Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Pixel42]

What is it about greenhouse gasses that reflect the sunlight back onto the earth while it does not reflect the sunlight outside the earth back into space? If its property was that it reflected light, wouldn't it not be changing the temperature at all since it would be reflecting the same percentage of light in both directions.

It would, but the property of greenhouse gases is not that they reflect light.

Greenhouse gases, like the rest of the atmosphere, are transparent to light. They absorb and re-emit electromagnetic radiation at infrared wavelengths, not those of visible light. So the sunlight reaches the earth's surface without any reflection, warms it, and it's then that warmth that the greenhouse effect reflects back, keeping it trapped at the earth's surface for longer than it would otherwise be.

I trust you can now answer the rest of your questions yourself.

 

[Bill Thompson]

The reason people who want to lie about AGW for political reasons highlight local cold weather and ignore the global picture is that they know they can use that with the more ignorant voters who make up a large part of their "base". (Base being a good term for them.)

Since it has been learned that the Himalayan ice caps have been melting because of soot rather than from greenhouse gasses, maybe the other places experiencing global warming also have simple explanations.

The huge bird death that occurred was blindly attributed to global warming. Now we know it was not the case.

The Himalayan ice melt can be easily reversed.

Since this is the case, and since Al Gore focused so much of this melt in his movie and book, it makes him and his supporters look like mindless alarmists.

"Post Hoc" is a logical fallacy. "It happened, thus it was caused by..." is a fallacy used often by Gore in his movie along with lots of other errors and fallacies.

 

[macdoc]

You think your rhetoric empty of any science content will change atmospheric physics.

C02's role in the atmosphere keeping the planet habitable has been understood for a century or more.
Background/history
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/summary.htm

Water vapour magnifies that warming - or cooling - something you seem not to understand.
C02 is a greenhouse cast that persists in the atmosphere for millenia and retains energy/warmth in the atmosphere due to it's physical nature.
Carbon cycle
http://wufs.wustl.edu/pathfinder/pat...s_11_13_07.htm

We have added carbon to the atmosphere the extent not seen in 15 million years.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091008152242.htm

result

It's getting warmer
We're responsible
It won't stop getting warmer even if we stop adding C02
It won't reverse in anything like human time scales
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html

Just what don't you get about those simple facts?

why don't you move on past the obvious reality of AGW to the very difficult task of dealing with climate regime that within a few decades will move far out of anything humans have experienced since the last ice age....
a benign relatively stable climate regime that we have already moved out of.

And we are only .6 degree C into it.

THere is no contention of those facts except in your own mind and that of a few other cranks....

It's as scientifically well founded as evolution and of course some of even deny that.
As i said .....cranks.

 

[macdoc]

over a century....

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Spin-polarized supercurrents for spintronics
The year 1911 was remarkable for physics in several respects. Ernest Rutherford postulated the existence of the atomic nucleus, which led him to his atom model; Max Planck introduced the quantum conce...
Physics Today / Volume 64 / Issue 1 / ARTICLES
Physics Today - January 2011
Infrared radiation and planetary temperature
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
University of Chicago

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ABSTRACT


In a single second, Earth absorbs 1.22×1017 joules of energy from the Sun. Distributed uniformly over the mass of the planet, the absorbed energy would raise Earth's temperature to nearly 800 000 K after a billion years, if Earth had no way of getting rid of it. For a planet sitting in the near-vacuum of outer space, the only way to lose energy at a significant rate is through emission of electromagnetic radiation, which occurs primarily in the subrange of the IR spectrum with wavelengths of 5–50 µm for planets with temperatures between about 50 K and 1000 K. For purposes of this article, that subrange is called the thermal IR. The key role of the energy balance between short-wave solar absorption and long-wave IR emission was first recognized in 1827 by Joseph Fourier, about a quarter century after IR radiation was discovered by William Herschel. As Fourier also recognized, the rate at which electromagnetic radiation escapes to space is strongly affected by the intervening atmosphere. With those insights, Fourier set in motion a program in planetary climate that would take more than a century to bring to fruition. ©2011 American Institute of Physics

 

[Malerin]

You think your rhetoric empty of any science content will change atmospheric physics.

