Posted on 05/19/2008 2:37:47 PM PDT by cogitator
Thanks for commenting. I think we can move on to more cogent skeptical points than this one.
page 66: nonexistence of global mean temperature. I guess this is supposed to be a metaphysical argument, since there is no such thing as average temperature, there is no such thing as an equilibrium temperature. But working backwards, there is a theoretical equilibrium temperature from the incoming radiation, earth physical shape without the atmosphere. The average temperature can also be measured, not like table 13, but with equally distributed satellite readings. The theory and the reality can be compared and have been successfully. There are obviously uncertainties and approximations, but the 33C difference (GH effect) is not off by more than a degree or two.
Yep.
The main way this has been done is to model the global climate over the past 100-150 years, and to use only natural (volcanic and solar) forcings in some model runs, and to then include the anthropogenic factors (greenhouse gases and land use change) in other model runs. The only runs that successfully reproduce the general pattern of observed changes are those which include the anthropogenic effects. Natural forcings are too limited in their effect. This is briefly alluded to in the text but not described in the text.
There may be comments that the solar influence has been underestimated due to potential effects on cloud cover. The mechanism for this has not been adequately established and experimentation is ongoing. The current state of knowledge does not indicate that the solar influence is responsible for most of the currently observed warming, but 30-50% of the warming early in the 20th century is attributed to increased solar activity. Note that the study period did not include the early part of the 20th century.
Apparently this study was published in Nature magazine which I can't seem to find; have you read the study itself or just this copy and paste article drawn from the Press Room at Columbia University?
For reasons best known to the loudest of the GW crowd all charts now seem to start with 1970, a well-known year of low temperatures having dropped steadily from 1940, just as the above graph.
And what of Dr. Miskolczi, who gave up his NASA job to publish? Also “not cogent”?
I have observed that certain people have a deep emotional need to believe in this global-warming nonsense. Perhaps for some it fills the void left by absence of belief in older more traditional religions. Of course Dr. Michael Crichton stated the case better than I ever could:
http://michaelcrichton.com/speech-environmentalismaseligion.html
Sure, and there are some that work backwards based on their political choices. I am conservative and I don't want any government involvement in climate whatsoever. But I am also basing my decisions on sound science and the greenhouse effect is sound. Man's growth of CO2 is sound. That increase in CO2 causing warming, debatable. Catastrophic? No chance, at least a lot less than other catastrophes. Not worth worrying about at all.
My suggestion is getting some good material from the skeptical side. Crichton is a good start. Find climate scientists. Avoid physicists like the guy you posted above. They tend to oversimplify or just not comprehend.
He can do whatever he thinks he needs to do. His level of commitment to his ideas doesn't change the intellectual quality of his ideas.
You provided three separate points in the post to which I responded. The first is the stuff of much debate and depends significantly on how the data is interpreted. The second has yet to demonstrate a real-world effect. The third, which is this supposed disproof, is not scientifically credible.
I'm probably guilty of this too, but: not everything that can be found which apparently supports a particular position is of the same quality. When discussing a subject like this, the lesser-quality stuff needs to be filtered out. And lesser-quality stuff exists on both sides.
I didn't read the actual article. I read the article I posted from TerraDaily. It's in the May 15 issue of Nature; I can see it but I can't access it (have to pay).
As for the starting date, it seems generally agreed that climate variability combined with sulfur emissions to lower temperatures a bit in the 60s and 70s. There also seems to be general agreement that the warming beginning in the 1970s is mostly attributable to anthropogenic cause. For example of why I say that:
“That and $3.99 will get you a gallon of gas. “
________________________________________________________________
But only until next week. Then, that and 4.59 will get you a gallon of gas
The people of the world must accept, that we are but a pimple on the butt of mother earth.
An irritant for sure, but one that can be popped and the pain goes away.
Ooops! They forget to mention that Mt. Shasta and Mt. St. Helens in North America have GROWING glaciers! Why do they avoid this fact?
Because most glaciers are receding and only a few exceptions (like the Mount St. Helens special crater-shadow case) are advancing.
