Global Warming and all that stuff.

[Azure]

The model's have turned out to be pretty correct, so far, with Hansens predictions from 20 years ago being incredibly on target.

The models are just the icing on the cake for estimating what will happen, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it is increasing, and the feedback affects are being observed. Unless some magical effect that cools down the earth appears out of nowhere, warming it is.

Icing on the cake?

So the evidence is all in...we can go home now, right?

98% of the the C02 released into the atmosphere is from natural sources.

What now?

 

[robinson]

Unless some magical effect that cools down the earth appears out of nowhere, warming it is.

Well, volcanoes aren't magical, but a couple of big one in a row could cool the planet in a very short time. This global warming gets out of hand, we could prime the pump with some H bombs.

Just set em off in the right volcano and boom, instant cooling.

 

[a_unique_person]

Icing on the cake?

So the evidence is all in...we can go home now, right?

98% of the the C02 released into the atmosphere is from natural sources.

What now?

IIRC, that '98%' claim is the result of judicious evidence twisting. That is, it's wrong. Pretty well 100% of the CO2 was part of a massive carbon cycle, the extra that is well on the way to double the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is due to us burning fossil fuels, as measured.

 

[Azure]

IIRC, that '98%' claim is the result of judicious evidence twisting. That is, it's wrong. Pretty well 100% of the CO2 was part of a massive carbon cycle, the extra that is well on the way to double the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is due to us burning fossil fuels, as measured.

I gotta run, so I'll get back to this tomorrow.

 

[Pipirr]

Everything is based on a freakin' computer model.

Should we instead use common sense?

 

[Azure]

Should we instead use common sense?

No, you should stick to the computer models.

Although they can be flawed at times...whatever floats our boat I guess.

The major natural greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36-70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth (not including clouds); carbon dioxide, which causes 9-26%; methane, which causes 4-9%, and ozone, which causes 3-7%.

Water vapor is a naturally occurring greenhouse gas and accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 90% [2]. Water vapor concentrations fluctuate regionally, but human activity does not directly affect water vapor concentrations except at local scales (for example, near irrigated fields).

A bit off my 98% remark...

Go the the references on the bottom of the Wikipedia page...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

Number 2. I can't read pdfs on this computer.

One important thing I saw..

The increased water vapor in turn leads to an increase in the greenhouse effect and thus a further increase in temperature; the increase in temperature leads to still further increase in atmospheric water vapor; and the feedback cycle continues until equilibrium is reached. Thus water vapor acts as a positive feedback to the forcing provided by human-released greenhouse gases such as CO2.

 

[Azure]

Oh but wait...

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many "facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.

From..

4) re: 95% contribution of water vapor:

a. S.M. Freidenreich and V. Ramaswamy, “Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,” Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264

" I can only see one element of the climate system capable of generating these fast, global changes, that is, changes in the tropical atmosphere leading to changes in the inventory of the earth's most powerful greenhouse gas-- water vapor. "

Dr. Wallace Broecker, a leading world authority on climate
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University,
lecture presented at R. A. Daly Lecture at the American Geophysical Union's
spring meeting in Baltimore, Md., May 1996.

 

[Azure]

Bryson is a believer in climate change, in that he’s as quick as anyone to acknowledge that Earth’s climate has done nothing but change throughout the planet’s existence. In fact, he took that knowledge a big step further, earlier than probably anyone else. Almost 40 years ago, Bryson stood before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and presented a paper saying human activity could alter climate.

“I was laughed off the platform for saying that,” he told Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News.

In the 1960s, Bryson’s idea was widely considered a radical proposition. But nowadays things have turned almost in the opposite direction: Hardly a day passes without some authority figure claiming that whatever the climate happens to be doing, human activity must be part of the explanation. And once again, Bryson is challenging the conventional wisdom.

“Climate’s always been changing and it’s been changing rapidly at various times, and so something was making it change in the past,” he told us in an interview this past winter. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?”

“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

<snip>

We ask Bryson what could be making the key difference:

Q: Could you rank the things that have the most significant impact and where would you put carbon dioxide on the list?

