Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[CapelDodger]

Fair enough. Perhaps "consensus" was a tad overstated.

Or, to put it another way, a complete travesty. That "they" all predicted an imminent ice-age in the 70's is a myth, as we are surely all aware by now.

It's probably more important to this discussion of where the 7 cooling and 20 neutral went wrong.

Is it? It might be more interesting than the rather boring "got it right" work, but that doesn't make it more important. What's important is that what has happened is just what the majority predicted. There's more to come.

Obviously the science hasn't changed, so what gives?

The physics hasn't changed, but the data available has vastly increased. Low-cost (relatively) mass-spectroscopy only became available in the 70's. We didn't have the cores (ice and sediment) to work with anyway. Clean Air Acts had hardly kicked in. And most importantly of all, we hadn't had the last three decades of climate change to observe.

If it was "wrong" then how do we know it's right now?

People can always cling to uncertainty in any prospect they don't like to contemplate. It's not a very sensible way to proceed, but not everybody's sensible. Far from it, in fact.

We mostly know the majority were right because it's happening as predicted, based on the physics we did know (which hasn't changed) and caused by the mechanism (enhanced greenhouse effect) which yielded said prediction.

It seems to me it would be more scientific to take a look at the papers and refute them or comment on what they did wrong.

Go ahead. Re-invent the wheel.

You might want to start start with the ones that were looking at cooling caused by sulphate aerosols and projected a business-as-usual scenario. It was suggested that climate sensitivity might be high because of tipping-points, particularly in northern sea-ice. They may have been right, but it wasn't business-as-usual after the 70's. Not in sulphate aerosols, anyway. The climate argument didn't cause that change, it was down to acid-rain and lung-damage.

Both of the latter were rubbished as "junk science" by the usual suspects at the time, of course, while they claimed the costs of mitigation would lead to universal ruin. Climate denial is very familiar to us greybeards.

Has that been done? Or is this really what they claim, a pseudoscience, validity determined by the number of papers published and not the actual science.

Who can really say with any certainty? Who "they" are, I mean?

 

[bit_pattern]

Recycled talking points are recycled

 

[CapelDodger]

Recycled talking points are recycled

And meanwhile ...

http://news.discovery.com/earth/antarctica-melting-warming-penguins-101214.html

"Global warming is sneaky. For more than a century it has been hiding large amounts of excess heat in the world's deep seas. Now that heat is coming to the surface again in one of the worst possible places: Antarctica."

Sneaky, eh? Well who'd a thunk it.

'
"It can destroy the ice shelf if that heat can get to it," said Bindschadler, who at the same meeting presented his work from the melting Pine Island Ice Shelf in Antarctica.'

So definitely not a good place for it.


There are some who won't like this though (my emphasis) :

"
Now that the upwelling deep sea water is the clear cause of the melting ice shelf, rather than summer melt water, as had been thought in the past, it's a question of how winds will change in a warming world and whether they will drive more warm water into the ice shelves."

There's no place for certainty in Science, thank you very much. Irony.

 

[Warmer1]

Great article! It mentions exponential warming of the water.

Also in the video section check out the miles of walruses that have pulled up on one stretch of the shoreline due to the lack of ice. I also like the concept that the moving ice would move them over new areas to feed and stop them overgrazing in one area. Will they be able to adapt and swim longer distances?

http://news.discovery.com/videos/global-warming-videos/

 

[lftrsuk]

1 : 10000 = 100 : 1000000

If you imagine a 100 mm x 100 mm grid, made up of (10000) 1 mm squares, and that each has the capacity to carry 100 molecules of air, then the whole grid will contain 1000000 molecules.

If you randomly colour in 3 squares, then this is equivalent to 300 ppm of CO2in the atmosphere, which is the level in about 1920. If you then colour in a further random square, then this will be about the level in 2020 and yet a further square, could be where we are heading by the turn of the century.

When you look at the size of the grid and the tiny additions made, it seems counter-intuitive that the extra 1 or 2 squares in 10000 could be responsible for incinerating the Earth.

Is there a mechanism for CO2 tracking global warming, instead of vice-versa?

 

[John Jones]

Huh?

 

[sol invictus]

You seem to have forgotten that the atmosphere is three dimensional....

If an infra-red photon is radiated straight up from the earth's surface, to escape it must pass through a very long column of air without scattering. Think of the photon as having some cross-section; then the question is, how many molecules of CO2 are there in the vertical tube swept out by that photon?

I think the answer is actually many, which means that most such photons will scatter of a CO2 molecule. Increasing the CO2 level makes that even more likely. Of the scattered/re-radiated photons, some will scatter up and potentially escape, and some will be radiated back down. Figuring out what effect increasing the concentration will have then requires some thinking about the radiation balance.

 

[Loss Leader]

So, your basic argument is that a small amount of something doesn't seem like it can be bad. You even argue that a 33% increase in something doesn't seem like it would be that bad because it's still a small amount.

I'd like to point out that your argument is based entirely on incredulity. You offer no evidence of what a 33% increase in CO2 may or may not do to the environment, no hypothesis, no suggestions for experiments - nothing. You just choose a graphic representation to highlight the fact that only a small percentage of our atmosphere is CO2.