C02's role in the atmosphere keeping the planet habitable has been understood for a century or more.
Background/history
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/summary.htm

Water vapour magnifies that warming - or cooling - something you seem not to understand.
C02 is a greenhouse cast that persists in the atmosphere for millenia and retains energy/warmth in the atmosphere due to it's physical nature.
Carbon cycle
http://wufs.wustl.edu/pathfinder/pat...s_11_13_07.htm

We have added carbon to the atmosphere the extent not seen in 15 million years.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091008152242.htm

result

It's getting warmer
We're responsible
It won't stop getting warmer even if we stop adding C02
It won't reverse in anything like human time scales
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0812/full/climate.2008.122.html

Just what don't you get about those simple facts?

why don't you move on past the obvious reality of AGW to the very difficult task of dealing with climate regime that within a few decades will move far out of anything humans have experienced since the last ice age....
a benign relatively stable climate regime that we have already moved out of.

And we are only .6 degree C into it.

THere is no contention of those facts except in your own mind and that of a few other cranks....

It's as scientifically well founded as evolution and of course some of even deny that.
As i said .....cranks.

After a hundred years of pouring junk into the air, we are indeed less than a degree "into to it".

Perhaps our contribution to Global Warming climate change isn't quite as pronounced as some make it out to be.

 

[Trakar]

Since it has been learned that the Himalayan ice caps have been melting because of soot rather than from greenhouse gasses, maybe the other places experiencing global warming also have simple explanations.

Glacial retreat in Himalaya using Indian Remote Sensing satellite data - http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/jan102007/69.pdf

Black soot and the survival of Tibetan glaciers - http://www.pnas.org/content/106/52/22114.full.pdf+html

...Scenarios with dramatic climate change are not inevitable.
An alternative scenario, which stabilizes global temperature at
a level near the range of the Holocene, requires reduction of
the major human-made climate-forcing agents that have a
warming effect, including black soot as well as the greenhouse
gases (10). If coal emissions were phased out over the next two
decades, and if unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands
and oil shale, were not developed, atmospheric CO2 could
peak at 400–425 ppm and conceivably return to a level of 350
ppm or less via improved forestry and agricultural practices
(27). Such a scenario for CO2, along with reduction of other
greenhouse gas and black soot emissions, might avoid demise
of Tibetan glaciers and the deleterious effect of glacier loss on
fresh water supplies, while having other benefits for global
climate and human health.

The huge bird death that occurred was blindly attributed to global warming. Now we know it was not the case.

Cite or Reference? Its easy to see how the Arkansas kill, might have been associated with unusual weather (there was also a tornado system that swept through Arkansas on New Year's eve killing three people), but I haven't heard any major Global Warming advocacies even talking about bird kills, but please present any references you are aware of!

The Himalayan ice melt can be easily reversed.

Yeah, all we have to do it stop burning fossil fuels, and remove all of the excess GHGs, aerosols and particulates we are pumping into the atmosphere!
You're right that is easy!!

Since this is the case, and since Al Gore focused so much of this melt in his movie and book, it makes him and his supporters look like mindless alarmists.

Al Gore is an ex-politician and civilian political activist, whether he gets something wrong is really of little consequence to the science of what is evidenced and understood. That being said, none of the scientific reviews of his documentary have found any substantively incorrect or improper. "Supporters," of Al Gore? Who exactly are you talking about?
Alarmists are the ones making fallacious pseudoscientific assertions without the support of solid, mainstream science reference and support.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/al-gore-inconvenient-truth-errors-intermediate.htm

"Post Hoc" is a logical fallacy. "It happened, thus it was caused by..." is a fallacy used often by Gore in his movie along with lots of other errors and fallacies.

post hoc ergo propter hoc is a logical fallacy.
Laying out and supporting with evidence each step of a consideration and the most likely causative agency in detail, is not a post hoc argument. Though some individual proponents on all sides of the Climate change issue do indeed employ such fallacies. In my experience it is the contrarians who have institutionalized the process, not the mainstream science which is pretty much forced to stick with the weight of evidences.

 

[Furcifer]

How do you summon a paradox? Or are you trying to imply that the OP is deficient in some way? It's very hard to tell, and that smiley is no help at all.

Give me something icerat and I can work with, please, some specific argument, not crypticisms.

I didn't summon it, the OP did, and I agreed.

 

[CapelDodger]

Since it has been learned that the Himalayan ice caps have been melting because of soot rather than from greenhouse gasses ...

Soot is contributing to Himalayan ice-melt but is not the sole cause.

... maybe the other places experiencing global warming also have simple explanations.

Given that it's the entire globe which is warming it would require it would require a very long string of coincidences if the predicted cause of warming (enhanced greenhouse effect) is incorrect. Rather longer than it's rational to expect.

The huge bird death that occurred was blindly attributed to global warming. Now we know it was not the case.

Blind attribution by ignorant people is hardly restricted to AGW or bird deaths. Attribution of, for instance, increased global precipitation to AGW is not blind and is rather more relevant.

The Himalayan ice melt can be easily reversed.

