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Global warming

robinson said:
I never questioned the coming Global Warming, you know, the one that is a fact, no doubt about it, it has been proven beyond all doubt, everybody agrees with, that Global Warming.

I never even thought about questioning it, looking into it, until I saw the religious like attacks on anyone who did question it. That got my attention. Why would anyone with a brain be so emotional, so irrational, so petty as to personally attack somebody for asking questions, or having a different view about Global Warming?

I'm funny that way, but when I see dumb behavior, stuff that makes no sense, I start wondering why. Why is questioning something viewed as heresy? How did a scientific Theory become the same as Church Doctrine? What the hell is going on when skeptics, logical, scientific people, start sounding like the faithful?
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good point, there's a load of that on this forum.. yet the ones who indulge in it don't appear to detect the irony
 
You made my day as usual.
You confuse so many things (specially equating greenhouse effect with AGW) that your post has no sense at all.
Repeat after me: Greenhouse effect is not AGW.


CapelDodger said:
Quantum physics was developed to explain observed data that were entirely unconnected with climate, and has proven not only to be robust but to be applicable in many other fields. Nuclear physics, astrophysics, electronics, and so on. Also the greenhouse effect on climate, which had previously been detected but not adequately explained. Quantum physics helped round off the explanation.

How, then, can quantum physics be extracted from its greenhouse significance without being completely reassessed? The theory will have to be modified to cope with that "observed fact" while leaving every other field of application unaffected, which ain't gonna happen, let's face it. Or the whole of quantum theory is called into question, resulting in turmoil.

None of this depends on the measurements and models you bring up. The biggest and best analogue model does not raise any challenges to quantum physics, or to AGW as a whole.
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Or you can admint than you have no basis for estimate model variables.

Wich it's exactly what is happenning.


CapelDodger said:
The introverted nature of the anti-AGW arena is surely reaching a tipping-point.

The 20thCE warming is disregarded as a constraint on climate sensitivity because so much was going on. CO2 this, sulphate emissions that, brown clouds there, it's a bad data point.

Climate sensitivity is best estimated from simpler times, and centres around 2C for a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels.
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robinson said:
When did ad hom and "everybody knows it" become a substitute for "here is the peer reviewed articles showing why it is the current theory."?

If I hear one more idiot declare "you are a denialist" instead of debating the evidence, I think I am going to start hitting the report post button.

Calling someone a name, and apparently a name that has some sort of insulting meaning, (I never heard the word denialist until I read these forums), is not civil or intelligent. It is dumb.

And denialist isn't even a word.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=denialist&go=Go

I know, I know, you Woos think that making up a word that a "cool in group considers a real word", you think that makes it a word. Maybe to you it does, but the majority of intelligent thinkers in the world would consider you dumb.

And insulting. If all you got is calling someone a made up word, you got nothing.
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I generally heartily agree with your post.
However, before coming onto this forum I'd never heard the word "woo", so your use of it is pretty much the same as those using "denialist"
 
Lucifuge Rofocale said:
You made my day as usual.
You confuse so many things (specially equating greenhouse effect with AGW) that your post has no sense at all.
Repeat after me: Greenhouse effect is not AGW.
Click to expand...

AGW by the injection of CO2 into the atmosphere follows directly from the greenhouse effect at any CO2 level below saturation - and CO2 concentrations are still well below saturation level. So there's no confusion. If AGW isn't true, greenhouse theory is wrong; if greenhouse theory is wrong, quantum physics is thrown into serious question.

Since warming has indeed occurred with the increase of atmospheric CO2 by a third, greenhouse theory is not thrown into question and nor is quantum physics.
 
CapelDodger said:
AGW by the injection of CO2 into the atmosphere follows directly from the greenhouse effect at any CO2 level below saturation - and CO2 concentrations are still well below saturation level. So there's no confusion. If AGW isn't true, greenhouse theory is wrong; if greenhouse theory is wrong, quantum physics is thrown into serious question.

Since warming has indeed occurred with the increase of atmospheric CO2 by a third, greenhouse theory is not thrown into question and nor is quantum physics.
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No, no, and no. But I'm only going to crack the QM part -

from wikipedia (bold is mine) -
Most of the infrared absorption in the atmosphere can be thought of as occurring while two molecules are colliding. The absorption due to a photon interacting with a lone molecule is relatively small. This three-body aspect of the problem, one photon and two molecules, makes direct quantum mechanical computation for molecules of interest more challenging. Careful laboratory spectroscopic measurements, rather than ab initio quantum mechanical computations, provide the basis for most of the radiative transfer calculations used in studies of the atmosphere.

