Moderated Global Warming Discussion

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In my own subjective experience (born in '54) I've seen a great deal achieved on environmental issues. I'm old enough to remember smog and rivers carrying lumps of mucky foam and exotically coloured slicks, so there have been some great advances. Which is just as well, we really couldn't carry on like that (as the Chinese are starting to realise now).

The things we sorted out were, as it turns out, the easy and visible ones. Rivers on fire make great TV, and there comes a point when Los Angeles's uniquely-coloured sky stops being a feature and starts being a problem.

Agricultural run-off has long been recognised as a problem, but not for the agriculturalists - and the agro-industrial complex is huge. Taking that problem seriously is far from easy, and unless an economically significant fishery is affected what goes on in the ocean is generally invisible. Not to you, Warmer1, but then your subjective experience is outside the norm :). (When I look at the sea it always runs through my mind that while it may look big, that's just the top!)

As for AGW, no chance. Ever. Not in the wildest of dreams. What happened in Kyoto was gonna stay in Kyoto.

The oceans are likely to cause the first major crisis, with AGW only a contributary factor, but the weather happens where we live and so gets the attention. As does agriculture, but the chances of collapse in ocean-systems are far greater, and that will grind against the 7+ billion more than most people appreciate.

This air-breathing bias is why the development of agriculture is identified with civilisation, and the fisherman's contribution gets written out of history. On another scale, it's why deniers obsess about surface temperatures when what's of interest is the whole fluid system we live in. Most of which is ocean, of course, by many measures : area, mass, heat-capacity, biological ancestry, to name but a few.
 
Does Arctic Amplification Fuel Extreme Weather in Mid-Latitudes? Jennifer Francis, Rutgers University, 25 January 2012.

The "Arctic Paradox" was coined during recent winters when speculations arose that the dramatic changes in the Arctic may be linked to severe snowstorms and cold temperatures in mid-latitudes, particularly along the U.S. east coast and in Europe. Recent studies have illuminated these linkages. Evidence is presented for a physical mechanism connecting Arctic Amplification -- the enhanced warming in high northern latitudes relative to the northern hemisphere -- with the frequency and intensity of several types of extreme weather events in mid-latitudes, such as droughts, floods, heat waves, and cold spells.

Also check out Dr. Francis' full presentation:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtRvcXUIyZg an the related paper:http://marine.rutgers.edu/~francis/pres/Francis_Vavrus_2012GL051000_pub.pdf

 
CapelDodger said:
In my own subjective experience (born in '54) I've seen a great deal achieved on environmental issues. I'm old enough to remember smog and rivers carrying lumps of mucky foam and exotically coloured slicks, so there have been some great advances. Which is just as well, we really couldn't carry on like that (as the Chinese are starting to realise now).

The things we sorted out were, as it turns out, the easy and visible ones. Rivers on fire make great TV, and there comes a point when Los Angeles's uniquely-coloured sky stops being a feature and starts being a problem.

Agricultural run-off has long been recognised as a problem, but not for the agriculturalists - and the agro-industrial complex is huge. Taking that problem seriously is far from easy, and unless an economically significant fishery is affected what goes on in the ocean is generally invisible. Not to you, Warmer1, but then your subjective experience is outside the norm :). (When I look at the sea it always runs through my mind that while it may look big, that's just the top!)

As for AGW, no chance. Ever. Not in the wildest of dreams. What happened in Kyoto was gonna stay in Kyoto.

The oceans are likely to cause the first major crisis, with AGW only a contributary factor, but the weather happens where we live and so gets the attention. As does agriculture, but the chances of collapse in ocean-systems are far greater, and that will grind against the 7+ billion more than most people appreciate.

This air-breathing bias is why the development of agriculture is identified with civilisation, and the fisherman's contribution gets written out of history. On another scale, it's why deniers obsess about surface temperatures when what's of interest is the whole fluid system we live in. Most of which is ocean, of course, by many measures : area, mass, heat-capacity, biological ancestry, to name but a few.
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I hate to have to agree with you, but knowing human psychology as I do, I have no choice.

I remember my boss saying "I'll believe it when someone can prove it to me."

I declined to point out that in order for someone to "prove it" to her, she would have to be capable of evaluating the proof, which she is not.

This is why doubtcasting is so insidious.

Mark my words, the people who survive the catastrophe -- yes, deniers, I'm being an "alarmist", millions of people will die -- will curse the deniers, but especially the doubtcasters.

Maybe, just maybe, a catastrophe on this scale will finally burn something into the human psyche, and future disasters can be avoided.
 
Piggy said:
I remember my boss saying "I'll believe it when someone can prove it to me."
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I prefer a different approach, along the lines of "you are not the right person to be making this decision".

I declined to point out that in order for someone to "prove it" to her, she would have to be capable of evaluating the proof, which she is not.
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This is exactly where I would have gone, in a sympathetic manner. That can get you to a place where a rational argument might actually be understood. You might even be told why it wasn't going to matter.

Maybe, just maybe, a catastrophe on this scale will finally burn something into the human psyche, and future disasters can be avoided.
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I can picture "growth" and "progress" losing their allure, and politicians starting to compete on how sustainable their policies are. The conservatism which usually follows times of tribulation.
 
CapelDodger said:
This is exactly where I would have gone, in a sympathetic manner. That can get you to a place where a rational argument might actually be understood. You might even be told why it wasn't going to matter.
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You seem to have missed a couple of key words in my post there... "my boss". ;)


CapelDodger said:
I can picture "growth" and "progress" losing their allure, and politicians starting to compete on how sustainable their policies are.
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Which is where we should already be, of course, but nobody right now knows what a modern sustainable economy looks like.

