Global warming discussion III

[hgus]

The loss of the ice shelf isn't directly harmful as it is already floating. Unfortunately it will mean that the glacier feeding it will flow faster, and that is directly harmful in terms of sea level rise.

Water has a lower albedo than ice, so in that regard it is not good.

 

[macdoc]

Something wicked this way comes

(Some El Nino forecast models, like the one above, are really freaking out about the potential for a monster event by the end of this year. This NOAA model is basically off the charts. Image source: NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.)

Should these predicted values emerge, they will literally blow the 1998-1999 Super El Nino out of the water. A monster event to shatter all records.

https://robertscribbler.wordpress.c...way-long-range-models-are-still-freaking-out/

Maybe

 

[Trakar]

Seepage vs. Leakage

Seepage: Climate change denial and its effect on the scientific community
- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378015000515

paper is open-sourced at above link

Abstract

Vested interests and political agents have long opposed political or regulatory action in response to climate change by appealing to scientific uncertainty. Here we examine the effect of such contrarian talking points on the scientific community itself. We show that although scientists are trained in dealing with uncertainty, there are several psychological reasons why scientists may nevertheless be susceptible to uncertainty-based argumentation, even when scientists recognize those arguments as false and are actively rebutting them. Specifically, we show that prolonged stereotype threat, pluralistic ignorance, and a form of projection (the third-person effect) may cause scientists to take positions that they would be less likely to take in the absence of outspoken public opposition. We illustrate the consequences of seepage from public debate into the scientific process with a case study involving the interpretation of temperature trends from the last 15 years. We offer ways in which the scientific community can detect and avoid such inadvertent seepage.

Kind of like the side-effects of medications speed-read through in commercials. In this case the warning is, engaging those who choose to reject science can subject even climate scientists to "leakages" that may result in Seepage. If you find yourself doubting the constancy of c, the efficacies of vaccinations, or the effects of anthropogenic carbon emissions for more than four hours,...please turn off Faux Noise and see your doctor as soon as possible.

Companion pieces:

Stephan Lewandowsky: Denial of Science Always Involves a Component of Conspiratorial Thought
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i3UJDd_spU

Video: If you don’t like the answer, question the science
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ou-dont-like-the-answer-question-the-science/

Trickle down science denial, from evolution to climate change
National Center for Science Education - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYLXWt3zOnE

 

[Haig]

I really don't think you understand the scale of energies involved in melting a couple hundre cubic KM of ice if you think a volcano can do it.

It's dishonest to ignore the volcanic activity under the melting west of Antarctica or to allude that it's only one volcano, it's far more than that and maybe even a "hot spot" linked down to the magma under Earth's crust.

Giant Blob of Hot Rock Hidden Under Antarctic Ice

A big, hot blob hiding beneath the bottom of the world could be evidence of a long-sought mantle plume under West Antarctica, researchers said Monday (Dec. 9) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Study: West Antarctic Glacier Melt Due To Volcanoes, Not Global Warming

Researchers from the UTA’s Institute for Geophysics found that the Thwaites Glacier in western Antarctica is being eroded by the ocean as well as geothermal heat from magma and subaerial volcanoes. Thwaites is considered a key glacier for understanding future sea level rise.

UTA researchers used radar techniques to map water flows under ice sheets and estimate the rate of ice melt in the glacier. As it turns out, geothermal heat from magma and volcanoes under the glacier is much hotter and covers a much wider area than was previously thought.

Hidden Volcanoes Melt Antarctic Glaciers from Below

Now, a new study finds that these subglacial volcanoes and other geothermal "hotspots" are contributing to the melting of Thwaites Glacier, a major river of ice that flows into Antarctica's Pine Island Bay. Areas of the glacier that sit near geologic features thought to be volcanic are melting faster than regions farther away from hotspots, said Dustin Schroeder, the study's lead author and a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin.

Seldom do you CAGW believers discuss this !