​
Note: wikipedia's article on this subject is not one of the better ones.
 
mhaze said:
Exxon is the good guys. Get over it. $100,000,000 by Exxon to Stanford.
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Ah! There's a thought! Exxon is the good guys! If one lives long enough, one eventually hears it all.

So you are from TEXAS, eh? Well! George Bush's territory. You voted for oil baron George Bush, didn't you. That's a statement - not a question. Lemme guess: You still support him.

So you therefore supported his administration's suppression of data concerning global warming, right? Scientific data? His lying-about-his-degree campaign worker punk 24-year-old kid who got installed at NASA to ride roughshod over scientists? You like that, do you? How about that attorney who, without any scientific basis, directly altered reports on global warming? Then when he got caught, went to work for Exxon? How about the decades-long assault launched by oil companies to suppress or minimize anything coming out of the scientific community concerning AGW? Make you feel good?

Don't you know that isotope analysis tagged excess CO2 to human activity - more specifically the burning of fossil fuels? How come you don't know that?

Don't you know that soot from coal burning in the USA / Canada being deposited on the polar ice cap is making it absorb, rather than reflect, sunlight? Speeding the melting? Shouldn't you be on top of this stuff?

Don't you have even a clue that rainforest destruction is a giant contributor to global warming? And that we do that - we humans? Do you know what's going on down in Brazil right now? Did you know that the Brazilian government is giving land directly to people so that they can contract directly with loggers for the destruction of the forest on their property?

Don't you even know that methane is 23 times more efficient than CO2 at re-radiating the infrared heat, and that its presence in the atmosphere has more than doubled over the last couple hundred years? Because of industrialization? Did you know exposed coal mines emit methane? Rice paddies?

Get busy. Do some analysis and studying and then come back here and attempt to argue that AGW is all a myth. If you ACTUALLY study what's going on - you will be unable to refute AGW.

Want to do something for Texas? Lobby, protest, whatever, to disallow SMU to host The Idiot's presidential library. Make this Idiot move his presidential library to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. Have him follow Halliburton. Texas will thank you for it later.
 
ConspiRaider said:
Ah! There's a thought! Exxon is the good guys! If one lives long enough, one eventually hears it all.

So you are from TEXAS, eh? Well! George Bush's territory. You voted for oil baron George Bush, didn't you. That's a statement - not a question. Lemme guess: You still support him.

So you therefore supported his administration's suppression of data concerning global warming, right? Scientific data? His lying-about-his-degree campaign worker punk 24-year-old kid who got installed at NASA to ride roughshod over scientists? You like that, do you? How about that attorney who, without any scientific basis, directly altered reports on global warming? Then when he got caught, went to work for Exxon? How about the decades-long assault launched by oil companies to suppress or minimize anything coming out of the scientific community concerning AGW? Make you feel good?

Don't you know that isotope analysis tagged excess CO2 to human activity - more specifically the burning of fossil fuels? How come you don't know that?

Don't you know that soot from coal burning in the USA / Canada being deposited on the polar ice cap is making it absorb, rather than reflect, sunlight? Speeding the melting? Shouldn't you be on top of this stuff?

Don't you have even a clue that rainforest destruction is a giant contributor to global warming? And that we do that - we humans? Do you know what's going on down in Brazil right now? Did you know that the Brazilian government is giving land directly to people so that they can contract directly with loggers for the destruction of the forest on their property?

Don't you even know that methane is 23 times more efficient than CO2 at re-radiating the infrared heat, and that its presence in the atmosphere has more than doubled over the last couple hundred years? Because of industrialization? Did you know exposed coal mines emit methane? Rice paddies?

Get busy. Do some analysis and studying and then come back here and attempt to argue that AGW is all a myth. If you ACTUALLY study what's going on - you will be unable to refute AGW.

Want to do something for Texas? Lobby, protest, whatever, to disallow SMU to host The Idiot's presidential library. Make this Idiot move his presidential library to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. Have him follow Halliburton. Texas will thank you for it later.
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That is commonly known as arm waiving i.e. reasoning without benefit of empirical data, or mathematical or logical formalism; one of the finest examples in some time. Join in, the water's warm, but control your emotions and use some logical reasoning. It wouldn't hurt to provide topic related evidence as well, particularly on CO2.

Would that outburst be best described as trolling, lurking or simply a long Jeremiad?
 