Of course the glaciers are SUPPOSED to melt in a temperate time, if they didn’t Canada and most of the northern US would still be under miles of ice. The whole freaking out over melting glaciers thing just proves that the global warming alarmists don’t really understand how climate works. If you’re not in an Ice Age the glaciers are melting, period, end of sentence.
The problem is that the general agreement seems to be more of a movement to reinforce the notion of the arrogance of mankind itself which has a poor record of living up to its boasts.
Every week now there is a small blurb published infrequently but published nonetheless that argues against the stated relentlessness of the warming trend, cooling oceans; temperature errors having to be corrected; glaciers growing; multiplying numbers of true climate-related scientists signing on to the denier list; strong ice-pack in the Arctic; continued Pacific storms due to cold offshore water in the northwest; an oscillation bring colder water along the Alaskan coast with a likely persistence; and virtually no sunspots.
All this serves little to reinforce the notion of continued warming on anywhere near the scale of that predicted by the models from the last few decades.
This is a time of moderation not ramped-up so-called “fixes.”
There's a very interesting interpretive filter at work.
You hear "cooling oceans"; I hear "shifts in the well-known ocean oscillations".
You hear "temperature errors having to be corrected"; I hear "standard quality control procedures which have only minor effects on the full record".
You hear "glaciers growing"; I hear "standard skeptical rejoinder pointing out that 10% of glaciers globally are advancing, trying to counter the receding trend of the other 90%".
You hear: "multiplying number of true climate-related scientists signing onto the denier list"; I hear "all the same names over and over again, and nobody of significance actually switching sides".
You hear "strong ice-pack in the Arctic"; I hear "all first-year ice during a slightly cooler winter" (and believe me, this one is going to be REAL interesting this August and September)
You hear "continued Pacific storms due to cold offshore water in the NW"; I hear "PDO". (Same for the next one.)
You hear "virtually no sunspots". I hear "it takes a lot more than a slow start to the next cycle to make a Maunder Minimum".
All this serves little to reinforce the notion of continued warming on anywhere near the scale of that predicted by the models from the last few decades.
And I say that it's way too soon to make that statement during a year when La Nina is a significant factor, the PDO shifted, and it's not even summer in the NH yet. This is clearly a pronounced example of year-to-year variability; it takes far more time to determine if a new normal has been established.
However, politics and public opinion move fast, and politicians and media mavens don't have the patience required of the scientific community. So I'm not surprised that there is considerable exploit of this year-to-year variability.
This is a time of moderation not ramped-up so-called “fixes.”
It is rare than anything done hastily is actually done well. I think that rather than base the nation's (and world's) energy adaptations on the state of the global climate, it just makes sense for several reasons (economic, security) to adopt more diversified sources. Many of these have less emissions impact than fossil fuels. And that will accrue an added benefit for the environment. I think economics is pushing the world down that road anyway.
So you agree that perspective plays a large role in this ongoing debate - then you go on to talk about alternative sources (of energy, I assume) while we know full well that the only thing that readily burns and is found easily is carbon.
Even now some are looking at ways to allow natural processes to reduce existing CO2 but with limited success due to environmental pressures and a bit of general trepidation.