A: Well let me give you one fact first. In the first 30 feet of the atmosphere, on the average, outward radiation from the Earth, which is what CO2 is supposed to affect, how much [of the reflected energy] is absorbed by water vapor? In the first 30 feet, 80 percent, okay?

Q: Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor…

A: And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.

Oh, whoops.

This begs questions about the widely publicized mathematical models researchers run through supercomputers to generate climate scenarios 50 or 100 years in the future. Bryson says the data fed into the computers overemphasizes carbon dioxide and accounts poorly for the effects of clouds—water vapor. Asked to evaluate the models’ long-range predictive ability, he answers with another question: “Do you believe a five-day forecast?”

Bryson says he looks in the opposite direction, at past climate conditions, for clues to future climate behavior. Trying that approach in the weeks following our interview, Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News soon found six separate papers about Antarctic ice core studies, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1999 and 2006. The ice core data allowed researchers to examine multiple climate changes reaching back over the past 650,000 years. All six studies found atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations tracking closely with temperatures, but with CO2 lagging behind changes in temperature, rather than leading them. The time lag between temperatures moving up—or down—and carbon dioxide following ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand years.

Who is he?

Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology—now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences—in the 1970s he became the first director of what’s now the UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He’s a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor—created, the U.N. says, to recognize “outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment.” He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.

http://www.wecnmagazine.com/2007issues/may/may07.html

 

[varwoche]

Oh, whoops.
http://www.wecnmagazine.com/2007issues/may/may07.html

It's hard to take your posts seriously. First you post absurd cherry-picking courtesy of nutjob James Inhofe. Then you summarily dismiss peer-reviewed scientific studies that stand as evidence of AGW. Then you morph the word "dangerous" into "we're all going to die" in the name of [guffaw] debunking hysteria. And now you cite an opinion piece published by an energy industry publication. Oh, whoops.

 

[mhaze]

It's hard to take your posts seriously. First you post absurd cherry-picking courtesy of nutjob James Inhofe. Then you summarily dismiss peer-reviewed scientific studies that stand as evidence of AGW. Then you morph the word "dangerous" into "we're all going to die" in the name of [guffaw] debunking hysteria. And now you cite an opinion piece published by an energy industry publication. Oh, whoops.

How would you state the problem? We're not all going to die then? We can't pay any attention to energy industry publications? Where are your positive suggestions?

 

[Azure]

It's hard to take your posts seriously. First you post absurd cherry-picking courtesy of nutjob James Inhofe. Then you summarily dismiss peer-reviewed scientific studies that stand as evidence of AGW. Then you morph the word "dangerous" into "we're all going to die" in the name of [guffaw] debunking hysteria. And now you cite an opinion piece published by an energy industry publication. Oh, whoops.

Typical.

When you can't attack the substance, you attack the source.

You're still stuck on the 'we're all going to die' huh? Doesn't surprise me.

Cite an opinion piece based on a very intelligence, and knowledgeable man. But no...it is biased.

Way to go.

In fact, way to look at both sides of the story. Coming from someone who told me this board is a skeptics forum, I find that funny.

 

[Azure]

How would you state the problem? We're not all going to die then? We can't pay any attention to energy industry publications? Where are your positive suggestions?

No, his suggestion is we listen to what HE has to say, and dismiss all articles that are skeptical of the gloom and doom version of global warming.

They are biased afterall.

What a load of crock.

 

[mhaze]

No, his suggestion is we listen to what HE has to say, and dismiss all articles that are skeptical of the gloom and doom version of global warming.

They are biased afterall.

What a load of crock.

Hansen has publicly stated that "oceans could rise several meters, and hundreds of millions could die". On examination of the IPCC report that is the extreme worst-case view of a 1000 year period. I see nothing wrong with being skeptical of Hansen; being continuously chided to believe in the "consensus view" by true believers in GW?AGW when it suits them to make that argument; but when the IPCC being the consensus shows up Hansen as a profit of gloom and doom, then the anti-denier takes another route.

As usual, those who are very certain may be the least well studied and the least right. But if this was a ship on autopilot going through the North Atlantic, I would hope the crew was experienced and continually vigilant.

 

[CapelDodger]

You're still stuck on the 'we're all going to die' huh? Doesn't surprise me.

