adhere to, from the left hand side of the black body curve is absorbed by whatever greenhouse agent, and then either re-emitted in a random direction, half continuing away from the greenhoused body, and half toward, or "thermalized." Thermalization being the frittering away of the proceeds from a big lottery ticket on little nickle and dime exchanges of translational and rotational energy through collisions with other molecules. This is the actual "greenhouse" mechanism; what was a large, or high power, divestiture of energy has been broken up into a whole bunch of piddling little low power emissions in the very long wave region through little translational and rotational transitions of molecules, which by their very number guarantee that at least half the original energy is returned to the terrrestrial surface either through direct radiative transport, or on the "atmospheric convection bus."

 

[Zlex]

It's the same old dance around the volcano political leg lifting crap. "The Gods are angry, better do what we say."

1] We're absolutely sure that Global Warming is occurring, absolutely. All the scientists agree.

2] Late breaking news. This just in. We're absolutely sure that GLobal Warming would be occurring, if it were not for Global coo...I mean, Dimming. Absolutely. But we're sure this time. Absolutely. All the scientists agree.

3] But whatever, rest assured, we absolutely know what is happening, not to mention, why it is happening, and what precise % of it is governmend by manmade vs natural perturbations. And above all, what To Do About It.

Absolutely.

Sure thing. Just ask all the social scientists. They're the ones in the labcoats with the slide rules and the spread sheets. Absolutely.

We know what Positive things we can do about it. What enlightened things we can do about it. Just ask us.

Why just look at the loss of ice trend in the Arctic ... and ignore the gain of ice trend in the Antarctic...we can explain that. Maxwell's Gaien Demon at the equator, let's water vapor exchange freely between hemispheres, but keeps CO2 segregated, North and South. Err...mysterious deep sea currents. Not when we are estimating thermocline boundaries, mind you, for precise estimates of 'the' Earth temperature over time, no, these things are only a mystery when we are trying to explain the ice piling up in the ANtarctic. Not to mention the uncertainties in the Antarctic data. Did I mention the uncertainites in the Antarctic data?

 

[Skyhunter]

Why just look at the loss of ice trend in the Arctic ... and ignore the gain of ice trend in the Antarctic...we can explain that.

There is no net gain in ice in the Antarctic.

There is more snow in the center of the continent, due to warmer temperatures. But there is a net loss in ice mass, unless you know of some study later than March 2006 that says otherwise.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030201712.html

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 3, 2006; Page A01
"The ice sheet is losing mass at a significant rate," said Isabella Velicogna, the study's lead author and a research scientist at Colorado University at Boulder's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "It's a good indicator of how the climate is changing. It tells us we have to pay attention."

I think you need to get some flat Earth science updates.

 

[Bystander]

"[URL gives a better picture of the data and the "fit" that yields the "ice loss rate." Anyone wanta do the least squares on it and reproduce the slope shown in the plot?

 

[Zlex]

http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/

We know that our little top is precessing.

We know that we are spinning through our galaxy.

We know the Sun cycles.

We know the Earth's orbital parameters jiggle.

We know when we track satellites around our won earth, we are forever jacking with the Keplerian elements to accurately describe the orbits. They are forever perturbed. Once launched, our own satellite orbits are not simply 'calculated.' They are inferred from orbital constants that are measured based on observations.

Well...ditto our Earth in its orbit around the sun.

23.5 degrees my ass, and not just that: all of the orbital parameters 'jiggle.'

So...back to Occams razor. The opposite trends we see in polar ice are due to:

1] incredible hemispherical specific effects of CO2 loading which result in opposite direction anomaly trends.

2] a local trend jiggle in Earth orbital and precession parameters that impact the northern pole and southern pole differently: slightly less icy arctic, slightly more icy antarctic.The sign of the trends is different, unless we shrink the timescale to some moot value(we are talking about CO2 loading well before 2000) not just the magnitude. I know that the toilets are supposed to flush in the opposite direction, but do Buicks in the Southern hemisphere actually suck in CO2?