BTW There are volcano's under the sea in the Arctic and under the ice in Iceland too !


Mmm I wonder what could be "triggering" the volcanism ?

 

[Mikemcc]

Water has a lower albedo than ice, so in that regard it is not good.

True, but it's not such a major factor for Antarctica as the percentage change in ice cover is tiny compared to the ice covered landmass.

 

[Pixel42]

NOAA's state of the climate report for April is up:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201504

The average temperature across global land and ocean surface temperatures combined for April 2015 was 0.74°C (1.33°F) higher than the 20th century average. This was the fourth highest for April in the 136-year period of record, but also marks the lowest monthly departure from average since November 2014.

The first four months of 2015 was the warmest such period on record across the world's land and ocean surfaces, at 0.80°C (1.44°F) above the 20th century average, surpassing the previous record of 2010 by 0.07°C (0.13°F).

 

[macdoc]

It's dishonest to ignore the volcanic activity under the melting west of Antarctica or to allude that it's only one volcano, it's far more than that and maybe even a "hot spot" linked down to the magma under Earth's crust.

So what
It's dishonest to compare any volcano or small group of volcanos with the energies involved in AGW.
Quit lying and learn some physics.

 

[!Kaggen]

So I'll post this again and ask whether anyone else thinks this is the best argument yet against deniers?

 

[Haig]

So what
It's dishonest to compare any volcano or small group of volcanos with the energies involved in AGW.
Quit lying and learn some physics.

So what ? Really ?

The energies involved in AGW are mythical They are based on failed computer models that can't match the reality of empirical data.

How about using physics to give answers to these questions ?

seven very inconvenient climate questions

 

[greybeard]

It's dishonest to ignore the volcanic activity under the melting west of Antarctica or to allude that it's only one volcano, it's far more than that and maybe even a "hot spot" linked down to the magma under Earth's crust.

Giant Blob of Hot Rock Hidden Under Antarctic Ice



Study: West Antarctic Glacier Melt Due To Volcanoes, Not Global Warming


Hidden Volcanoes Melt Antarctic Glaciers from Below



Seldom do you CAGW believers discuss this !

BTW There are volcano's under the sea in the Arctic and under the ice in Iceland too !


Mmm I wonder what could be "triggering" the volcanism ?

The only one of your links that says glacier melt is not caused by greenhouse gas emisions is a right wing blog. Which just proves the point I made in my last post.

 

[Haig]

The only one of your links that says glacier melt is not caused by greenhouse gas emisions is a right wing blog. Which just proves the point I made in my last post.

Care to give answers to these, in case macdoc can't ...

seven very inconvenient climate questions

 

[greybeard]

Care to give answers to these, in case macdoc can't ...

seven very inconvenient climate questions

Another blog article for the gullible. Try reading a blog that only deals in peer reviewed science.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Roger_Pielke_Sr.htm

Also perhaps you could address my point that the only link you could provide to say that glacial melt was not due to CO2 emissions was a political blog.

 

[lomiller]

"The World Could Get Rid of Fossil Fuel Electricity in Just 25 Years with Nuclear Power" - I'm not saying that solar wind, geo, hydro, etc., aren't needed or worth investing in. I am saying that clean, modern, well regulated, advanced design, nuclear power can help us achieve carbon neutrality much more quickly than non-nuclear only policies.

Nuclear can certainly help, but the article and paper overestimate how much current nuclear technology can help. There are fuel cycles and technologies than could be a lot more useful, but these are still in the lab with little sign of widespread deployment any time soon.
Wrt to the article, there are two issues. First this is electricity production only, you could replace 100% of electricity production with non-fossil sources and still have a major problem with greenhouse gas emissions.

