This is more alarming to me.
Posted on 04/07/2006 11:52:35 AM PDT by cogitator
What you are essentially arguing is that there are sufficient push-"backs" in the system to counter a slow, steady push-forward in a single direction. It's fine to think or hope that, but it's not scientifically defined as likely. The models can and do cover the systems that are involved. That does not deny there are uncertainties; the predictions come with associate uncertainties.
That's one of the most idiotic analogies I've ever heard. I say one of the most idiotic because it's typical of the feeble minded BS that comes from most global warmers.
It was not so much an analogy as an illustration. If you want an analogy; take a bathtub and fill it nearly to the brim with water. Turn on the faucet, and open the drain. Provide you have enough incoming water flow, balance the incoming flow with the drainage so that the water level is stable. Clearly there will be turbulent circulation in the tub, temperature variability, etc.
Now start adding a teaspoonful of water from the sink next to the tub once a minute. What will happen to the level of water in the tub?
The point of the analogy is to show that a small steady change in one direction will influence other variables in a system in one direction.
Nonsense. Systems where positive feedback dominate blow up.
I agree. This is a climate concern, where "blow up" would mean accelerated warming. Loss of ice albedo, increased absorption of solar radiation by seawater, and methane release are all potential positive feedbacks.
Your analogy is still flawed. Heat doesn't escape the earth through a fixed size drain, it is reradiated and reflected into space. Both of those are affected by weather which must be modeled to determine the resulting heat loss. A GCM without a weather model might be like your bathtub scenario. But the real earth is like a tub with waves that splash water over the sides. The real earth doesn't reradiate heat evenly using a single parameter like your bathtub drain. In the real earth the vortexes change how energy is lost into space, unlike your bathtub where they don't matter. Finally the extra water vapor in the real earth as postulated by the forcing theory, does affect the weather and therefore the energy lost to space.
I absoLUTELY do not ignore that. Here's why: we are in the middle of a stable interglacial period right now.
Not true. We are nearing the peak of another cyclical warm spell, according to all available measurements.
The main factors that cause glacial/interglacial shifts are simply too slow to be operative factors now; they could not cause the observed trends ---
That can be said only if you ignore the sharp peaks of previous cyclical shifts. -- Feel free to dream on.
And also to you.
I think you missed my meaning. Blow up means runaway warming or cooling. Neither has happened in the Earth's 4.5 billion year history. One must therefore conclude that the Earth's climate is not dominated by positive feedback.
Your comment about positive feedback loops makes sense in the absolute but I think it's a bit more complicated. With climate you have lots of different cycles all operating on different time scales. While a positive feedback loop (like loss of snow albedo leading to more warming) may dominate for a while, it may eventually be overturned by another cycle, such as long term changes in the orbit of the earth around the sun (Milankovich cycles) which would eventually act to cool the earth back down.
But we need to be concerned with the short term effects, and most science suggests that these are going to hammer us in the near term (the next decades and possibly centuries).
Since coral reefs are a phenomena of tropical waters, wouldn't it make sense that increased water temperature would increase the area where coral growth is viable?
I think the comment about corals would make sense if both growth and death occurred at the same rate. But it doesn't. It takes coral and awful long time to establish itself and grow, but you can have a massive die-off in a single season. So we're starting to see some large die-offs in warmer waters. Maybe in a few hundred years it will balance out, but that's not really too comforting if you are dependent on fish now that lives off of the coral.
The pursue the analogy even further --- Since we know that brain tumors can cause pain, the next time you get a headache, you should go directly to surgery instead of waiting to see if it's something else causing the pain.
Right. But what if you've had hundreds of scientists look at your "headache" and tell you that it's more serious than that and you do need surgery?
I have been hearing about large scale reef destruction (pick a cause, any cause) for over 30 years now since the Frog in scuba gear started his junk science soap opera for National Geographic, yet I am not aware of any reef that has ceased to exist in that time.
Are you?
And where is the evidence that a degree or two change in water temp. will kill them off just like that?
I know what you're saying - the crisis is always just over the horizon, right?
But, I think there is some pretty recent evidence of coral kills. This article was just posted on CNN a week ago, and it sure sounds pretty alarming and immediate to me.
Caribbean coral suffers record die-off:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/03/31/coral.death.ap/index.html
The proper analogy would be that "surgeons" would recommend an operation --- because --- well, that's what Surgeons do.
A good doctor would say take two aspirin and call me in the morning.
For a damn theory based entirely on computer models that are not even close to accurate on "predicting" past trends, that ignore major variables because they are more complex that we can model or compute, on a warming trend that isn't even a century old, using proxy data for measurements older than 200 years, is the equivalent of allowing someone to dig into your skull 30 seconds after your headache started because he told you that you will die if he doesn't. It's junk science at it's worst.
And you notice how this book huckster dismisses climate scientists who don't buy on to his religion? (Tools of big polluters). Yet this guy knows squat about climate science --- he's a freak'n zoologist yet he plays the guilt by association card on people infinitely more qualified than he. Not surprising since something like 60% of the IPCC sign-ons are from the biological sciences not climate or atmospheric scientists. (Most of the rest are "social" sciences, BTW)
I'll read it over later, but if I had a nickle for every "alarming" article I have read on the environment from the MSM over the last 40 years, I'd own my own damn coral reef by now. ;~))
People that study climate for a living overwhelmingly say this is a problem.
If I've got a large number of mechanics that say my car needs a new alternator, then I'd buy one. If I have a large number of surgeons that say I need surgery, then I would do it. That's not to say that you don't shop around, but at some point you make a rational decision based on evidence and testimony.
You're never going to have a climate model that is 100% accurate, but that goes for a model of pretty much anything. If you could measure every single variable empirically and produce absolute causal relationships, then why would you need a model?
If you live in a fault zone, a seismologist might tell you that your house stands a 1-in-50 chance of being destroyed by an earthquake in your lifetime (probably based on a model). And you decide whether to buy earthquake insurance. But, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists tell us that we are at an extemely high chance of some pretty bad consequences from climate effects induced by our actions, during our lifetime, and we do nothing. Actually, insurance firms are starting to take quick notice because they understand this principal.
I just want to make this clear:
The majorities of climate scientists do say there are climate changes but at the same time does not contribute this to human influences.
It is mainly just the corrupt minority of scientists that are trying to make a buck which claim it is human created weather changes.
You don't say. And where did you get that information?
This is more alarming to me.
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