For instance there is this article from Europe where a few scientists have modeled the use of iron and its oxides to fertilize the ocean:
[The impact on atmospheric CO2 of iron fertilization induced changes in the ocean’s biological pump
X. Jin1, N. Gruber2,3, H. Frenzel1, S. C. Doney4, and J. C. McWilliams3
1Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP), UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
2Environmental Physics, Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
3IGPP & Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
4Dept. of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543-1543, USA
Abstract. Using numerical simulations, we quantify the impact of changes in the ocean’s biological pump on the air-sea balance of CO2 by fertilizing a small surface patch in the high-nutrient, low-chlorophyll region of the eastern tropical Pacific with iron. Decade-long fertilization experiments are conducted in a basin-scale, eddy-permitting coupled physical/biogeochemical/ecological model. In contrast to previous studies, we find that most of the dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) removed from the euphotic zone by the enhanced biological export is replaced by uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere. Atmospheric uptake efficiencies, the ratio of the perturbation in air-sea CO2 flux to the perturbation in export flux across 100 m, integrated over 10 years, are 0.75 to 0.93 in our patch size-scale experiments. The atmospheric uptake efficiency is insensitive to the duration of the experiment. The primary factor controlling the atmospheric uptake efficiency is the vertical distribution of the enhanced biological production and export. Iron fertilization at the surface tends to induce production anomalies primarily near the surface, leading to high efficiencies. In contrast, mechanisms that induce deep production anomalies (e.g. altered light availability) tend to have a low uptake efficiency, since most of the removed DIC is replaced by lateral and vertical transport and mixing. Despite high atmospheric uptake efficiencies, patch-scale iron fertilization of the ocean’s biological pump tends to remove little CO2 from the atmosphere over the decadal timescale considered here.]
What do you think of this approach?
Of course perspective plays a large role -- so does the way information is presented. The skeptical spin on the Keenlyside paper is a perfect example.
Speaking of things that cost $133 a barrel and burn, the world may be pricing itself out of carbon consumption rather quickly. A global recession could change things far faster than efforts to curb carbon emissions, I think.
What do you think of this approach?
They answered that question: "Despite high atmospheric uptake efficiencies, patch-scale iron fertilization of the ocean’s biological pump tends to remove little CO2 from the atmosphere over the decadal timescale considered here."
Which is a long way of saying it doesn't work.
If you're interested, I actually thought a bit about the long future. There's a couple ways out. Controlled nuclear fusion is one. Another might be large-scale hydrogen generation using solar. (Hydrogen burns too!) The problem with solar in general is that the sun is either not there (at night) or affected by cloud cover. But sunlight in normally cloudless areas (= deserts) can be concentrated and then focused onto advanced photovoltaics to generate a considerable amount of power. That power could be used for electrolytic breakdown of water, producing hydrogen. Vehicles can run on fuel cells. What do you think of that approach?
“If you’re interested, I actually thought a bit about the long future. There’s a couple ways out. Controlled nuclear fusion is one. Another might be large-scale hydrogen generation using solar. (Hydrogen burns too!) The problem with solar in general is that the sun is either not there (at night) or affected by cloud cover. But sunlight in normally cloudless areas (= deserts) can be concentrated and then focused onto advanced photovoltaics to generate a considerable amount of power. That power could be used for electrolytic breakdown of water, producing hydrogen. Vehicles can run on fuel cells. What do you think of that approach?”
Well, other than the simple fact that I don’t work for Marvel Comics you end up sounding like everyone else who thinks there is a simple fix for complex problems.
How can you possibly think that any earth-bound controlled fusion is going to come about in our lifetimes? Through what possible mechanism?
It currently takes the output of a major city to trap a fusion reaction long enough to count a few stray Fermions and you want to assemble a marching band of like warriors?
Hydrogen is everywhere as it tends to hang out with the best and the worst crowds one ever saw but the one thing you can bet on is that cowardly, volatile little shrimp won’t ever venture out on his own and by the time you chase him out of his cave to where you can illuminate the night with his own light he will have flown off into the sky, far away from your carbon-fueled match.
I lived in the southwest for over 25 years and the last I remember the hours after dark were still dark even out there in the desert where liars live or die depending or whether they have made friends with cacti or became adept at hitchhiking, other than that, maximum solar input will always occur after 10AM and before 4PM and that amounts to about 25% of the entire cloudless day that you assume will soon be relentless as the whole place becomes so drought-stricken as to be uninhabitable even for the most naive and ambitious sun-harvester.
Methane is the only suitable fuel using current supplies, ease of attainment and known resources which brings us right back to the first link in the carbon-paraffin fuel chain of Cn+H2n+2 - so your thoughts along the future look more like footnotes on a review of the history of this futile notion of reliving Captain Planet’s Summer Vacation.
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