Second the study is based on extrapolating numbers from regional nuclear power programs. The problem is that even a country like France represents only small percentage of global electricity production.
France’s 400TWh per year represent only ~2% of global electric production. There are significant issues scaling that up with current technology. Building 20 000 – 30 000 nuclear reactors is a very different proposition than different than building 60 plants (with ~ 300 individual reactors). There is no mass production of pressure vessels for nuclear reactors and somewhat limited amount of expertise in doing it properly.

The other issue is fuel. In terms of energy produced using current technology reserves of nuclear fuel are tiny, less than 1/10 the electricity production of the fossil sources it would replace. While increased exploration would find more finding it quickly enough is another issue. Unless there are massive new discoveries almost continuously we’d run or of fuel to burn in those reactors in a little over a decade.

Even with fuel reprocessing/recycling current nuclear technology isn’t a viable replacement for fossil fuels on its own. Thorium and fast reactor technologies are more promising but are still basically lab experiments and nowhere near ready to deploy let alone deploy on these types of scales. In fact they are not even on the roadmap for nuclear power generation, so they are probably decades off at least.

 

[Trakar]

Haig-

When such is relevant, the people here who track, follow and understand the science related to climate change certainly do discuss this type of issue, in fact the topics of all of the links you present below have been discussed several times, though they are completely irrelevant to the farcical topic of Corbyn's whack-a-doodle nuttery. and in line with previous discussions of these issues do not substantively impact or reflect upon any current discussions regarding climate change or climate science.

Giant Blob of Hot Rock Hidden Under Antarctic Ice

The thermal anomaly extends 125 miles (200 kilometers) below Marie Byrd Land, Lloyd said. Below about 255 miles (410 km), where a mantle plume's trailing tail would also leave a hotter-than-average mark in mantle rocks, there's little evidence for a rising hotspot, said Erica Emry, a postdoctoral researcher at Pennsylvania State University.

​

Study: West Antarctic Glacier Melt Due To Volcanoes, Not Global Warming

The above misunderstanding is what happens when you try to get your science information from a hyperpartisan political advocacy source. From the actual science that your political hack site claims to be reporting on:

The minimum
average inferred flux is ∼114 ± 10 mW/m2. High-flux areas exceed 200 mW/m2.

​

Do you understand the significance of 100 - 200 milliwatts per meter squared? Yes, there are some localized geologic hot-spots under some areas of the Antarctic ice sheet, and yes they do contribute to creating a lubricating thin layer of slushiness which helps the overlaying ice to slide more easily down slopes in the areas where the ice is on a slope and there are no blockages on the downslope side of the ice to retard or halt such sliding.

Eric Rignot, an actual climate scientist (an earth science professor at University of California Irvine and a principal scientist at NASA) lead author of this companion study to the one listed above stated last year at about the same time that both of these studies were released that "geothermal heating contributes to a few millimeters of melting annually, compared to rising sea temperatures which can trigger rates of up to 100 meters each year"

The Live Science article you listed (much like the first live-science article you apparently misunderstood) actually refutes your statements and supports what I've just listed for you. Perhaps if you actually took a science course or two and tried to really understand, you know, like real science, you wouldn't have these types of issues, but learning and improving your understanding of the world don't seem to be your forte.

...Mmm I wonder what could be "triggering" the volcanism ?

Well, if you were actually curious, real science has an answer for this question -
"Could a Changing Climate Set Off Volcanoes and Quakes?"
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/could_a_changing_climate_set_off_volcanoes_and_quakes/2525/

...The most solid evidence for climatic influence on geology comes from the end of the last ice age, around 12,000 years ago, says McGuire, who is a volcanologist and professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London. Analysis of volcanic deposits, published in the past decade by several authors, has found that this period of rapid climate change, when ice sheets retreated from much of the planet, coincided with a sudden outburst of geological activity. The incidence of volcanic eruptions in Iceland increased around 50-fold for about 1,500 years, before settling back to previous levels.

