Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Dancing David]

Is there any estimation for when it was the last time the Arctic was ice-free during summer?

There was a warming period after the last ice age, I am thinking maybe 10,000 years ago or so. I could be way off, but it may not have been ice free.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Anyone who takes refuge in what "they" said in the 70's is asking to be crushed.

"Crushed"? Whatever happened to calm confidence? In poker, "Holy crap! All in!" is a tell that means "bluff; weak hand". Steven Schneider recommended intervention to counter global cooling. S.J. Gould wrote that he worried more about a new ice age than about global warming.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Steven Schneider recommended intervention to counter global cooling.

Are you talking of Stephen Henry Schneider?

S.J. Gould wrote that he worried more about a new ice age than about global warming.

Are you talking of Stephen Jay Gould? When and where did this person wrote that?

 

[a_unique_person]

"Crushed"? Whatever happened to calm confidence? In poker, "Holy crap! All in!" is a tell that means "bluff; weak hand". Steven Schneider recommended intervention to counter global cooling. S.J. Gould wrote that he worried more about a new ice age than about global warming.

Way back in the 80's when I started to read about Global Warming, the first thing I thought of was the talk back in the 70's about global cooling. Of course, we hadn't heard about that for years, it just came and went as some scientific thought bubbles, no real evidence for it occurring 'soon', (in our terms) was there. The Global Warming idea, however, is still with us thirty years later, the world is warming, the ice is shrinking, the fundamental physics is rock solid. The only question is, how warm is it going to get.

 

[Piggy]

S.J. Gould wrote that he worried more about a new ice age than about global warming.

Gould? What does he have to do with it? You might as well note that your aunt Edith is more worried about an ice age than global warming.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Are you talking of Stephen Henry Schneider?¹Are you talking of Stephen Jay Gould?² When and where did this person wrote that?³

1. Is there more than one? The climate scienist (Stanford?).
2. Yes.
3. I don't recall. Long before he died, and that was some time ago.

...the world is warming¹, the ice is shrinking², the fundamental physics is rock solid³. The only question is, how warm is it going to get.

1. a) Over what time-span? Does the current trend look any different from the change of the Younger Dryas or between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age?
b) By what measure? It would be nice to assess Earth's temperature from some spot so remote that Earth appears as a point. It's only been in the last thirty or so years that this has been possible. We're not, so we rely on sampling, with all attendant problems. We have no thermometer readings from before the invention of thermometers.
2. Arctic Ocean? Greenland? Equatorial and sub-tropical high-altitude? Antarctic?
3. The law of gravitation says airplanes, birds, bats, and insects cannot fly. Other physics (aerodynamics) says that they can. Quite a few physicists either do not accept AGW or argue that it's likely to amount to a small effect not worth a worry. Feedbacks (cloud cover, snow cover), geochemistry, orbital mechanics, and solar physics also influence surface temperatures.

Gould? What does he have to do with it? You might as well note that your aunt Edith is more worried about an ice age than global warming.

Ummm...Paleontologists have some knowledge of climate cycles. Certainly paleobotanists contribute to the discussion.

 

[metzomagic]

Malcom,

Steven Schneider recommended intervention to counter global cooling. S.J. Gould wrote that he worried more about a new ice age than about global warming.

For starters, you could provide sources for those quotes by Schneider and Gould, so we can see the actual quotes, and see them in context. We're actual skeptics here, not the fake kind. Gould has been quote mined so many times by the creationists that it's become more than tiresome.

 

[CapelDodger]

"Crushed"? Whatever happened to calm confidence?

I can make crushing comments with all the calm confidence you could ask for when I'm handed such an opening.

In poker, "Holy crap! All in!" is a tell that means "bluff; weak hand".

In this case their cards are fully revealed. Metaphor is a fine thing but should be used judiciously.

Steven Schneider recommended intervention to counter global cooling. S.J. Gould wrote that he worried more about a new ice age than about global warming.

You make those claims with calm confidence but I'll pay to see your cards. I know what I'm holding, after all, and it's way better than what anybody said in the 70's.

 

[CapelDodger]

1. Is there more than one? The climate scienist (Stanford?).
2. Yes.
3. I don't recall. Long before he died, and that was some time ago.

We can assume he never did then.

1. a) Over what time-span? Does the current trend look any different from the change of the Younger Dryas or between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age?

It's not just the 70's you take refuge in then, it's even deeper history. Anything but the present.

b) By what measure? It would be nice to assess Earth's temperature from some spot so remote that Earth appears as a point. It's only been in the last thirty or so years that this has been possible. We're not, so we rely on sampling, with all attendant problems. We have no thermometer readings from before the invention of thermometers.

Deep space is another refuge, of course. So it's anything but the here and now.

2. Arctic Ocean? Greenland? Equatorial and sub-tropical high-altitude? Antarctic?

All getting warmer on the surface, but that's hardly the crucial point. The point is the weather we've been having these last few years.

3. The law of gravitation says airplanes, birds, bats, and insects cannot fly. Other physics (aerodynamics) says that they can.

