Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Trakar]

This statement supports his position science on clouds is trending towards then being a positive feedback and rejects you position this "uncertainty" somehow means large negative feedback is a legitimate possibility.

Thank-you, I have been a bit busy the last week. I appreciate the assist.

 

[Trakar]

Interesting video, Thank-you!

 

[Trakar]

You seem to have confused cause and effect. Clouds occur because air cools down. This process actually releases energy due to the phase transition of water vapor to water, and therefor helps warm the surrounding air.

A very basic chemistry and physics principle that anyone with even a solid HS level understanding of either field should well understand.

Feedback has been well understood for a long time. Clouds stand out as the only "fast" feedback that isn't well understood. Slow feedback like the release of methane from tundra or the melting methane hydrates frozen at the bottom of oceans is less well understood, but this isn't exactly good news.

I think you probably over-state (a bit) "isn't well understood," it is certainly a complex and intricate phenomenon, and there is much yet to be definitively explained, and even explored, but this shouldn't be misinterpreted as a critical lack of general and even comprehensive understanding. Clouds are much more, as you imply, a weather ("fast" feedback) phenomenon. As such, it is rather difficult to define well in long term projections, but this doesn't mean that this limitation invalidates all climate projections or considerations, as some seem to want to portray the situation.

 

[Trakar]

...This would be a misrepresentation of fact. Feedback as it is defined is well understood, "feedbacks" as they apply to the planet are poorly understood.

Please cite and reference these "facts," and definitions of "feedbacks," which support your assertions.

Feedback -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback

 

[Trakar]

Please append this to the post regarding feedback:

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

 

[Trakar]

That's nonsense. An exception to the rule doesn't invalidate the rule...

The exception to a rule, invalidates that rule, just as a single exception to any scientific theory invalidates that theory as anything more than a rough approximation.

Something that is true, except when its not, is not reliably nor accurately "true."

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/true
—Synonyms
1. factual, veracious. See real1 . 3. honest. 4. trustworthy; staunch, constant, steady, unwavering. 7. faithful.

 

[Trakar]

Cloud Feedback
This is climate science 101.
Incorrect. Please read the above link for clarification.

Your wiki link is neither functional, nor does the actual link support your claims

 

[Trakar]

Tropical ice clouds? Humidity fluctuation in large scale cirrculation? Which vegetative studies are you familiar with? Longwave radiation in the sub tropics? Midlatitude cyclones? Atmospheric moisture over North America in the Winter, Summer? Large and small droplet size effects on long and shortwave radiation?
Here's a recent one in the Journal of Physical Research: "Atmospheric chemistry-climate feedbacks"
Which climate chemistry feedbacks are you familiar with, all of them?

I'm not about to catalogue the thousands of feedback mechanisms discovered and studied over the last 30 years. You're going to have to read some of them and see for yourself if they're positive or negative.

I am actually extremely and intimately familiar with this particular paper and its authors. In what way, specifically, do you feel that it supports any of your assertions or positions?

 

[Trakar]

This is incorrect, in the experiment I suggested clouds block radiation and cause cooling below them.

Not only is it incorrect, it's incomplete. Clouds are formed by condensation which occurs when warm air is cooled to the dew point. There are several mechanisms for doing so because temperature and pressure are directly related. http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/8e.html

Don't worry, it's an easy mistake to make. Just remember, warm air can cool all it wants, but if it doesn't condense clouds won't form.

Condensation occurs when dense, warm, moist, air expands, and cools lowering its pressure and ability to maintain water in its vaporous state.

cloud formation basics:http://www.umaine.edu/center/files/2009/12/Rappaport_Thesis.pdf

...“Consider the Pacific coastal city of Seattle. Seattle is famous for its rainy climate, while eastern Washington is a near-desert. Why is this the case?”
This question was posed verbally, and then supplemented with a simple sketch showing the zonal geography of Washington state, including ocean basin, coastal mountain range, and inland plains. The mechanism present in this example offers students the chance to recognize several steps in the hydrographic cycle, some very basic, others more subtle: Water is evaporated from the Pacific Ocean, carried inland by the sea breeze, lifted orographically by coastal mountains, and re-condensed as clouds and rain by adiabatic cooling...

A simple, clear and scientifically accurate description of the process of cloud formation.

http://daphne.palomar.edu/jthorngren/adiabatic_processes.htm

...Let's look more closely at how the air changes temperature when it rises or subsides. We know that warm air rises, and when it rises it becomes cooler. If you remember that, you can reason your way through a lot of meteorology.