What happened? McGuire makes the case that during the long preceding glaciation, the weight of ice some two kilometers thick over Iceland maintained high pressures underground that kept magma at the root of volcanoes solid and suppressed eruptions. But as the ice melted, the huge weight was released and the land surface lifted, sometimes by hundreds of meters. This reduced the pressure below. He cites Freysteinn Sigmundsson at the Nordic Volcanological Center at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, who says: “Reduction of pressure enabled mantle rocks to melt, creating a zone of magma upwelling underneath Iceland.” Magma production increased 30-fold – that magma, the argument goes, burst out in a spectacular epidemic of volcanic eruptions...

here's a link to a podcast discussion of this by the author of the above piece for those who would prefer to listen to the material while they continue their online explorations - http://c375872.r72.cf0.rackcdn.com/e360_podcast_fred_pearce.mp3

 

[Trakar]

Care to give answers to these, in case macdoc can't ...

seven very inconvenient climate questions

Surprise, surprise, from one hyperpartisan political blog full of misinformation and lies, to another hyperpartisan political blog full of misinformation and lies.

If you want to talk politics the political discussion page is here

 

[Haig]

Another blog article for the gullible. Try reading a blog that only deals in peer reviewed science.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Roger_Pielke_Sr.htm

Also perhaps you could address my point that the only link you could provide to say that glacial melt was not due to CO2 emissions was a political blog.

Surprise, surprise, from one hyperpartisan political blog full of misinformation and lies, to another hyperpartisan political blog full of misinformation and lies.

If you want to talk politics the political discussion page is here

Nope, the cause of ALL the climatic problems isn't excess Co2 - it's plant food and we will need all the food we can grow soon.


Surprise, surprise, NO answers to the 7 questions - Come on now ! How about some honest answers ?

They are science questions NOT politics !

seven very inconvenient climate questions

 

[ehcks]

Nope, the cause of ALL the climatic problems isn't excess Co2 - it's plant food and we will need all the food we can grow soon.


Surprise, surprise, NO answers to the 7 questions - Come on now ! How about some honest answers ?

They are science questions NOT politics !

seven very inconvenient climate questions

Does that blogger pay you to spam his links?

 

[greybeard]

Nope, the cause of ALL the climatic problems isn't excess Co2 - it's plant food and we will need all the food we can grow soon.


Surprise, surprise, NO answers to the 7 questions - Come on now ! How about some honest answers ?

They are science questions NOT politics !

seven very inconvenient climate questions

So co2 isn't a greenhouse gas Haig?. I don't know what universe you are living in but its a different one to the rest of us. Stop reading political blogs Haig and learn some science. Perhaps tben you will realise why you can't find any peer reviewed science to back up your claim that greenhouse gases are not the main reason glaciers are melting.

 

[Trakar]

Nuclear can certainly help, but the article and paper overestimate how much current nuclear technology can help.

Largely agreed, not so much from a technological standpoint, however, but from the aspect of: is GenII, or even GenIII, really the type of nuclear technology that we want to use as the paradigm for an entire wave of hundreds (if not thousands) of new reactors to be mass produced and quickly brought on line (next 10-15years). I think that with the proper economic incentive (why there is a need for an exceedingly tight regulatory environment associated with any massive roll-out of nuclear power) it shouldn't be a problem producing the reactors for such a system (talk about a high-tech -with lots of low-tech labor as well - Jobs program!).

The article and paper listed should not be seen as the end-all of a nuclear power discussion, but merely another step toward the discussion about a proper role and place for nuclear power in the energy needs of our country and planet headed into the next few centuries.

There are fuel cycles and technologies than could be a lot more useful, but these are still in the lab with little sign of widespread deployment any time soon.

When there is no sign that such systems will be fully developed or deployed, it is difficult to produce much beyond limited studies and research demonstrating basic viability. It isn't that building rockets to carry heavy payloads to orbit and beyond are beyond the scope of current technology, merely that until we have heavy payloads that we are committed to lifting to orbit and beyond, there is no sense in fully developing and deploying such technology.

