Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Reality Check]

Now we have three meanings of "basic physics", seems to me: 1) the conceptually minimal axiomatization, 2) 19th century classical mechanics and thermodynamics, and 3) whatever supports the larger theory (the basic assumptions of that larger theory).

And number 4) The physics that is taught in high schools.
And number 5) The physics that is taught in undergraduate courses.
And number 6) The physics that is taught in correspondence courses.
And number 7) The physics that is taught in some online courses.
And number 8) The physics that is not taught in postgraduate courses.

Dyson and Motl certainly understand ...

Dyson certainly understands "basic physcs" because he has an education in ... physics!
Motl certainly understands "basic physcs" because he has an education in ... mathematical physics!

So what?
You have provided no evidence that they disagree with the "basic physcs" or even any physics behind AGW.
You have provided no evidence that they disagree with the consensus that AGW exists.


So what you are left with is the logical fallacy of argument from authority. This fallacy is made doubly ridiculous because

1. You do not cite authorities on climate science !
2. Dyson at least does not support your argument !

 

[aleCcowaN]

Contrary to some isolated opinion, I find this thread extremely interesting even though sometimes it looks like an effort made to contain a disease on outbreak.

It's important -for someone- to note that this thread is not for establishing the truth of AGW or the existence of a synarchic conspiracy to interfere with "who was made in the likeness of God to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over all the earth" , as Internet and fora like these ones, with their rules, are just like a bus which stops in every corner of every neighbourhood with a bus fare of 0 so it's normal that the bus is crowded and for some picturesque characters to be found among the passengers.

So, the recent one won't be the last case of "ignorance is blitz" which begs the question of how to deal with them under the current forum rules.

Other fora have succeeded in preventing from posting such users who left unanswered any line of argumentation that they themselves started. This prevents users who only bob and weave like a boxer from avoiding to reply what they started by changing the subject and beginning a new line of reasoning. Of course, they can post again just by answering, but this requires moderators who follow the thread and know the subject, as moderated threads become moderated users of those threads. In fact it is less work for moderators as destabilizing participants go away quickly.

As this or something similar goes unimplemented I wonder what we can do meanwhile. Any suggestions?

I still hope to find people who offer real, hard, scientific evidence that AGW is a fata morgana but all those conspiracy theories and blatantly uninformed assertions have make them shy.

 

[manofthesea]

Here's a couple of new and interesting items of interest concerning global warming.
First, increased precipitation in the arctic may speed global warming: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120905200554.htm

Second, glacial thinning in Patagonia is sharply increasing: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120905110537.htm

Not trying to disrupt anything, it just seems there's more and more news regarding this subject, none of it good.

 

[uke2se]

Malcolm, you still haven't provided any source for where Dyson published something that disputes the physics underpinning AGW theory.

 

[bit_pattern]

AGW advocacy supports socialists in their reach for control. AGW skepticism supports free marketeers in their rejection of control.

A timely article on this issue:

How do people reject climate science?

In a previous article on The Conversation, Stephan Lewandowsky asked, why do people reject science? I’m going to take a slightly different angle and consider how people are able to reject climate science in the face of strong evidence.

A growing body of research has found that when a person’s worldview is threatened by scientific evidence, they interpret the science in a biased manner. One issue where this influence is strongest is climate change.

For supporters of an unregulated free market, regulating polluting industries to reduce global warming is so unpalatable that they are far more likely to reject that climate change is happening.

 

[lomiller]

Here's a couple of new and interesting items of interest concerning global warming.
First, increased precipitation in the arctic may speed global warming: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120905200554.htm

This one would seem to favour cooling in northern Europe rather than increased warming globally, not that these are mutually exclusive.

In fact it serfs to highlight that the real issue isn’t that it will be a bit warmer, it’s that climate zones change. Northern Europe gets crop failures because it’s colder, The US high plains and mid-west have crop failures because they are dryer, Monsoons in Asia and India move northwards causing flooding and erosion in dry areas while leaving rich agricultural areas in permanent drought, and so on.