David Rodale said:
That is commonly known as arm waiving i.e. reasoning without benefit of empirical data, or mathematical or logical formalism; one of the finest examples in some time. Join in, the water's warm, but control your emotions and use some logical reasoning. It wouldn't hurt to provide topic related evidence as well, particularly on CO2.

Would that outburst be best described as trolling, lurking or simply a long Jeremiad?
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You misused the word "waiving".

Don't tell me to join in. I joined JREF 10 years ago. And have been following the world of science a helluva lot longer than have you.

YOU do the work if you actually care about understanding just how we humans have been fouling our own nest concerning this particular issue of accelerated warming of the planet due to our activities. I've already done it. And I wouldn't even presume to point you to links, because how you conduct your research to discover the truth about AGW is your affair.

Okay I'll do this: There's a magazine called Scientific American, ever heard of it? Get the August 2007 issue. Go to page 64. Read that 10-page article entitled:

The Physical Science Behind Climate Change: Why are climatologists so highly confident that human activities are dangerously warming the Earth?

Wanna guess why I'm passionate about this? Why a sample of righteous indignation at deliberate ignorance is just exactly what is called for? Give up? A huge reason is my 7 nieces and nephews. Now I actually care a great deal about the preservation of humanity, collectively, but sometimes that's not quite personal enough. Kin - that's personal. My nieces and nephews (and if I ever do have kiddies of my own) are going to see an ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summertime, by about 2040 or 2050. And maybe sooner. That will speed the warming. They are going to see the scramble for freshwater. They are going to see the havoc wreaked by extremes of weather. They are going to see the disruption in the world of agriculture, a tenuous food supply. They're going to see the leading edge of coastal cities being affected by a rising ocean level. They'll see diseases that used to be isolated in the deep tropics move across the planet, infecting millions.
 
ConspiRaider said:
You misused the word "waiving".

Don't tell me to join in. I joined JREF 10 years ago. And have been following the world of science a helluva lot longer than have you.

YOU do the work if you actually care about understanding just how we humans have been fouling our own nest concerning this particular issue of accelerated warming of the planet due to our activities. I've already done it. And I wouldn't even presume to point you to links, because how you conduct your research to discover the truth about AGW is your affair.

Okay I'll do this: There's a magazine called Scientific American, ever heard of it? Get the August 2007 issue. Go to page 64. Read that 10-page article entitled:

The Physical Science Behind Climate Change: Why are climatologists so highly confident that human activities are dangerously warming the Earth?

Wanna guess why I'm passionate about this? Why a sample of righteous indignation at deliberate ignorance is just exactly what is called for? Give up? A huge reason is my 7 nieces and nephews. Now I actually care a great deal about the preservation of humanity, collectively, but sometimes that's not quite personal enough. Kin - that's personal. My nieces and nephews (and if I ever do have kiddies of my own) are going to see an ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summertime, by about 2040 or 2050. And maybe sooner. That will speed the warming. They are going to see the scramble for freshwater. They are going to see the havoc wreaked by extremes of weather. They are going to see the disruption in the world of agriculture, a tenuous food supply. They're going to see the leading edge of coastal cities being affected by a rising ocean level. They'll see diseases that used to be isolated in the deep tropics move across the planet, infecting millions.
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Interesting points of view.

Did you just want to state these opinions or discuss some part of it or what?

If so, what parts?

By the way, we got Bush out of Texas, (he is allowed to come back to visit for limited times).:D
 
mhaze said:
No, no, and no. But I'm only going to crack the QM part -
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You're gonna try, but ...




from wikipedia (bold is mine) -
Most of the infrared absorption in the atmosphere can be thought of as occurring while two molecules are colliding. The absorption due to a photon interacting with a lone molecule is relatively small. This three-body aspect of the problem, one photon and two molecules, makes direct quantum mechanical computation for molecules of interest more challenging. Careful laboratory spectroscopic measurements, rather than ab initio quantum mechanical computations, provide the basis for most of the radiative transfer calculations used in studies of the atmosphere.​
Note: wikipedia's article on this subject is not one of the better ones.
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This does not say that quantum mechanics are not involved in the greenhouse effect, it simply says that direct ab ovo quantum mechanical computation is very challenging. Which I never doubted. Instead they're done from spectroscopic measurements - spectroscopy being another field in which quantum physics features, so messing with that to make AGW go away also messes with quantum physics.

Only connect ...
 
It's interesting.....you know, Intelligent Desing also relies in natural selection for development of most characteristics of specia. And it will be hard to sell that negating ID will mess natural selection.
You, on the other hand..............
 
mhaze said:
Interesting points of view.