No, it can't. You'd have to stop the warming.

Since this is the case, and since Al Gore focused so much of this melt in his movie and book, it makes him and his supporters look like mindless alarmists.

Actually, you're the one focusing on Himalayan ice-melt, presumably because you think you have a revelation to share about it. Greenland and the West Antarctic ice-sheet are the big players. The Himalayas matter to India, Pakistan, China and SE Asia but that's about it. Encompassing most of the people, admittedly, but not most of the globe (which is itself mostly covered by ocean).

"Post Hoc" is a logical fallacy. "It happened, thus it was caused by..." is a fallacy used often by Gore in his movie along with lots of other errors and fallacies.

Al Gore doesn't matter. I know he strides like a Titan across the US American right-wing landscape, but that's a landscape with very limited horizons.

AGW was predicted long before Al Gore produced his film, and is not a post hoc explanation for what has happened and will continue to happen. People went to see the film because they were interested in the subject, not because they shared your interest in Al Gore.

Post hoc explanations for global warming are, of course, rife amongst deniers, many of whom were only a few decades ago "explaining" why it wouldn't happen. Predictions of future cooling are also, some of which are already quite dated. I think we can confidently expect some post hoc wriggling over those in the next few years.

 

[CapelDodger]

Greenhouse gasses don’t block visible light but they block long wave IR, which is how the Earth gets rid of the energy it receives from the Sun.

All energy exchange between space (effectively the Sun for input) and Earth is in the form of radiation. This shouldn't need saying, of course, but sadly I find that it does from time to time .

Dawn reminds us every day (well, those of us living outside the polar circles) the Sun does most of its business in the visible part of the spectrum, and dusk reminds us every night that the Earth doesn't.

See above

See below, at night . The Earth doesn't shine.

 

[Trakar]

After a hundred years of pouring junk into the air, we are indeed less than a degree "into to it".

Perhaps our contribution to Global Warming climate change isn't quite as pronounced as some make it out to be.

There is a lag between emission and full thermal equilibration. This is why if we ceased all emissions today, the warming would continue for a century or more.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/few-degrees-global-warming.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ipcc-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm

 

[macdoc]

After a hundred years of pouring junk into the air, we are indeed less than a degree "into to it".

Perhaps our contribution to Global Warming climate change isn't quite as pronounced as some make it out to be.

do you understand the term hysteresis.....??

apparently not from your trite answer....

The climate is composed of effects from massive systems that react slowly to a change in input - in this case a forcing from C02 that is mined and burned by H Sapien.

It's a simple bit of physics and you are in denial of the consequences -

which no matter what action we take now will impact the climate dramatically for the next millenium or more and effects will linger out 100k years, even if we stopped emissions totally right now
note "inertia" in the title below....

course it seems some would prefer to have their kids deal with the consequences

CO2 Inertia Will Trigger Climate Change for Next Millennium, Study Says

By Thomas Schueneman
According to a research study just published in the journal Nature Geoscience, climate change will persist, and in some parts of the world intensify, from the increased levels of atmospheric CO2 long after humans stop burning fossil fuels – for a millennium or more, the report says.
In even a best case, real-world scenario where anthropogenic carbon emissions essentially stop by the year 2100, the consequences on climate will last throughout the next one thousand years, and in epoch-changing ways. The seas are the great heat sink that have so far absorbed much of the heat and most of the CO2 from the atmosphere. Eventually the ocean will be able to take no more and begin to give back the heat – as decadal trends of consistently warming seas now portend.



By the year 3000, if carbon emissions continue to 2100, the West Antarctic ice sheet will collapse and sea level will eventually rise by at least four meters (more than 13 feet).


http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/...limate-change-for-next-millennium-study-says/


original paper


http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1047.html

 

[Furcifer]

No, it can't. You'd have to stop the warming.

Really? OK, then I guess the warming has stopped.

"Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing rather than retreating, claims the first major study since a controversial UN report said they would be melted within quarter of a century."

Story here.

Perhaps climate science shouldn't be lead around on a leash by alarmists?

 

[Furcifer]

How sure are you CO2 is a greenhouse gas? Not as sure as you were yesterday:


"The Earth’s incident solar radiation entropy flux estimated using the mean SIM-based TOA SSI observations and Planck expression exhibits 4 times larger in magnitude than 15 that estimated using the conventional expression based on the Sun’s brightness temperature under the assumption of a blackbody Sun. It is worth emphasizing that the difference (0.23Wm−2 K−1) between the two approaches represents about 77% of the typical entropy production rate associated with the atmospheric latent heat process"


http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/2/45/2011/esdd-2-45-2011.pdf

This has significant impact on the role CO2 and all greenhouse gases play in climate change.