 

[Dancing David]

Malcolm, you still haven't provided any source for where Dyson published something that disputes the physics underpinning AGW theory.

Dyson didn't he stated that he doesn't like the prediction models based on his understanding 30 years ago:
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151

"What’s wrong with the models. I mean, I haven’t examined them in detail, (but) I know roughly what’s in them. And the basic problem is that in the case of climate, very small structures, like clouds, dominate. And you cannot model them in any realistic way. They are far too small and too diverse.

So they say, ‘We represent cloudiness by a parameter,’ but I call it a fudge factor. So then you have a formula, which tells you if you have so much cloudiness and so much humidity, and so much temperature, and so much pressure, what will be the result... But if you are using it for a different climate, when you have twice as much carbon dioxide, there is no guarantee that that’s right. There is no way to test it."

 

[aleCcowaN]

Second, glacial thinning in Patagonia is sharply increasing: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120905110537.htm

Argentine and Santa Cruz Province governments are starting to build La Barrancosa and Condor Cliff dams and hydroelectric power plants on a river that is originated in these glaciers and they're supposed to be a great and expensive project -some 5 or 6 milliard euros- because of the great flow that is in fact originated by the melting glaciers. Regrettably those glaciers are bound to disappear in this climatic context and most models predict dryer conditions for that region in the near future.

Meanwhile the same governments have been delaying lots of less expensive projects on wind power, including the funding for the public company in charge of developing local technology. In the same province, around San Jorge Gulf and closer to the major consuming centres of the country, wind farms have an exceptional capacity factor of 55-58% without being off-shore. Constantly strong West winds are a feature of the zone that is found just in a few places around the world (I can't find images of trees growing in an angle -not northwards but eastwards!- that are common there).

 

[Krikkiter]

True. It's also a pretty accurate description of the conspiracy theory that is at the root of AGW defense. It has nothing to do with science and everything to do with the need for the science statistical criticisms to be a hoax in order to maintain beliefs that would be untenable in a world without AGW. It's basically the same irrationality we see with twoofers and holocaust deniers.
Right.

http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu....yetalPsychScienceinPressClimateConspiracy.pdf

 

[CapelDodger]

Are there seriously still deniers who dispute the basic physics of AGW?

I thought we were way past this.

We're on a nostalgia trip here.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Can you guess what happens to the CO2 when it gets "stored" in the ocean?

Foraminifera incorporate it into calcium carbonate and it precipitates and forms chalk.

Wrong, but thanks for playing. Your answer is close to the canard of "it's food for plants". Phytoplankton is limited by nutrients, not carbonates...It actually forms carbonic acid, changing the carbonate chemistry of the water and lowering the pH.

You mean those chalk beds, like the coal deposits, have lain there since Creation?
Did Adam have a navel?
Did the trees in the Garden have annual rings?

Your inability to read your own language is noted.

The chalk beds were laid in shallow seas under vastly different conditions from the present. I didn't ask you what happened to the CO2 absorbed by the ocean in the Cretaceous, I asked you what happens to it now.

You obviously didn't know what happens, so I tried to educate you. Like so many before in this thread, I appear to have failed.

You mean, where marine organisms once made shells from calcium carbonate, they now use titanium?
You obviously didn't know what happens, so I tried to educate you. Like so many before in this thread, I appear to have failed./QUOTE]

Yes, that the conditions are not the same as the ones that conducted to the creation of the chalk deposits means that the organisms no longer use calcium carbonate.

However, if ocean acidification gets serious enough, coccoliths will no longer produce plates, so then chalk deposits will definitely be off the menu...

Malcolm,
He's a marine biologist.
-Ben

You know this how? If so, he should be able to explain this: ...