Did you just want to state these opinions or discuss some part of it or what?

If so, what parts?

By the way, we got Bush out of Texas, (he is allowed to come back to visit for limited times).:D
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As far as I'm concerned, mhaze, the time for discussing IF the phenomenon known as AGW is credible - is now past. In my view - there is no debate. AGW is credible, is undeniable.

The debate part is what to do? How? When? How do you stop rainforest destruction? I can't stop it personally - but I can contribute regularly to Greenpeace because they are on the front lines of the issue. I can't make an automobile that has zero emissions and zero CO2 production - but I can vote for monies to be aimed at such research. I cannot shut down the 1000-plus coal power plants in the USA - but I can vote for those who will insist on better regulation of smokestack emissions and for those who will vigorously pursue the funding and research of non-polluting production of electrical power.

One thing I can do is open my big fat mouth, and as you see I'm certainly not shy about that! :)

Good news about Bush and Texas. Put a big fence around Crawford, give him a platinum sickle and tell him to go to work! :D
 
ConspiRaider said:
Wanna guess why I'm passionate about this? Why a sample of righteous indignation at deliberate ignorance is just exactly what is called for? Give up? A huge reason is my 7 nieces and nephews. Now I actually care a great deal about the preservation of humanity, collectively, but sometimes that's not quite personal enough. Kin - that's personal.
Click to expand...

I empathise with that. I have six nepots; four live in East Anglia (or the Archipelago as I refer to it), and two in Gloucester (at high flood risk, as recently demonstrated, and it might not be over yet). I care deeply about them - they're my parents' grandchildren, after all. I've never had dynastic inclinations myself, but they did, and I share their pride in their achievement.

To my mind, the best we can do for them is help prepare them for what's coming, intellectually and practically. It won't be as easy a ride as I've had - a boomer, '54 vintage - but it wasn't for my parents or grandparents either. Or the great-uncles that sailed in one Atlantic convoy too many. We boomers have been particularly blessed, but I can't help thinking we'll be roundly cursed in the future.

I try not to be part of the problem, despite carrying massive carbon credits from not breeding :) .
 
Lucifuge Rofocale said:
I'll help yor grandchildren in the coming apocalypse:
Get this
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070604222124.htm
and forget about the inminent water wars.
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There will come a day - I have to believe - when you'll remove those items from your signature line. You'll be red-faced about it - and then you'll turn Green. And we'll welcome you, because the world needs as many folks who care about the future of humankind as we can get. The door is always open, you just c'mon in.

In the meantime get to it and read that August 2007 issue of Scientific American, the 10-page article starting on page 64. Promise? It's a start, and you've got a lot of work to do...
 
ConspiRaider said:
As far as I'm concerned, mhaze, the time for discussing IF the phenomenon known as AGW is credible - is now past. In my view - there is no debate. AGW is credible, is undeniable.

The debate part is what to do? How? When? How do you stop rainforest destruction? I can't stop it personally - but I can contribute regularly to Greenpeace because they are on the front lines of the issue. I can't make an automobile that has zero emissions and zero CO2 production - but I can vote for monies to be aimed at such research. I cannot shut down the 1000-plus coal power plants in the USA - but I can vote for those who will insist on better regulation of smokestack emissions and for those who will vigorously pursue the funding and research of non-polluting production of electrical power.

One thing I can do is open my big fat mouth, and as you see I'm certainly not shy about that! :)

Good news about Bush and Texas. Put a big fence around Crawford, give him a platinum sickle and tell him to go to work! :D
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Obviously, the thread is not about politics, and even if it were I am not sure I see obvious connections. Moreover, GW is a world-thing, not a US thing, right? China has already overtaken the US on GHG emissions, not even counting their one coal plant going into service every four days; Jakarta has (if I recall the number right) GHG emissions from all the 2 cycle motorbikes equal to 6 billion SUVS; etc.

For some rather technical reasons I agree with you about the rain forest issues. The best evidence I have seen indicates that forests are worthless for sinking carbon; the exception is tropical forests (actually there is a latitude band for this) and these sink about 3x what they source.

The reason Exxon was being discussed was because there was apparently an organized media campaign -

216 "regular starburst media campaign, eh?"
221 "Why exxon may have been anti-Kyoto"
228 "why Exxon is the good guys"
353 "Newsweek editor apology"

that brought back up the "Exxon funding anti-AGW conspiracy theory" as first promulgated by Greenpeace/Exxonsecrets.org, later by UCS. This campaign emerged right before the disclosure of the data errors in the NASA climate numbers by Steve McIntyre on 8-10-07.