Rising air experiences a drop in temperature, even though no heat is lost to the outside. The drop in temperature is a result of the decrease in atmospheric pressure at higher altitudes. If the pressure of the surrounding air is reduced, then the rising air parcel will expand. The molecules of air are doing work as they expand. This will affect the parcel's temperature (which is the average kinetic energy of the molecules in the air parcel). One of the results of the Laws of Thermodynamics is that there is an inverse relationship between the volume of an air parcel and its temperature. During either expansion or compression, the total amount of energy in the parcel remains the same (none is added or lost). The energy can either be used to do the work of expansion, or to maintain the temperature of the parcel, but it can't be used for both. If the total amount of heat in a parcel of air is held constant (no heat is added or released), then when the parcel expands, its temperature drops. When the parcel is compressed, its temperature rises. In the atmosphere, if the parcel of air were forced to descend, it would warm up again without taking heat from the outside. This is called adiabatic heating and cooling, and the term adiabatic implies a change in temperature of the parcel of air without gain or loss of heat from outside the air parcel. Adiabatic processes are very important in the atmosphere, and adiabatic cooling of rising air is the dominant cause of cloud formation.
...

 

[lomiller]

A very basic chemistry and physics principle that anyone with even a solid HS level understanding of either field should well understand.

There are also some well known weather phenomenon that show just how bit this effect is.

Chinook/Santa Ana winds occur when moist air from the oceans is carried by prevailing winds over a mountain range. When the air is forced upwards the drop in pressure cools it, causing the moisture to precipitate out as rain or snow. This phase change releases energy which stays in the air mass, so while it cools it doesn’t cool nearly as much as the pressure difference would normally cause.

Once the air clears the mountain it flows down the other side and the increase in pressure causes the air mass to become smaller and therefore warmer. Because of all the energy released when the moisture changes to rain or snow the temperature of the air can be as much as 30 deg C warmer on the other side of the mountain compared to where it started.

In places like Calgary this means you can have a day well below freezing and within an hour or two you can get a wind coming down the side of the Rocky Mountain that is well above freezing that is almost summer like. In eastern California and Arizona/New Mexico you can the very hot & dry Santa Ana winds that can cause all kinds of wildfire problems.

 

[Trakar]

For those who might want to brush up on their chemistry climate feedback understandings:

"Enhanced chemistry-climate feedbacks in past greenhouse worlds" - http://www.pnas.org/content/108/24/9770.full.pdf

"Atmospheric CO2 concentrations during ancient greenhouse climates were similar to those predicted for A.D. 2100." - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20080721

"An Assessment of Climate Feedbacks in Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Models" - http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI3799.1

"Fossil soils constrain ancient climate sensitivity" - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2818960/

"Atmospheric CO2: principal control knob governing Earth's temperature." - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20947761

 

[Furcifer]

Condensation occurs when dense, warm, moist, air expands, and cools lowering its pressure and ability to maintain water in its vaporous state.

Correct, although it seems you've made a similar mistake (small oversight). Cooling it lowers the pressure, but lowering the pressure cools it as well!

We usually talk about the dew point as well because it's critical to condensation and cloud formation.

 

[Furcifer]

A reduction in emissions will be indicated by negative growth. The two things are equivalent.

Incorrect. A reduction in emissions will be indicated be less positive growth.

Everybody's out-of-step but you ...

Indeed, the above is a prime example of why.

You remind me of a kid at school who couldn't accept that an object with zero velocity could be accelerating. The teacher tried, then we all tried in different words, but no luck. He just could not get it, nor understand why we didn't get that an object with zero velocity could not be accelerating.

That's probably because you were using words. A good teacher would simply throw a ball in the air.

Tell me why that's not advocacy for not doing anything now.

*sigh

That has nothing to do with emissions. That's in response to cloud feedback being positive or negative. It's completely and utterly unrelated. Please try reading the quote again.

You use the possibility of a negative feedback from changes in cloud cover as a reason for not doing anything now, since it would be foolish and irresponsible.

Indeed, it would be foolish and irresponsible to say clouds are a positive or negative feedback right now.

Incorrect. There has been industry and growth throughout most of history, even when energy was (in contemporary terms) expensive.

Nope. Cheap energy means growth. It's a scientific fact.

If natural gas was burned for generation as part of a long-term strategy to minimise total CO₂ emissions, just something to get us though to when enough renewables came online, then it would have been a good idea. As it was, a valuable resource was squandered inefficiently simply because it was cheap at the time. (Price and value are not equivalent, of course.)

*sigh

It wasn't squandered. It was used to make electricity. Producing electricity isn't squandering. Especially with natural gas.

You believe it's a fact, but your argument for why it's a fact starts with "it's a fact". Which is begging the question.