Wrt to the article, there are two issues. First this is electricity production only, you could replace 100% of electricity production with non-fossil sources and still have a major problem with greenhouse gas emissions.

Again the article is more to kick start the discussion, not meant to serve as a one-serve solution to all aspects replacing fossil fuels or the intelligent use of nuclear power to help address our energy needs in a non-carbon fuelled future. I assume here you are primarily referring to transportation fuels? (possibly the addition of concrete production). The primary thrust of the article was to replace coal-generated electrical power production. One of the main issues I would like to focus on is how nuclear power could get us past the use of coal and oil for the production of electricity.

The other issue is fuel. In terms of energy produced using current technology reserves of nuclear fuel are tiny, less than 1/10 the electricity production of the fossil sources it would replace. While increased exploration would find more finding it quickly enough is another issue. Unless there are massive new discoveries almost continuously we’d run or of fuel to burn in those reactors in a little over a decade.

Please provide some supporting references here, uranium itself is about as common as tin and zinc in the Earth's crust. And while the most common isotope isn't used in most GenII and GenIII designs, it can be used in breeders to produce more reactive fuels, and this doesn't even begin to explore the use of Thorium as either breeder feedstock or in accelerator catalyzed systems. But this gets back into a discussion about advanced design systems rather than our grandfather's nuclear power. Even here, the primary references I have at hand seem to indicate current known stocks (at the current market price - price increases mean that economically viable reserves jump up tremendously) are sufficient to support the current global nuclear production level for a couple hundred years or more. if we were to increase the planet's reactors by 10 fold it would reduce that supply to 20 years, assuming no change in market prices and that new systems would use fuel in the same manner as the 50year old designs currently on-line (I don't think those assumptions are valid).

-ref.
OECD NEA & IAEA, 2014, Uranium 2014: Resources, Production and Demand
WNA 2013, The Global Nuclear Fuel Market – Supply and Demand 2013-2030
UN Institute for Disarmament Research, Yury Yudin (ed) 2011, Multilateralization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle – The First Practical Steps
Monnet, A, CEA, Uranium from Coal Ash: Resource assessment and outlook, IAEA URAM 2014 -http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Nuclear-Fuel-Cycle/Uranium-Resources/Supply-of-Uranium/

Even with fuel reprocessing/recycling current nuclear technology isn’t a viable replacement for fossil fuels on its own. Thorium and fast reactor technologies are more promising but are still basically lab experiments and nowhere near ready to deploy let alone deploy on these types of scales. In fact they are not even on the roadmap for nuclear power generation, so they are probably decades off at least.

I didn't see anything in the article, paper, nor especially in my commentary, which stated or suggested that nuclear power alone (or any alternative energy flavor "on its own") should ever be expected to, or counted on to, replace the broad range of fossil fuels our society currently relies upon. Actually, the first step of even a massive nuclear rollout would probably require a massive expansion of the use of natural gas systems to begin retiring and replacing coal and oil fuelled powerplants and to fuel the factories that are going to busy supply the industrial increases that will be required by the massive nuclear buildout

Please do not mistake my response as negative, there are a lot of issues involved in nuclear power and I would hope that an engaging and open discussion of the many issues can help more people involved in figuring out how this issue should best be moved forward. Perhaps a different thread would be a good move, but it's such a broad range of potential subjects (science, technology, economic, public policy (politics), etc.), that I'm not sure where the best fit for such a discussion would be.

 

[Trakar]

Nope, the cause of ALL the climatic problems isn't excess Co2 - it's plant food and we will need all the food we can grow soon.


Surprise, surprise, NO answers to the 7 questions - Come on now ! How about some honest answers ?

They are science questions NOT politics !

seven very inconvenient climate questions

Then list your questions in scientific fashion with references to scientific sources that support that these are legitimate problems or issues with respect to current mainstream science understanding. That should be simple enough for any legitimate set of "science questions."