It was the same old conspiracy theory that had already been discredited. And Exxon had given $100M to Stanford for climate research. So they were not the bad guys they had been depicted.

Post 353, the Newsweek editor concurred. I'm open to change my opinion on Exxon if you have any actual new evidence to consider. Otherwise, I consider this a closed issue. To me Exxon is just a company traded on the stock exchange and a gas station down the street.

Also please note that if carbon sequestreration plants are needed in the future, it will be a small group of heavy industry companies that build them. Basically, those will be built by the same companies that build powerplants. Not necessarily Exxon, but cohorts of them; and yes, Exxon could easily be involved. Same logic applies for nuclear powerplants - same heavy industry companies.

It's those heavy industry companies that can build the equipment that is a technological way out of any AGW problem that may be believed to be critical enough to require actions.

By contrast simple calculations shows that "behavior change", and "carbon neutral footprints" make negligible differences. I'm not convinced there is or will be a significant AGW impact, but that's another issue entirely.

There seem to be a lot of people who think GW, and AGW particularly, is a crisis that will flood New York, Florida, etc., within a few decades. This is misinformation. It's pretty easy to back up this up with facts.

That has been also discussed at length here, there are various opinions on it of course. I'm defining "alarmism" as say, someone who takes the worst case scenario computed by the IPCC in their computer models for a 1000 year time frame and who asserts that that will happen within a few decades, not the 1000 year timeframe, and who conveniently forgets to mention that it was the computation of the "worst case scenario".

Don't you think that people should be informed of the facts?
 
mhaze said:
Yes, Hansen should be advised that science isn't about beliefs.
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Hansen knows this perfectly well, you're the one who seems to have trouble with the concept. Hansen is very well-placed to understand AGW and its implications. He has been convinced by the underlying science and by observation that AGW is happening and it has serious implications. He didn't suddenly "believe" in AGW one day, any more than I did; he's been convinced of it as the new science and observations have come in, as have I.

Basically that's ask politely for resignation time.
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He was appointed to his job on merit. If it gives him status, that's because he's earned it. His conclusions on AGW do not diminish him as a scientist, despite the fact that you find them uncomfortable. If you think that anybody with a high-status position, in public or private institutions, who voices their opinions as a private citizen on contentious matters should resign ... well, that's just crazy talk.

You could say Hansen has reached a tipping point in positive feedbacks.

But not a forcing.
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Do what now :confused: ?

There is a forcing involved, I suppose, in the form of events and observations. The glacial retreat, season-change, northward (and upward) migration of species, oceanic and atmospheric temperatures, all the actual stuff that's going on. Which is seeping through to the general population like melt-water infiltrating an ice-mass. Most people experience climate to some extent and they've noticed that it's changing.

Truth will out, and the truth is we're screwed. On average.
 
CapelDodger said:
I empathise with that. I have six nepots; four live in East Anglia (or the Archipelago as I refer to it), and two in Gloucester (at high flood risk, as recently demonstrated, and it might not be over yet). I care deeply about them - they're my parents' grandchildren, after all. I've never had dynastic inclinations myself, but they did, and I share their pride in their achievement.

To my mind, the best we can do for them is help prepare them for what's coming, intellectually and practically. It won't be as easy a ride as I've had - a boomer, '54 vintage - but it wasn't for my parents or grandparents either. Or the great-uncles that sailed in one Atlantic convoy too many. We boomers have been particularly blessed, but I can't help thinking we'll be roundly cursed in the future.

I try not to be part of the problem, despite carrying massive carbon credits from not breeding :) .
Click to expand...
Excellent stuff, CD. I'm a boomer myself, '57. And I've had no kiddies but won't say that I never will. Probably won't. If I meet that right woman? Who can say. But I do have the offspring of my brothers and sisters and I absolutely don't want them to suffer. We were discussing AGW when I visited them and the 10-year-old girl said: "Why? Why are they doing that?". I really had no good answer. How do you tell a 10-year-old that things may get worse for her because of greed, power, deception?

Kin just personalizes it. In reality - I don't want anybody to lose because of this. Not a single person - or animal or plant, for that matter.

What's more alarming is this: Big time social upheavals are coming because of AGW. At best, you want the world's people to be getting along with each other famously, because tensions will be increased. And look at the state of the world. We've got a lunatic president, BushCheney, trying to figure out how to justify attacking the country of Iran. That's their priority! Not this. Invasion. That's what they dream about...
 
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