Foraminifera (forams for short) are single-celled organisms (protists) with shells or tests (a technical term for internal shells). They are abundant as fossils for the last 540 million years. The shells are commonly divided into chambers that are added during growth, though the simplest forms are open tubes or hollow spheres. Depending on the species, the shell may be made of organic compounds, sand grains or other particles cemented together, or crystalline CaCO3 (calcite or aragonite).

and this

Coccolithophores have long been thought to respond to increased ocean acidity, caused by increasing CO2 levels, by becoming less calcified. In 2008, Iglesias-Rodriguez et al. were surprised to learn that in fact the opposite can happen in at least some circumstances, with the model species E. huxleyi becoming 40% heavier and more abundant in waters of higher CO2 concentration.[2]

Recall: "Can you guess what happens to the CO2 when it gets "stored" in the ocean?"
Dissolved CO2 is biologically sequestered. In a talk at the University of Hawaii, Richard Alley argued against the strategy of CO₂ mitigation through oceanic biological sequestration with oceanic fertilization and precipitation (by, e.g., forams and other organisms with calcite shells) on the grounds that it would give us only 200 years. That's a long time to find a better solution.

Oh, and moderators:...
"Your inability to read your own language is noted."
"You obviously didn't know what happens, so I tried to educate you. Like so many before in this thread, I appear to have failed."

What happened to "Address the argument, not the arguer"?

 

[CapelDodger]

As I noted above, energy stored as biomass is far too small in relation to the ToA imbalance to be a consideration.

Back in the Carboniferous energy was, of course, being stored as the biomass we now refer to as coal. There would, therefore, be a ToA imbalance while that was going on. Just how trivial an imbalance is clear from the fact that if all that coal was burnt in a decade the stored energy released would have no impact at all on global temperatures. Energy that was stored over many millions of years and has powered us to a pretty impressive industrial society in a couple of centuries.

More to the point when it comes to climate is the carbon that was stored by that tiny energy imbalance during the Carboniferous; most of us are well aware of that, of course, but I think it's worth saying .

The requirement for the earth to remain in a relatively constant climate is that the solar energy being absorbed by the earth must equal the infrared energy leaving the top of the atmosphere. Year to year temperature can change a bit depending on how energy is distributed around the atmosphere & ocean but this will be a fairly narrow range. (natural variation in the absence of a long term forcing is ~ +/- 0.2 deg C)

More exactly, year to year surface temperatures (which means ground-level air, in effect) can vary in that range. The average temperature of the entire fluid skim on the planet (water and atmosphere), calculated from volume, heat-capacity and total heat-content, doesn't vary naturally by nearly as much.

I find it ironic that during a La Nina, when surface temperatures are at there lowest and long-term cooling phases have been entered due to Arctic sea-ice recovery and in impending Ice-Age, the fluid system as a whole is gaining heat at its fastest. As the next full-year El Nino will demonstrate (assuming an ice-free summer Arctic doesn't completely swamp the effect).

 

[Mikemcc]

You know this how? If so, he should be able to explain this: ...and thisRecall: "Can you guess what happens to the CO2 when it gets "stored" in the ocean?"
Dissolved CO2 is biologically sequestered. In a talk at the University of Hawaii, Richard Alley argued against the strategy of CO₂ mitigation through oceanic biological sequestration with oceanic fertilization and precipitation (by, e.g., forams and other organisms with calcite shells) on the grounds that it would give us only 200 years. That's a long time to find a better solution.

This explains someof the difference:

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.marine.010908.163834

Acidification will directly impact a wide range of marine organisms that build shells from calcium carbonate, from planktonic coccolithophores and pteropods and other molluscs, to echinoderms, corals, and coralline algae. Many calcifying species exhibit reduced calcification and growth rates in laboratory experiments under high-CO2 conditions, whereas some photosynthetic organisms (both calcifying and noncalcifying) have higher carbon fixation rates under high CO2

 

[CapelDodger]

You know this how? If so, he should be able to explain this: ...and thisRecall: "Can you guess what happens to the CO2 when it gets "stored" in the ocean?"
Dissolved CO2 is biologically sequestered.