How dull a shave with Occams razor must we be treated to? Because we'd need to say that water vapor is miraculously exchanged between hemispheres, but CO2 is not.

A cousin of Maxwell's Demon? Maybe we could call it "AlGore's Demon."

OTOH...

"Milankovitch cycles" is an old climate theory. Not an old disproved theory, just an old theory. But, that old theory only addresses a few major orbital parameters and observed first order cycles. The complete orientation of the Earth relative to the sun is described by several orbital parameters, and they all 'jiggle.' The composition of all such 'jiggles' is not guaranteed to never result in periods of very rapid change.

If we did nothing...cycles and jiggles would still occur. "Climate change" is redundant. Is man's contribution to the thousands of things that cause climate change the controlling input? We don't know. Not even close. Not even Al Gore and his many demons know.

 

[Skyhunter]

http://www.nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/

Nice links. Thanks.

They are only monitoring sea ice, which does not effect sea level. And the bottom line is this:

Passive microwave satellite data reveal that Arctic ice extent decreased about 3 percent per decade while Antarctic ice extent increased by 0.8 percent per decade (Cavalieri et al. 2003).

So we have a net loss of 2.2%, not exactly a one for one exchange.

Then there are the last 3 years:

In recent years, satellite data have indicated an even more dramatic reduction in regional ice cover. In September 2002, sea ice in the Arctic reached a record minimum (Serreze et al. 2003), 4 percent lower than any previous September since 1978, and 14 percent lower than the 1978-2000 mean. In the past, a low ice year would be followed by a rebound to near-normal conditions, but 2002 has been followed by two more low-ice years, both of which almost matched the 2002 record. Taking these three years into account, the September ice extent trend for 1979-2004 is declining by 7.7 percent per decade (Stroeve et al. 2005).

Combine that with the report from the University of Colorado Boulder detailing the loss of glacial mass in the Antarctic and what we have a net melting of ice, sea and land ice.

The possible explanation for an imbalance between northern and southern hemisphere is the AO or Arctic oscillation.

Fossil fuel consumption and the resulting increase in global temperatures could explain sea ice decline, but the actual cause might be more complicated. The Arctic Oscillation (AO) is a seesaw pattern of alternating atmospheric pressure at polar and mid-latitudes. The positive phase produces a strong polar vortex, with the mid-latitude jet stream shifted northward. The negative phase produces the opposite conditions. From the 1950s to the 1980s, the AO flipped between positive and negative phases, but it entered a strong positive pattern between 1989 and 1995. This flushed older, thicker ice out of the Arctic, leaving the region with younger, thinner ice that was more prone to summer melting. So sea ice decline may result from natural variability in the AO. Growing evidence suggests, however, that greenhouse warming favors the AO's positive mode, meaning recent sea ice decline results from a combination of natural variability and global warming.

The evidence is becoming overwhelming, eventually, just like with the tobacco companies, the energy interests will run out of anomolies that they can use as arguments for keeping the status quo. Which BTW is quite lucrative right at the moment.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8646744/

 

[Skyhunter]

"[URL gives a better picture of the data and the "fit" that yields the "ice loss rate." Anyone wanta do the least squares on it and reproduce the slope shown in the plot?

Three years is not usually enough time to site a trend, however there are enough climate anomolies in the last three years to give one pause.

The ice has been melting steadily for 20 years, and now the rate of melt is accelerating, especially in the past three years.

I believe we are in for some nasty weather in the next century.

 

[Zlex]

Nice links. Thanks.

They are only monitoring sea ice, which does not effect sea level. And the bottom line is this:


So we have a net loss of 2.2%, not exactly a one for one exchange.

Then there are the last 3 years:


Combine that with the report from the University of Colorado Boulder detailing the loss of glacial mass in the Antarctic and what we have a net melting of ice, sea and land ice.

The possible explanation for an imbalance between northern and southern hemisphere is the AO or Arctic oscillation.