 

[zooterkin]

Really? OK, then I guess the warming has stopped.

"Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing rather than retreating, claims the first major study since a controversial UN report said they would be melted within quarter of a century."

Story here.

Did you read the whole story, rather than just the misleading headline?

Just over half the glaciers, the ones with an insulating cover of rubble, are staying the same or advancing, in one particular region of the Himalayas, the Karakoram range, where covered glaciers are common. The other half, uncovered glaciers, are retreating. In other areas of the Himalayas, where most glaciers are not covered in rubble, most of the glaciers are retreating. What we don't know, from that story: would the glaciers be expected to be staying the same, advancing or retreating (i.e. are covered glaciers advancing slower than expected)? Why are the uncovered glaciers retreating? What are the relative volumes involved, since the story only talks about numbers of glaciers?

I guess I should also point out, in case not everyone is aware, that the Torygraph is not exactly averse to stories which deny AGW.

 

[Warmer1]

"Really? OK, then I guess the warming has stopped.

"Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing rather than retreating, claims the first major study since a controversial UN report said they would be melted within quarter of a century."

Story here."



You really dig deep alright

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/en...ers-spell-trouble-for-climate-scientists.html


And climate sceptics are bound to seize on today's news that more than half the glaciers in the Karakoram mountains in the west of the world's highest chain are either stable or actually advancing as providing dramatic evidence that global warming is not taking place. But it does no such thing. For a start, the study that made the discovery concluded – as lead researcher Dirk Scherler put it that - "overall in the Himalayas, the glaciers are retreating". What made the difference in the Karakoram was that many are covered in a layer of rubble that has eroded from the peaks, insulating the ice from the warmth of the sun. Where this layer was present the glaciers did not melt or even grew; where it was not the rate of retreat remained high.

Elsewhere in the world the retreat continues. Just last weekend, for example, it was announced that Greeenland's icesheet melted at a record rate in 2010 and studies show that most of the world's glaciers are shrinking.

 

[Furcifer]

I guess I should also point out, in case not everyone is aware, that the Torygraph is not exactly averse to stories which deny AGW.

And climate sceptics are bound to seize on today's news that more than half the glaciers in the Karakoram mountains in the west of the world's highest chain are either stable or actually advancing as providing dramatic evidence that global warming is not taking place.

Are you sure you read the story? It doesn't "deny" global warming, it's about Himalayan glaciers.

Now the other link, the one about radiation flux, the one you ignored, comes a whole heck of a lot closer to denying AGW. Since you can't find an alarmist site to get your opinion from I imagine you will continue to ignore it.

 

[zooterkin]

Are you sure you read the story? It doesn't "deny" global warming, it's about Himalayan glaciers.

I didn't say it did, but I was pointing out a known bias, which might explain the misleading headline.

Now, how about you comment on the points made about the actual glacier melting or otherwise?

 

[Furcifer]

I didn't say it did, but I was pointing out a known bias, which might explain the misleading headline.

Now, how about you comment on the points made about the actual glacier melting or otherwise?

It serves as an example of how emotion and hyperbole tend to over shadow actual science, and even the scientists themselves aren't immune.

It's kind of sad they couldn't recognize an outrageous claim at first glace. You can downplay it as a mistake or you can interpret it as them becoming desensitized to the wild claims being made. Dealer's choice.

As for the Telegraph, I don't make decisions based on who wrote a paper or what their political leanings are. I don't care. I suggest you do the same because the source is irrelevant, it's all about content. When people makes comments about the source instead of the content I assume bias. (except perhaps if the source was "The Onion")

 

[BenBurch]

I find it sociologically interesting that the people who object to the science behind AGW are most often the ones with both the least scientific acumen and the most right-wing politics.

Why do you suppose that is?

Now, the people who hold that position want to chalk that up to a leftist plot involving 90+% of the scientific community, but most of these same people would not accept any similar argument surrounding the events of 2001-9-11, and they appear to utterly lack the perspective to see the similarity or the irony.

And I wonder; Is it possible to reach these people with any argument based on facts and reality, or are they in a fact-proof space where any information that disproves the "vast left-wing conspiracy" is itself disinformation promulgated by those dastardly conspirators?

 

[DC]

Really? OK, then I guess the warming has stopped.

"Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing rather than retreating, claims the first major study since a controversial UN report said they would be melted within quarter of a century."

Story here.

Perhaps climate science shouldn't be lead around on a leash by alarmists?

yes the Himalaya claim was wrong and is now corrected. But it doesn't change the fact AGW.