Eventually.

In a talk at the University of Hawaii, Richard Alley argued against the strategy of CO₂ mitigation through oceanic biological sequestration with oceanic fertilization and precipitation (by, e.g., forams and other organisms with calcite shells) on the grounds that it would give us only 200 years. That's a long time to find a better solution.

And long enough that somebody else would have to find it. Meanwhile I trust you're voting for candidates who would launch a crash program of oceanic fertilization (assuming the free market doesn't leap in out of self-interest) to keep the problem at bay. Not for candidates who mock the very idea that there's a problem.

Let alone that there are two problems : ocean acidification and AGW.

Oh, and moderators:...
"Your inability to read your own language is noted."
"You obviously didn't know what happens, so I tried to educate you. Like so many before in this thread, I appear to have failed."

What happened to "Address the argument, not the arguer"?

When there's no argument to address but what there is is couched in such pompous and sarcastic tones, this will happen.

 

[BenBurch]

You know this how? ...

Go back and read the thread, and you would know, too.

If forams could deal with the problem in anything like the time frame required, the problem would already be dealt with.

The fact that CO2 keeps rising says that they cannot.

Because they multiply very fast under conditions favorable to them.

So, obviously increased CO2 is not the thing that determines their fecundity.

 

[CapelDodger]

http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu....yetalPsychScienceinPressClimateConspiracy.pdf

As you're no doubt aware, the deniosphere is in an uproar over that, which must be a wonderful distraction from all the nasty climate stuff that just keeps making a bad year worse. It'll be such a relief for them when Arctic sea-ice bottoms out and a record rate of re-freeze (and hence recovery) can be predicted. And corn and soya crops are in, so the bad news can become old news in a week and then become not as bad as alarmists predicted. There may even be snow somewhere.

Lewandowsky's paper itself scores a 9.8 on the Well D'uh Scale, as does the response from all the prima donnas who will be mortified if they weren't thought worth contacting. So after the knee-jerk "he lied about contacting five sceptic sites" they got into competitive discovery of the contact - with McIntyre leading the field, you have to give him credit for smarts. It's a poor field but he's well out in front of it.

Comment 19 here http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/ccc2.html#235, from hengistmcstone, is wonderful.

"The lesson in this is Mr McIntyre et al should be paying more attention to emails addressed to themselves and less attention to reading other peoples."

 

[Reality Check]

Recall: "Can you guess what happens to the CO2 when it gets "stored" in the ocean?"

Recall: The answer is really simple - it changes the pH of the water, reduces the ability of marine organisms that build shells from calcium carbonate (and even kills them!) and so the fraction of the CO2 that is stored biologically reduces.

ETA: This is something that even me (a non-marine biologist) can understand!
Ocean acidification: global warming's evil twin
Ocean Acidification Is Fatal To Fish
and a tutorial on ocean acidification: OA not OK part 1

 

[CapelDodger]

Go back and read the thread, and you would know, too.

If forams could deal with the problem in anything like the time frame required, the problem would already be dealt with.

The fact that CO2 keeps rising says that they cannot.

Remember, we're on a nostalgia trip. It's still the 80's and all the stuff that hasn't happened over the last twenty years can still be predicted. It can all still be about models, not outcomes. The cataract on Lindzen's Iris has yet to become evident. No trials of ocean fertilisation have yet been performed so it can still be presented as a fantasticallly cheap magic bullet. Dallas is on TV and the Arctic sea-ice has just emerged from the shower all hale and hearty; it was all a terrible dream ...

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

When there's no argument to address but what there is is couched in such pompous and sarcastic tones, this will happen.

Dunno what "this" refers to. Alec Cowen's posts remain.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

..No trials of ocean fertilisation have yet been performed so it can still be presented as a fantasticallly cheap magic bullet....

But even if that were the case, why would people dismiss the cheap fix? That suggests that the ostensible problem is not the real problem. This makes skeptics suspicious.