Sane persons have realized for quite some time that no growth model can keep going very long.

One of the big carpet manufacturers in my state (which is the US carpet production capital) had the revelation and has been trying to get the industry to listen, but it's an uphill battle.
 
Big, big trouble in the Arctic. First have a look at the NSIDC chart here:

Arctic Sea Ice Extent 26 Aug 2012

Then read this powerful article by Neven and Kevin McKinney:

Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold

Makes the previous record 2007 sea ice extent minimum look positively benign by comparison. Looks like an ice-free Arctic in the summer may be possible as early as 2020, well ahead of any previous predictions. Will the mainstream media pick up on this? NOT!
 
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Quick question -

What was the earliest reference to the global warming hypothesis? Just curious, as I'm discussing this with someone who remembers the 70's Newsweek article on the coming Ice Age.
 
carlitos said:
Quick question -

What was the earliest reference to the global warming hypothesis? Just curious, as I'm discussing this with someone who remembers the 70's Newsweek article on the coming Ice Age.
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Svante Arrhenius first proposed greenhouse gasses like CO2 could warm the planet back in the late 1800’s.

Until the mid 50’s there was considerable doubt that humans could actually change CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere because it was thought that the oceans would simply absorb the excess. This was put to rest with a series of papers that showed that it took a long time for CO2 to make it pact the top part of the oceans. At the same time it was demonstrated that CO2 levels were climbing and that the isotope signature of the new CO2 indicated it was from burning fossil fuels.

While there are also cooling factors like global dimming going on that could have (but turned out not to) outweigh greenhouse gasses it was conceded by ~1960 that human CO2 was warming the planet. By the mid 70’s the scientists were nearly all of the view human activity was would warm the planet even if there wasn’t much being measured yet. The article you refer to from this time was a minority opinion that managed to make it to the popular press not thye view of the scientific community.
 
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metzomagic said:
Big, big trouble in the Arctic. First have a look at the NSIDC chart here:

Arctic Sea Ice Extent 26 Aug 2012

Then read this powerful article by Neven and Kevin McKinney:

Why Arctic sea ice shouldn't leave anyone cold

Makes the previous record 2007 sea ice extent minimum look positively benign by comparison. Looks like an ice-free Arctic in the summer may be possible as early as 2020, well ahead of any previous predictions. Will the mainstream media pick up on this? NOT!
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The BBC is already reporting it!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19393075
 
Is there any estimation for when it was the last time the Arctic was ice-free during summer?
 
carlosy said:
Is there any estimation for when it was the last time the Arctic was ice-free during summer?
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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/20...ice-history-paleoclimate-polar-amplification/

I asked the lead author, Leonid Polyak, of Ohio State’s Byrd Polar Research Center, when was the last time the Arctic was ice free. He replied:

The paleo data we have so far is very scant, so we can’t know for sure when the Arctic was ice free in the summer last time. To be conservative, the closest candidate is the early Holocene (roughly ~10 kyr ago), when the insolation in the Arctic was high due to the beneficial orbital configuration; however, the more data I see, the stronger is my impression that there was not that little ice at that time. The next best (actually, better) candidate is the Last Interglacial, about 125kyr ago, again due to orbitally-driven high insolation: the ice was likely very low, but we can’t say whether it was completely ice free in summer or not. There are also a few other major interglacials, which may have had a similar picture, in particular Marine Isotopic Stage 11, about 450 kyr ago. In any case we are talking about very rare events controlled by a forcing very different from today. If none of those intervals was really ice free, then a million year assessment would be correct.
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bit_pattern said:
Everything you could ever want on the history of global warming science :)
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So far. Its greatest days are yet to come, I think, with this massively expensive experiment starting to produce data. Experiments in silico are all well and good, but you can't beat the Big Bad Analogue Model when it comes to pinpoint accuracy. The real-time processing-speed limitation is a handicap, true, but there's nothing to be done about that.

We are now in the days that the earliest digital models warned us about.

Climatology wasn't regarded as an experiment-heavy science back in the 70's (nor for that matter was glaciology) but since the opportunity has arisen it would be criminal not to make something of it. One effect of a "more research is required" policy is that it can be used to screw some actual funding out of the political system, and has done wonders for oceanography (a woefully neglected subject historically; it's a travesty that we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about what goes on under 70% of the surface of Earth).
 
carlitos said:
What was the earliest reference to the global warming hypothesis? Just curious, as I'm discussing this with someone who remembers the 70's Newsweek article on the coming Ice Age.
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As it happens, I remember this silly-season story myself, not least because I happened to know some of the scientists involved. Their general reaction was a mix of irritation and slightly patronising amusement.

What actually had been determined from work done and techniques developed during the 50's and 60's was that glacial/interglacial transitions occur much more quickly than had previously been thought. Not taking as many thousands of years. To a journalist on a slow-news day that became "Ice Age Imminent Say Scientists".

It got some momentum in slack water but was over in a few months (that's how most things were in the 70's :cool:). Such details aside, the most that can be crammed into the 70's is a decade and the warming issue has been going on and growing in prominence for three decades, with every sign of carrying on the same. Anyone who takes refuge in what "they" said in the 70's is asking to be crushed.
 
CapelDodger said:
So far. Its greatest days are yet to come, I think, with this massively expensive experiment starting to produce data. Experiments in silico are all well and good, but you can't beat the Big Bad Analogue Model when it comes to pinpoint accuracy. The real-time processing-speed limitation is a handicap, true, but there's nothing to be done about that.
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Hogwash! No replicates :P
 
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