If I gave you a gram of powder that was 99.9999% inert, would you gladly inhale it? What if I told you that one-millionth of that powder was anthrax? What if I then offered to increase that dose by 33%?

The mere fact that a number is small is no evidence whatsoever that it is unimportant.

 

[davefoc]

I have nothing useful to say here. The previous responders have pretty much covered every aspect of this issue that I can imagine, but the idea made me smile, so:

 

[Towlie]

I'd like to point out that your argument is based entirely on incredulity.

And to artificially enhance that incredulity, the straw man is added that this supposedly "... could be responsible for incinerating the Earth", invoking images of Klaatu saying "if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder."

I don't believe the elaborate "grid" visualization with the colored in squares adds anything useful or helpful to the simply stated ratio of 1:10000. Yes, it's a small ratio. We get it.

 

[Olowkow]

Where's Feynman when we need him? This is my favorite video of my favorite physicist. I wish there were a better copy.



The dialog reminds me of scientists trying to communicate with politicians with some agenda, be it religious pandering or any other obsequiousness to some imagined base. At the root of the question is an impatience...just tell me what I want to know.

 

[ThunderChunky]

The LD50 of botulism toxin is about 50ng/kg that means 50:1000000. That is enough to KILL 50% of the people exposed, not simply raise their temperature by a partial degree.

 

[Meridian]

The LD50 of botulism toxin is about 50ng/kg that means 50:1000000. That is enough to KILL 50% of the people exposed, not simply raise their temperature by a partial degree.

You seem to be missing some zeros there: 50ng/kg would be 50:1000000000000. But wikipedia suggests it's estimated to be more like 1ng/kg, i.e., 1:1000000000000, with 50ng (not per kg) being the approximate total does for an (unspecified) monkey.

 

[quarky]

An increase of 1 % in the atmospheric O2 would kill us all. Some stuff is delicately balanced.

 

[ThunderChunky]

You seem to be missing some zeros there: 50ng/kg would be 50:1000000000000. But wikipedia suggests it's estimated to be more like 1ng/kg, i.e., 1:1000000000000, with 50ng (not per kg) being the approximate total does for an (unspecified) monkey.

Yes, you're right.

 

[The Norseman]

The LD50 of botulism toxin is about 50ng/kg that means 50:1000000. That is enough to KILL 50% of the people exposed, not simply raise their temperature by a partial degree.

You seem to be missing some zeros there: 50ng/kg would be 50:1000000000000. But wikipedia suggests it's estimated to be more like 1ng/kg, i.e., 1:1000000000000, with 50ng (not per kg) being the approximate total does for an (unspecified) monkey.

Could we please use commas or spaces or other internationally recognized separators when dealing with large numbers?

Thanks!

 

[davefoc]

An increase of 1 % in the atmospheric O2 would kill us all. Some stuff is delicately balanced.

What do you mean by this? That a 1% increase in the concentration of oxygen in the air might be lethal? There is such a thing as oxygen poisoning but according to the Wikipedia article it isn't even possible to get oxygen poisoning at less than one half atmospheric pressure. That is the oxygen concentration can be more than doubled before oxygen poisoning is possible. Maybe I didn't understand what you meant or maybe I'm confused?

 

[quarky]

What do you mean by this? That a 1% increase in the concentration of oxygen in the air might be lethal? There is such a thing as oxygen poisoning but according to the Wikipedia article it isn't even possible to get oxygen poisoning at less than one half atmospheric pressure. That is the oxygen concentration can be more than doubled before oxygen poisoning is possible. Maybe I didn't understand what you meant or maybe I'm confused?

Its usually me that's confused, but the O2 killing effect would be indirect; a chain of events upsetting the biosphere.

 

[soylent]

If the entire atmosphere was squeezed into a regular 2D grid, air molecules would be separated by a distance of 2.2 femtometers. If CO2 molecules alone were placed into a 2D grid they would be separated by 110 fm. Ozone molecules would be separated by a distance of 3500 fm(and yet there are no ozone deniers, or are there? ETA: and by that I don't mean people who deny the effect of CFCs, but people who deny that the ozone layer blocks a useful amount of short wavelength UV).

If the CO2 in Earth's atmosphere was concentrated at sea level, at standard temperature and pressure, it would be a 3.4 meter thick layer and ozone only 3 mm.

 

[BeAChooser]

Then:

http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2010/12/19/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past/

‘Snowfalls Are Now Just a Thing of the Past’

That was the headline on this March 2000 story in England’s Independent:

Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

… snip …

The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London’s last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.

Now:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7864521.stm

2 February 2009

Your pictures: Snow blankets England

http://holykaw.alltop.com/great-satellite-photo-of-england-under-snow

Jan 7th, 2010

Great satellite photo of England under snow

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/12015518

17 December 2010

Your snow pictures: the return!

http://www.anglotopia.net/anglophil...land-snow-day-in-england-snow-across-britain/

December 18, 2009

Pictures of England: Snow Day in England – Snow Across Britain