The evidence is becoming overwhelming, eventually, just like with the tobacco companies, the energy interests will run out of anomolies that they can use as arguments for keeping the status quo. Which BTW is quite lucrative right at the moment.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8646744/

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_untersteiner.html

Recent computations (e.g. Vinnikov, 1999) closely duplicate the observed reduction of the mean annual ice extent. However, closer inspection reveals a disturbing discrepancy: models show impacts in winter and observations show ice retreat in summer. As we expect from basic physical reasoning, the largest effects of greenhouse warming should be seen in the absence of solar radiation when thermal infrared radiation dominates the surface energy balance, i.e. in winter. The calculations by Vinnikov et al. (1999) and Manabe et al. (1992) indeed show the largest sea ice signal in winter. An explanation of this summer/winter discrepancy has not been offered so far. The absence and presence of sea ice, and its thickness, depend on very small differences between large fluxes of energy. Minor changes of the assumptions about surface albedo, snow cover, cloudiness and cloud radiative properties, ocean heat flux, and other factors, may have large effects on the computed ice cover and require a model precision that remains to be attained.

The uncertainites in the measurements exceed 1%, which is greater than the calculated effect. In otherwords, we are measuring differences in large quantities with a ruler marked off only in units of 'feet' and noting as significant a difference of less than '1 foot.'

In addition, the details of the model predictions don't match the details observed. We can only claim as significant our model predictions if we ignore the uncertainties in the modeling.

I am forever biased by the fact that our Sun is a direct driver. I mean, check out this


We regard as 'constant' and 'should be' plenty of massive drivers that are not constant at all.


Maybe someday the NH: ice extent will be 10.7 million sq KM and trending up, and the SH: ice extent will be 13.6 million sq km and trending down, and perihelion will be in early July moving later in the year...

But that is just one driver...out of many. Not THE driver.

So in agregate from the sum of all such 'jiggles'...what should be?

Here is a real hypothetical to ponder. In the current free for all, is it possible to imagine a result or observation that does not support the conclusion that mankind is the determining driver for any and all climate change?

Because, I was just reading about all the evidence of abrupt, 50 year climate changes tens of thousands of years ago, and was wondering if Henry Ford also built time machines and was holding out on us, as a plausible explanation for that which has often happened in the past seemingly without our energetic participation.

You know, from the record, there is absolutely no evidence that if we just hold our breath and don't move, the Earth won't change. None. Zero. Nada. Zip.

 

[Skyhunter]

Here is a real hypothetical to ponder. In the current free for all, is it possible to imagine a result or observation that does not support the conclusion that mankind is the determining driver for any and all climate change?

Of course there is, if it could be demonstrated that the Earth's orbit and tilt, were in one of those rare congruences in the Milankovitch cycles, that would be worth exploring. I have seen no evidence that we are in one of those rare congruences.

If there are any other possible explanations, I am sure that they will be heavily promoted and disseminated through the media by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. and or their associates.

Global Warming TV Adverts "The Competitive Enterprise Institute has produced two 60-second television spots focusing on the alleged global warming crisis and the calls by some environmental groups and politicians for reduced energy use. The ads are airing in 14 U.S. cities from May 18 to May 28, 2006." The ads say that ice is actually thickening and that CO2 is a good thing.[10] (http://streams.cei.org/ )
"These television ads are a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming debate," said Curt Davis, director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence at the University of Missouri-Columbia and author of the research in a May 19 news release. "They are selectively using only parts of my previous research to support their claims. They are not telling the entire story to the public." [11] (http://munews.missouri.edu/NewsBureauSingleNews.cfm?newsid=9842)

- His study only reported growth for the East Antarctic ice sheet, not the entire Antarctic ice sheet.
- Growth of the ice sheet was only noted on the interior of the ice sheet and did not include coastal areas. Coastal areas are known to be losing mass, and these losses could offset or even outweigh the gains in the interior areas.
- The fact that the interior ice sheet is growing is a predicted consequence of global climate warming.