Incorrect. Questions end with a (?). It's a fact!

You seem to have lost the thread. You raised the hypothetical that the internal-combustion engine had never existed. From that you projected a world in which nothing associated with the ICE (in real history) would have happened. I've been pointing out that this is not a valid assumption.

Incorrect. I said quite clearly it would be "delayed".

I can easily picture the story presented in the Henry Ford Museum. I would find it simplistic and rather too focussed on the ICE. Not deliberately, but because people generally lack perspective. The up-close dominates their view, and they miss the big picture.

Quite the contrary, the opposite is in fact true. Being submersed or focused makes you an expert.

Exponential economic growth did not originate with the Oil Age; in fact it's been going on since the Mongols got civilised.

No, it came about as a result of the second industrial revolution. The greatest period of economic growth coincides with the ICE, 1870-1900. The steam engine probably set it in motion and the automobile finished it off.

Proposals (like targets, and talk) are cheap.

Incorrect. Most notably the proposal to build a nuclear plant can run tens of millions of dollars. Perhaps in your day talk was cheap, these days talk is very expensive. Emails are cheap

 

[Furcifer]

The exception to a rule, invalidates that rule, just as a single exception to any scientific theory invalidates that theory as anything more than a rough approximation.

Incorrect.

It's interesting you would make this mistake considering the subject at hand; mitigation. Mitigating factors allow for an exception to the rule that doesn't invalidate the rule. The rule is we don't shoot and kill people. War would be a mitigating factor, it allows us to shoot and kill people despite the rule without invalidating it.

You're also confusing rules and laws with theories and principles. It's a common mistake.

 

[Furcifer]

Not last night they didn't.

What kind of clouds were they? What was the relative humidity? How long did you stand there?

For clouds to form a feedback to climate change then it must depend on global-scale changes in response to climate change. I've yet to see any decent argument in favour of a negative feedback.

Simple question then; how much radiation do clouds reflect (W/m²) and how much outgoing longwave radiation do they trap? Answer it the best you can and we can go from there.

 

[Trakar]

I don't believe your English skills are what you claim. Here's what I said.


"Decoupled" would be the exact opposite of "unalterable", in fact the whole quote is the exact opposite of what you're claiming I said. I'm not sure how you could make this mistake on accident. These "errors" continue to plague this discussion.

If you look at the reference included, I was referring to what you initially said, not this revision of your statements made later.

 

[Trakar]

Correct, although it seems you've made a similar mistake (small oversight). Cooling it lowers the pressure, but lowering the pressure cools it as well!

We usually talk about the dew point as well because it's critical to condensation and cloud formation.

Despite your verbal acrobatics, what I stated is what I meant, and an accurate description of the science. "Condensation occurs when dense, warm, moist, air expands, and cools lowering its pressure and ability to maintain water in its vaporous state."

 

[Trakar]

Incorrect.

Cite or reference in support of your opinion?

It's interesting you would make this mistake considering the subject at hand; mitigation. Mitigating factors allow for an exception to the rule that doesn't invalidate the rule.

This appears to be an improper conflation of "mitigation/mitigating" with "extenuating." Furthermore, extenuating circumstances are indeed invalidations of general rules through the establishment of special circumstances which seek to demonstrate that the rule does not, or should not apply.

there is a big difference between the manner in which the law uses terms and the definitions of terms appropriate to the discussion of science. You are not free to switch at a whim to whichever definition fits your argument, that is the definition of "disingenuous."

Mitigation - noun
1.The action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something
- the emphasis is on the identification and mitigation of pollution

http://www.google.com/search?q=defi...gc.r_pw.&fp=41db8b0d514ef544&biw=1010&bih=599

Extenuate - verb /ikˈstenyo͞oˌāt/ 
extenuated, past participle; extenuated, past tense; extenuates, 3rd person singular present; extenuating, present participle

1.Make (guilt or an offense) seem less serious or more forgivable
- there were extenuating circumstances that caused me to say the things I did

http://www.google.com/search?q=defi...gc.r_pw.&fp=d629f4504b1e7649&biw=1010&bih=599

 

[Furcifer]

If you look at the reference included, I was referring to what you initially said, not this revision of your statements made later.

That link has nothing to do with what you've misrepresented already.

 

[Furcifer]

Despite your verbal acrobatics, what I stated is what I meant, and an accurate description of the science. "Condensation occurs when dense, warm, moist, air expands, and cools lowering its pressure and ability to maintain water in its vaporous state."

And this isn't the case with orographic lifting. The converse is true. You're continuing to make a very basic mistake and overlook the direct correlation between pressure and temperature.