The laws of physics are universal. They don't come in subsets. There aren't "laws of climate science" which dictate AGW, it's the full deck.

Quite a few physicists either do not accept AGW or argue that it's likely to amount to a small effect not worth a worry.

And they're wrong. We know this because we can see the effects already.

Feedbacks (cloud cover, snow cover), geochemistry, orbital mechanics, and solar physics also influence surface temperatures.

Orbital variations are very slow. Really slow. Thousands of years slow. Incremental. Forget them.

Solar physics we have no control over, but fortunately the Sun is very stable so there's no point in worrying about that.

Albedo feedback is positive and responding faster than was predicted. Negative cloud feedbacks have been posited (and in some cases no doubt prayed for) since the 70's but have turned out to be undetectable. Proponents still trot them out but nobody pays them serious attention.

Ummm...Paleontologists have some knowledge of climate cycles. Certainly paleobotanists contribute to the discussion.

If Gould was speaking as a palaeontologist then he'll have been referring to a distant glaciation which, in the normal run of things, would be coming. In the 70's it was assumed that we're in an interglacial, which, by the nature of things, are flanked by glaciations. Now we know this might not be the case.

 

[CapelDodger]

The Global Warming idea, however, is still with us thirty years later, the world is warming, the ice is shrinking, the fundamental physics is rock solid.

The crucial point.

The only question is, how warm is it going to get.

And beyond that, just how much that's going to affect us where we live.

 

[aleCcowaN]

1. Is there more than one? The climate scienist (Stanford?).

I asked before you said "Steven". I looked for evidence of your claim and I found in the very page about him in Wikipedia that it was a paper in 1971 when he was 25 or 26. You omitted to mention his quickly change of mind early during the same decade, just after redoing some math.

2. Yes.
3. I don't recall. Long before he died, and that was some time ago.

I agree then that we can firmly suspect such thing never happened. However, I wouldn't be surprised an evolutionary biologist and palaeontologist may think GW would be better that GC from the perspective of his specialities. I would agree if those were the only considerations.

 

[aleCcowaN]

The law of gravitation says airplanes, birds, bats, and insects cannot fly.

This is the typical phrase that "sounds good" and makes no sense. It is just one of the umpteen ways to attempt claiming "everything is relative" and "you need to see the whole picture" as if real epistemology of sciences were involved.

 

[BenBurch]

This is the typical phrase that "sounds good" and makes no sense. It is just one of the umpteen ways to attempt claiming "everything is relative" and "you need to see the whole picture" as if real epistemology of sciences were involved.

You understand the American "Right" quite well!

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

This is the typical phrase that "sounds good" and makes no sense. It is just one of the umpteen ways to attempt claiming "everything is relative" and "you need to see the whole picture" as if real epistemology of sciences were involved.

"The fundamental physics is rock solid" refers to some of the relevant factors, but not to all. CO₂ absorbs solar energy at some frequencies ("light")and emits it at others ("heat"). Fact. Okay. Ocean warming raises the level of water vapor in the atmosphere. Fact. Snow cover and clouds reflect sunlight. Fact. Plants absorb CO₂ and expand their range as temperatures rise (within the range between arctic temperatures and tropical temperatures). Also fact. These last two considerations are among some negative feedbacks.
Anyway, I initially objected to "crushing", which I see as an expression of enthusiasm for the rhetorical contest that undermines calm assessment of the science. Did you read Feinman's You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feinman? Remember the chapter about his presentation of some incomplete results as a grad student? Word spreads and some prominent people decide to attend. So he has to present half-baked results with people like Enrico Fermi and Einstein in the audience. They let him down gently. No "crushing". Secure people don't do "crushing". They also share their data. And they don't sabotage the peer review process.

 

[Piggy]

Paleontologists have some knowledge of climate cycles. Certainly paleobotanists contribute to the discussion.

When did Gould last publish a paper on the current climate situation? When did he last do field research on the current climate situation?

 

[Piggy]

The law of gravitation says airplanes, birds, bats, and insects cannot fly.

No, in fact, it does not. Flying is only a "gravity defying" feat in common parlance, not in physics.

 

[a_unique_person]

1. Is there more than one? The climate scienist (Stanford?).
2. Yes.
3. I don't recall. Long before he died, and that was some time ago.
1. a) Over what time-span? Does the current trend look any different from the change of the Younger Dryas or between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age?

Over the time span they have measured. If you look at the temperature record, the short term warming (the past 40 years, since AGW 'took off', is extremely rapid, in geological terms.

b) By what measure? It would be nice to assess Earth's temperature from some spot so remote that Earth appears as a point. It's only been in the last thirty or so years that this has been possible. We're not, so we rely on sampling, with all attendant problems. We have no thermometer readings from before the invention of thermometers.
2. Arctic Ocean? Greenland? Equatorial and sub-tropical high-altitude? Antarctic?