I see a lot of this kind of obfuscation. Not that there isn't still a lot we don't know or understand. I just feel that the GW deniers are grasping when they resort to cherry-picking and misrepresenting the conclusions of a study.

 

[Bystander]

re: http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/images/articleimages/pdf/AA_June06_EN1.pdf#search='graceantarctic%20ice%20s heet'

Three years is not usually enough time to site a trend, ...

My inference from this remark is that you've recognized the trend line (black dashes) as a bald-faced lie. Fitting a "trend" to the data shown indicates a slight accumulation of ice over the past three years --- less than the uncertainty in the GRACE data, but, if there is any real change, that's the direction the measurements indicate.

(snip)

You understand that there is a message from some of the people who actually do the measurements in the "Aerospace America" link? Message being, "We're working for Dilbert's 'pointy-haired boss. He's the one who put in the 'trend line.' "

You asked earlier in the thread about "conspiracy" --- you're actually looking at evidence of deliberate misrepresentation of data here --- don't know if I'd call it conspiracy yet, but it's got more than a slightly funny smell to it.

 

[Skyhunter]

You asked earlier in the thread about "conspiracy" --- you're actually looking at evidence of deliberate misrepresentation of data here --- don't know if I'd call it conspiracy yet, but it's got more than a slightly funny smell to it.

http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/images/articleimages/pdf/AA_June06_EN1.pdf#search='graceantarctic%20ice%20sheet'

I don't see it as a misrepresentation. The dashed line is an average. There was a large spike in the first half of 2005, followed by a large drop off. There was also a large drop in 2004, followed by a large spike. I think perhaps you are misreading the graph, or it could be me, I wish it had a legend to explain what the lines represent exactly. What I found interesting is that the red and blue lines haves transposed positions. Would sure be nice to know what that means.

 

[Zlex]

I see a lot of this kind of obfuscation. Not that there isn't still a lot we don't know or understand. I just feel that the GW deniers are grasping when they resort to cherry-picking and misrepresenting the conclusions of a study.

Skyhunter,

Maybe, maybe I am grasping. I admit that I am biased in my beliefs about the drivers of climate.

The Suns output is a direct driver; we can't obviously change that. The Earth's albedo is also a direct driver. Try as we might to change the Triple point of water, it is what it is, and we live in a buffered film of lots of water in all three phases. The % of the full Earth disk that is covered with clouds has been an incredibly stable and fixed %. That is because of a very stiff feedback mechanism. (If it were otherwise, then this % would vary widely. It does not, so it must be governed by a stiff feedback mechanism.) For as some have calculated, http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF11/1191.html

If the Earth's temperature rises by 2 deg F, in our buffered skin of water in all three phases, will there be more, less or the same amount of water as vapor in our buffered atmosphere? And if there is more, will there be more, less or the same amount of net reflective clouds in our atmosphere? And if more, will the Earth's albedo decrease, increase, or stay the same?

All these years of satellite imagery, why has there never been an image of the Earth with cloud cover everywhere? What prevents that? With cloud cover nowhere? WHat prevents that? It's not a purely random event, because in any long string of random numbers, ".33" does not keep coming up day after day after day after day...

In fact, there has only ever been evidence of cloud cover covering only an extremely tiny narrow and stable range of the full Earth disk--because it must. Because sunlight is a direct driver, and so is Earth albedo. Land, ocean, ice albedo changes slowly, but since we have the happy fortune of living in a thin buffered atmosphere with lots of water in all three phases, we would have to evaporate our oceans (under cloud filled skies and without the Sun's help) to knock ourselves out of this buffer and its stiff feedback mechanism. Or, likewise, freeze all the water, without shade from the Sun; an equal impossibility for Man.

This could take a while. If all of mankinds energy consumption were devoted to heating up the ocean, it would take us about 10000 years just to raise the oceans 1 deg F. Cooling it, we'd do no better, even with the best minds and 100% of the world's resources put to the task.