It was you who came up with "We're all going to die". Now you're atributing it to varwoche. What's that all about?

 

[CapelDodger]

When you can't attack the substance, you attack the source.

The "substance" appears to be that water is a greenhouse gas, and the most active one. Which we all know. We also know that the amount of water in the atmosphere is strongly dependent on temperature. The warmer the ambient temperature, the more evaporation there is. This causes a positive feedback to any temperature change. If the temperature drops, evaporation drops, water vapour "dews" out, greenhouse effect lessens, so more cooling. And vice versa. Eventually an equilibrium is reached.

This demonstrates that water vapour responds to climate change, it doesn't drive it. The world isn't getting warmer because the atmosphere suddenly became wetter. The atmosphere is getting wetter because something has made the world warmer. 380ppmCO2 is the reason for that.

So as to the source. Did it explain what I've just explained, for the benefit of readers? The piece has nothing to say about the causes of climate change, but seems to imply, by its simple existence, that it does.

Water vapour does not drive climate change. It amplifies, through the greenhouse effect, the effects of influences that do drive climate change. Such as atmospheric CO2 - which is not, in the short term, dependent on temperature.

 

[Azure]

It was you who came up with "We're all going to die". Now you're atributing it to varwoche. What's that all about?

One of the articles I quoted had the 'end of the world is nigh - its official' in the title.

I took it...along with someone calling the global warming 'dangerous' and someone else saying that we were going to become extinct with the current trend, and sarcastically pointed out...'oh no, we're all going to die.'

Okay?

 

[Wolverine]

This made me giggle.

Global warming is important to the discussion over intelligent design because the same bag of tricks used to invalidate ID get used to invalidate criticism of man-made global warming.

Whee!

 

[Azure]

This causes a positive feedback to any temperature change. If the temperature drops, evaporation drops, water vapour "dews" out, greenhouse effect lessens, so more cooling. And vice versa. Eventually an equilibrium is reached.

Yes...I know that.

The increased water vapor in turn leads to an increase in the greenhouse effect and thus a further increase in temperature; the increase in temperature leads to still further increase in atmospheric water vapor; and the feedback cycle continues until equilibrium is reached. Thus water vapor acts as a positive feedback to the forcing provided by human-released greenhouse gases such as CO2.

We certainly agree there.

So as to the source. Did it explain what I've just explained, for the benefit of readers? The piece has nothing to say about the causes of climate change, but seems to imply, by its simple existence, that it does.

That source was something entirely different. Wikipedia has a good article regarding what you just said...basically saying the same thing.

My problem with this is not the actual substance...I can read your posts and learn something...but I have a problem when certain substance is dismissed because the 'source' is biased.

If the publication I quoted from is an energy related company, and are so EVIL and biased...why would they quote someone that...

Hansen has publicly stated that "oceans could rise several meters, and hundreds of millions could die". On examination of the IPCC report that is the extreme worst-case view of a 1000 year period. I see nothing wrong with being skeptical of Hansen; being continuously chided to believe in the "consensus view" by true believers in GW?AGW when it suits them to make that argument; but when the IPCC being the consensus shows up Hansen as a profit of gloom and doom, then the anti-denier takes another route.

Suddenly, he is NOT so biased.

Or not? Can I dismiss those comments too, because an Energy related company published an article about him?

I surprised nobody has come up with dirt about those scientists I quoted earlier in the thread as having changed their mind about human contribution to global warming.

Seems to me when an article is quoted saying something certain people disagree with, they instantly go look up dirt on that person.

Might not happen here...or does it?...but I have certainly seen it in other global warming discussions.

We can argue long and hard about what drives global warming...or climate change as some refer to it....but in the end, it will be the alternative measures, new technology, more efficiency, and the usage of more renewable resources that will limit the human contribution to global warming, whatever that is.

Considering the worlds dependence on oil, I seriously doubt many countries would seriously limit their imports, or exports.

 

[Azure]

This made me giggle.

Whee!

He MUST be biased.

Bought and paid for by the oil industry!

*hides*

 

[Wolverine]

He MUST be biased.

Bought and paid for by the oil industry!

*hides*

Perhaps you're not getting the joke.