IIRC, Global, Arctic, Equatorial etc. The Antarctic is a special case, it is the driest continent on earth, it will become warm enough to experience more precipitation, which may lead to more ice. The Antarctic ice shelf is rapidly warming, as the Arctic is. Overall, the total polar sea ice is shrinking.

 

[aleCcowaN]

"The fundamental physics is rock solid" refers to some of the relevant factors, but not to all. CO₂ absorbs solar energy at some frequencies ("light")and emits it at others ("heat"). Fact. Okay. Ocean warming raises the level of water vapor in the atmosphere. Fact. Snow cover and clouds reflect sunlight. Fact. Plants absorb CO₂ and expand their range as temperatures rise (within the range between arctic temperatures and tropical temperatures). Also fact. These last two considerations are among some negative feedbacks.
Anyway, I initially objected to "crushing", which I see as an expression of enthusiasm for the rhetorical contest that undermines calm assessment of the science. Did you read Feinman's You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feinman? Remember the chapter about his presentation of some incomplete results as a grad student? Word spreads and some prominent people decide to attend. So he has to present half-baked results with people like Enrico Fermi and Einstein in the audience. They let him down gently. No "crushing". Secure people don't do "crushing". They also share their data. And they don't sabotage the peer review process.

Yes, I reckon "crushing" is not the most fortunate choice of words but it makes a bit of sense when I think in terms of what is happening now in Anglosaxonia-Fantasiland. I mean, 50% of climate science and 95% of denialism come from US, UK and what is culturally orbiting around them by historical reasons. During the last decade AGW has continue its unceasing path with stressing and even dire consequences all over the planet, but we had to wait until chance piled a few together in and around Anglosaxonia-Fantasiland (horrible droughts, three hurricanes at the same time -with areas where flows are ending droughts-, ice cap extreme melting) in times of elections that involve most of that region -so everybody has to watch their tongues- so we can experience a few weeks when the forces of denialism go quiet and regroup.

Within such a period of strategic latency, it is bound to be noted the efforts made to counteract propaganda so, for instance, there are a few daily instances of people keeping the torch burning -good for you- and slipping insidious cherries and other fruits from the harvest of confirmation bias, like your Schneider reference, while it stands out that the Wikipedia article about Schneider is written in a way 25% of it exists just to neutralize the acridity of that cherry. The "crushing" is not only the hard evidence of having lost ice caps the size of the Bible Belt but the fact that the sudden demure behaviour of denialism has left in sight the effort to counteract their propaganda. Note that no epistemology of sciences is involved in the last posts in this threads (because the use of scientific lexicon in a mumbo-jumbo way doesn't constitute epistemology), so it has been more the kind of social racconto that is appropriate for fora like these.

From outside Anglosaxonia-Fantasiland things look soooooooo different! BTW, who is that Feinman chap?

[I used the terms Anglosaxonia-Fantaisland on purpose not only because it refers a real background, but also in a way it can provide some chauvinistic motivation to continue the debate]

 

[Mikemcc]

"The fundamental physics is rock solid" refers to some of the relevant factors, but not to all. CO₂ absorbs solar energy at some frequencies ("light")and emits it at others ("heat"). Fact.

actually the other way round, it's translucent to visible light and opaque to some IR frequencies

Okay. Ocean warming raises the level of water vapor in the atmosphere. Fact. Snow cover and clouds reflect sunlight. Fact. Plants absorb CO₂ and expand their range as temperatures rise (within the range between arctic temperatures and tropical temperatures). Also fact. These last two considerations are among some negative feedbacks.

And they are accounted for in all of the models in use to predict climate outcomes. Your point is what?

They also share their data.

As do climate scientists. Again, what is your point?

And they don't sabotage the peer review process.

Any actual evidence of this other than the ravings from the usual deluded sites?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Malcolm Kirkpatrick): "Ocean warming raises the level of water vapor in the atmosphere. Fact. Snow cover and clouds reflect sunlight. Fact. Plants absorb CO₂ and expand their range as temperatures rise (within the range between arctic temperatures and tropical temperatures). Also fact. These last two considerations are among some negative feedbacks."
And they are accounted for in all of the models in use to predict climate outcomes. Your point is what?

"Accounted for" with varying degrees of success. "Predict" with varying degrees of success. The net effect of feedbacks is uncertain. The Earth has been hotter with lower CO₂ levels and colder with higher CO₂ levels. The Earth has been only mildly hotter with far higher CO₂ levels. Terrestrial life has been around for over 400 million years. If positive feedbacks like CO₂ + =>water vapor + dominated, geologists would not need celestial impacts or massive volcanism to explain mass extinctions. Every tiny perturbation would send the system into a skid.

(Malcolm Kirkpatrick): "They also share their data."
As do climate scientists. Again, what is your point?

They don't. That was the issue with Steve Macintyre's FOI.

(Malcolm Kirkpatrick): " And they don't sabotage the peer review process."
Any actual evidence of this other than the ravings from the usual deluded sites?

There's another "crushing" indication of insecurity, seems to me. Yes. The UEA emails.