In the meantime, the Sun would no longer be helping us, and Earth's radiative cooling would be cooling off the Earth faster than we could heat it up.

These are direct drivers. The atmosphere is about 20% O2, about 80% N2, and about 0% everything that the pinheads say is really driving climate, measured in ppm. O2 and N2 are greenhouse gasses; the 'greenhouse' effect would be called "Boyles Law"(+ Charles Law = Ideal Gas Law) anywhere else except in mystic boogeyman sceintific street theatre. The surface of the Earth is warmer than the planet radiative balance skin temperature because as pressure increases, so does temperature. Thank you gravity, that is 'the greenhouse effect.'

Can we substantially change the physics of that? Can we change the atmospheric gas constant significantly, or is our atmosphere still 'about 20% O2, and about 80% N2?'

And here is where the mystics live: can we substantially alter the albedo feedback mechanism, such that we alter the stiffness of the feedbaclk mechanism, or render it a positive feedback mechanism(such that the feedback amplifies perturbations, instead of damps them?

Because, when over 40 years of satellite imagery doesn't support our pet theories, and instead, we have to resort to 'more reliable' modeling of 'earth shine observations' made by folks staring at the moon centuries ago, or 'ice core gas analysis' of a handful of samples somewhere on Earth is divined to tell us 'the' temperature of the Earth 50000 yrs ago, something silly is going on.

Natural variations in solar output, volcanic emissions(not just step loading eruptions, emissions are almost constant) provide perturbations which far outweight anything man can do, and as is murkily shown by the INDOEX/Global coo...err, dimming/warming debates, not everything that man does uniformy contrinutes to either warming or cooling, but both!

So the real issue is, is the 'net' impact of mans activity(not his total greenhouse gasses/ppm emmissions contrinution to global warming, nor his total particulate contrinution to global coo--err dimming, but his net impact) significantly consequential, related to 'natural' variations which we ultimately know will end in a dim 3 deg K soup of nothing no matter what we do or don't do, so is clealry not in any long term mythical 'balance' that the mystics claim for it.

Of course, this would require that we actually knew or could measure man's net impact: we can't. It would also require that we 'knew' what the 'natural balance' was, and we don't. It would require that we 'knew' that Man was not part of the natural world, and that is another totally religious assertion.

 

[Skyhunter]

You asked earlier in the thread about "conspiracy" --- you're actually looking at evidence of deliberate misrepresentation of data here --- don't know if I'd call it conspiracy yet, but it's got more than a slightly funny smell to it.

http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/images/articleimages/pdf/AA_June06_EN1.pdf#search='graceantarctic%20ice%20sheet'

I don't see it as a misrepresentation. The dashed line is an average. There was a large spike in the first half of 2005, followed by a large drop off. There was also a large drop in 2004, followed by a large spike. I think perhaps you are misreading the graph, or it could be me, I wish it had a legend to explain what the lines represent exactly. What I found interesting is that the red and blue lines haves transposed positions. Would sure be nice to know what that means.

 

[Andre]

I wonder why there is a line through the name of skyhunter. Can't be for careless posting. Can't see anything wrong with that.

Anyway, regarding the consensus part, and the Oreskes study

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

It must be known that a scrutinized repetition of the study does not hold up:

http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Scienceletter.htm
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/20060627/20060627_18.html

Furthermore about the cause of the warming of the last decade, perhaps it's good to take note of this recent peer reviewed scientific paper:

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/enfuem/2006/20/i03/abs/ef050276y.html

Essenhigh, Robert H., 2006. Prediction of the Standard Atmosphere Profiles of Temperature, Pressure, and Density with Height for the Lower Atmosphere by Solution of the (S-S) Integral Equations of Transfer and Evaluation of the Potential for Profile Perturbation by Combustion Emissions. Energy & Fuels Vol. 20, No 3, pp. 1057-1067, May 17, 2006

Abstract

This analytical solution, believed to be original here, to the 1D formulation of the (1905-1906) integral (S-S) Equations of Transfer, governing radiation through the atmosphere, is developed for future evaluation of the potential impact of combustion emissions on climate change. ...etc."
etc

Nothing spectacular in the abstract however the conclusions (ch6) state:

...More specifically, the outcome of the analysis does not support the concept of “forcing” or precipitation of bifurcation behavior because of increased CO2. Rather, although the evidence is clear that global warming is currently occurring as discussed elsewhere, it would appear, nevertheless, that it is not the rising carbon dioxide concentration that is driving up the temperature...

this is followed by an alternative hypothesis that may or may not prove to be right.

For checking the full PDF, pm me, it's worth it.

It's likely that there is consensus about a warming period from about 1980 to 1998, like there is about boiling water. Apparantly there is no consensus about it's cause. More discussions in the Earth thread.

 

[MeJennifer]

If there is no scientific basis for denying AGW, why is there so much doubt being expressed in the media and by layman on blogs and forums?

Typical herd animal mentality!

Except for the types who want to "change society for the better" the herd animal wants to hear no bad news.

Now if things become a really a problem and in everybody's face then the herd mentality will switch 100%. Then scapegoats need to be found. Then watch politicians climbing on boxes "explaining" that they always thought this a big problem.

First there is denial then there is offense!
The typical herd animal behavior.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Typical herd animal mentality!

Except for the types who want to "change society for the better" the herd animal wants to hear no bad news.

Now if things become a really a problem and in everybody's face then the herd mentality will switch 100%. Then scapegoats need to be found. Then watch politicians climbing on boxes "explaining" that they always thought this a big problem.

First there is denial then there is offense!
The typical herd animal behavior.

One thing I really hate to see in a debate is the identification of one's opponents with animals, and dismissing their arguments as just what you would expect from animals.

Most of the anti warming people (whom I believe to be wrong) regard themselves as the very opposite of herd animals. They see the firm opinions of the scientists as an attempt to force an unsound elite opinion on the people and themselves as the courageous resisters of that power play.

 

[MeJennifer]

What are you talking about, which opponent?

I was simply giving my explanation as to why people don't care too much about global warming.
Which by the way is the main question of the person who created the topic!
But you seem to have identified "the opponent" already.
What opponent are you talking about?

 

[Andre]

I wonder if it is at all possible to have an analytic neutral fallacy free exchange of ideas here about the thread subject instead of about the people.

 

[Bystander]

http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/images/articleimages/pdf/AA_June06_EN1.pdf#search='graceantarctic%20ice%20sheet'

I don't see it as a misrepresentation. The dashed line is an average. There was a large spike in the first half of 2005, followed by a large drop off. There was also a large drop in 2004, followed by a large spike. I think perhaps you are misreading the graph, or it could be me, I wish it had a legend to explain what the lines represent exactly. What I found interesting is that the red and blue lines haves transposed positions. Would sure be nice to know what that means.

http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~piccard/radnotes/data.html#expon ; sections E and F should give you some idea of methods for handling data --- if you wish to call the dashed line "an average," do so with the understanding that it is an "average" direction (slope) and "average" position (intercept) in the chosen coordinate plane (time and mass, time and change in distance between GRACE birds, or whatever inferences the non-discerning reader can be led to draw through omission of information).

"Red" is probably raw GRACE data, the change in separation distance between the two birds. http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/newsletter/2002/august2002.html gives you a quick summary of mission parameters; the 24 m/day loss of altitude is of interest for estimating change in sensitivity to surface mass defects. Translates (with assumptions) to 9 km/a loss of altitude; the decrease in Earth surface area that is "seen" as altitude decreases is 1-2%/a, and the time spent over a "target area" for measurement likewise decreases by 1%/a; a net loss in sensitivity to "distributed" (snow and ice cover, plus atmosphere) mass defects of 2-3%/a, give or take a half order of magnitude, plus corrections mission controllers might make by increasing the separation distance between birds. There is an increase in sensitivity resulting from reduced vertical distance between birds and mass defects, but, unless I've muffed an exponent or two, the radial component of acceleration due to mass defects is below the 1 micron resolution threshold for anything less than a million cubic km of ice piled in a 100 km cube; that is, the measurable changes in distance between the two birds are due entirely to tangential accelerations. 'Nother GRACE overview talks about 150 km loss in altitude over mission life (three times what I've estimated) --- and, unsaid in the "24 m/day" link is the possibility that it could be less over the mission life. Orbit decays due to atmospheric drag, and sensitivity drops at some rate.

The "black dash" (trend line) is fit to the "red." Why look at the GRACE decay trend and not comment on it? Got me.

Leaves "blue" for actual ice mass lost or gained over the three years --- thirty-four points plus uncertainty limits (error bars) --- measurement a month (corresponding to same for red). We'll presume that the track widths overlap by at least one half among all thirty-four.

"Maybe 'blue' is GRACE, and 'red' is ice?" Constant signal over three years ("trend line" through 'blue' is zero slope, zero intercept), and decreasing sensitivity means 'red' increases --- not the case. "Sensitivity went up?" Mebbe --- lower altitude means nearer horizon, means less time for tangential acceleration, also means smaller areal extent of "distributed" mass defect being sensed --- anyone's got factors I've omitted, forgotten, or of which I'm not aware, say so.

"Connect the dots" if still in kindergarten, or if an economist (okay, physical scientists do it to check for transpositions of numbers with the visual cortex --- reduced data doesn't connect to yield same shape as raw data, time to go back and do things over). It's tempting to try fitting this stuff to some periodic function (local maxima at 200x.5, and local minima at .0, but it's a bit noisy to expect much useful). It might be a little unfair to jump to a conclusion that this plot is "a deliberate misrepresentation" of GRACE results: Science does have an embargo policy; authors are not allowed to have presented work elsewhere before publication, or to present it elsewhere after publication. Granting an interview to A-space Amer., and furnishing them with "working" plots of trends, data, reduced data, that are not going to be submitted to Science for publication is a way around "embargo" --- does it bias reviews? Is it ethical? Fill in the blanks on your own.

Mass is mass. GRACE measures change in mass of the Antarctic ice sheet plus the atmosphere over it. Given a "footprint" radius for the experiment of 200 km, the mass of the atmosphere included in a measurement is 1.2x10¹² tons, equivalent to 1200 km³ ice. Most weather occurs within about a 30 mbar range of atmospheric pressures, 30-40 km³ of ice, and that level of "noise" may, or may not, be included in the 80 km³ uncertainty reported in the story --- it ain't mentioned --- it's good form to "assign" identified source contributions in error reports, but far from universally followed.

What else? A-space Amer., "... GRACE measures micron scale variations ..." UT GRACE newsletter talks about 10 microns in the mission parameters.

A-space Amer. overstating things? Yeah. Wash. Post? When not? Velicogna? Ain't seen Science yet.

 

[Skyhunter]

I found this to be interesting, although I wouldn't call Pat Michaels a "skeptic". Since he and others that dispute AGW commonly refer scientists that support AGW as "alarmists", I will from now on refer to him and the other AGW lobbyists as "denialists".

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/07/27/national/w144018D84.DTL&hw=pat+michaels&sn=001&sc=1000

Pat Michaels — Virginia's state climatologist, a University of Virginia professor and senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute — told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists' global warming research. So last week, a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign to help him out, raising at least $150,000 in donations and pledges.

And the scientists on the other side of the debate...

Three top climate scientists said they don't accept money from private groups. The same goes for the Web site realclimate.org, which has long criticized Michaels. "We don't get any money; we do this in our free time," said Realclimate.org contributor Stefan Rahmstorf, an ocean physics scientist at Potsdam University in Germany.

I think that their is a growing credibility problem for denialists like Michaels. I would be interested to know where his funding has come from previously.