Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[aleCcowaN]

Not with your English I think, as much as with a common unfamiliarity with the Rankine scale, and the fact that it counts backwards. (Thanks wiki, as I was part of that group too).

Rankine is to Fahrenheit what Kelvin is to Celsius, so they all go "forward". It's Delisle scale the one "counting backwards", meaning, with lower temperatures assigned to warmer events.

This shows how important is to be precise (reasonably precise, as precise as possible without wasting time and resources). The whole "4? more like 8" might be just Celsius and Fahrenheit, that is, to be speaking about the same thing. Or it may not. So, I'm still intrigued.

Deniers can be as much sloppy as they want -or naturally becomes them-, but that is a luxury that "warmers" can't allow ourselves.

 

[jimbob]

Rankine is to Fahrenheit what Kelvin is to Celsius, so they all go "forward". It's Delisle scale the one "counting backwards", meaning, with lower temperatures assigned to warmer events.

This shows how important is to be precise (reasonably precise, as precise as possible without wasting time and resources). The whole "4? more like 8" might be just Celsius and Fahrenheit, that is, to be speaking about the same thing. Or it may not. So, I'm still intrigued.

Deniers can be as much sloppy as they want -or naturally becomes them-, but that is a luxury that "warmers" can't allow ourselves.

Ah I was getting confused (you put 6°D) in there.

I think it is lack of context...

Were you talking about a 6K drop due to global dimming in reply to post #6511?

 

[aleCcowaN]

Ah I was getting confused (you put 6°D) in there.

I think it is lack of context...

Were you talking about a 6K drop due to global dimming in reply to post #6511?

I understand that macdoc was ironizing about the short-termed global "dimming" effect of a circumstantial increase of coal burning on part of China -and others- and the long-termed effect of the humongous volume of CO2 we release each day (21 months of it are enough to cover Belgium with a 100%-CO2 layer one kilometre thick) which implies a lot of warming come and to come -including the warming still "in the pipe"-, which may increase global temperatures in an average of 4°C even with the mild measures already in progress to curb its effect. But I may be wrong, so I hope macdoc and Ben will clear up what they were talking about.

 

[CapelDodger]

Cool... or, as I posted back in '08

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=15845http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_28149d1e907d3f18.jpg

No doubt the inspiration for the SkS version. You have always been a Grandmaster of the Graph .

 

[CapelDodger]

But I may be wrong, so I hope macdoc and Ben will clear up what they were talking about.

The cooling effect is there, of course, and is to some extent masking AGW. China and India are reproducing what happened in North America and Europe thirty or forty years ago, and at some point they'll clean their act up as well. The situation in China is unsustainable even in the short-term.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

True, you have not convinced me that forams and other plankton have switched from CaCO3 to titanium.

That is such a stupid thing to try to convince anyone of... no doubt you can link to the post where I tried to do such a doltish thing. Unless you're lying, of course.

While you're looking, you can review the posts I did write, and read my explanations on why your answer was wrong.

Because despite your apparent belief to the contrary, I didn't just assert that you were wrong, I explained why in quite some detail.

This is such a stupid thing to try to convince anyone of. This self-proclaimed academic asked what happens (present tense) to dissolved CO2. I answered that forams incorporate it into CaCO3 and it precipitates as chalk. I should have said "foraminifera and other plankton". I supposed that that was understood. Our "expert" then responded that there has to be some limit beyond which this process will (future tense) fail.

...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 mean, where marine organisms once made shells from calcium carbonate, they now use titanium?

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...
(note future tense)...definitely be off the menu...

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Related.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Someone can also explain in a better English than mine about gas solubility decreasing with temperatures and why warm waters are so transparent and not the ideal place for fisheries. Opening either a Coke, beer or champaign will show what happens with CO2 in water when temperature is lower or higher. Certainly, having a bottle of warm champaign and removing the cork to see it foamy and spilled all over the place is not an example of what is going to happen to the seas in the -inescapable- event of more warming, but everyone can think of the seas absorbing CO2 in the actual conditions and deduct what is going to happen with that capacity if more CO2 drives to a warmer world with warmer oceans.

I was taught that the relative infertility of tropical oceans relative to sub-polar oceans related to bacteria.
Your champagne froths in response to a decrease in pressure. True, warm beers will froth more than cold ones.
Oceans will release dissolved gasses in response to warming from other causes (e.g., increase in insolation). This suggests to me that feedbacks are not "runaway" (one-directional) or the Earth would have seen the predicted warming crisis before.

 

[Megalodon]

You're back... yay...

This is such a stupid thing to try to convince anyone of. This self-proclaimed academic asked what happens (present tense) to dissolved CO2.

Not that it matters, but can you quote where I proclaimed myself an academic. I am one, regardless of your approval, but IIRC it was Ben who referred to it in this thread.

I answered that forams incorporate it into CaCO3 and it precipitates as chalk. I should have said "foraminifera and other plankton". I supposed that that was understood. Our "expert" then responded that there has to be some limit beyond which this process will (future tense) fail.

I suppose that sarcasm tags or smilies are needed when responding to stupid claims, but that doesn't mean I'll use them. I do not give a damn about your little games, and your attempts to score points on anything but science. So yes, my reply to "You mean, where marine organisms once made shells from calcium carbonate, they now use titanium?", is still "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."

I could explain to you, once again, that the fact that new CO2 is entering the surface water increases the DIC content, not the TA. Actually the DIC increase reduces the pH, effectively reducing the TA pool. It's from this pool that the cocco's remove carbonates to form plates. Once the pH is low enough, it will be much harder for the cocco's to produce plates, and they won't. But this are two different matters in our present ocean.

Effectively, the CO2 we are introducing will not be captured as carbonates, AND cocco's can still produce plates by capturing carbonates! Isn't it funny how nature doesn't abide to one's simplistic views of how things should work?

So, in some part of the Hypothetic Ocean, there could theoretically be occurring at this moment enough sedimentation of cocco's to create chalk deposits. It's not, as far as I'm aware, but it could. In a few decades it will not be possible even theoretically.

Now, you have two options: either learn something, or have this explanation pasted into every revisiting of this subject, until you learn something...

 

[Megalodon]

I was taught that the relative infertility of tropical oceans relative to sub-polar oceans related to bacteria.

No, you both got it wrong. Ocean productivity has mostly to do with the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water. Since there is little upwelling going on in the tropics you have warm but nutrient depleted water, so no growth and transparent waters. Of course, when coastal upwelling events occur the productivity sky-rockets, but the temperature also decreases.

Your champagne froths in response to a decrease in pressure. True, warm beers will froth more than cold ones.

Yes, but I think Alec meant that a cold glass of champagne remains bubbly for longer than a warm one. That sort of accelerated de-gassing will happen in the surface of the oceans, and the ocean will become a net source of CO2 emissions.

Oceans will release dissolved gasses in response to warming from other causes (e.g., increase in insolation).

Yes they will... however we do know that no such increase was observed in the recent decades.

This suggests to me that feedbacks are not "runaway" (one-directional) or the Earth would have seen the predicted warming crisis before.

When exactly? Please show your math regarding "increased insolation" vs temperature increase (if possible SST increase).

 

[Dancing David]

Related.

1989
1989
1991

Those are some great sources on recent research.

 

[r-j]

This suggests to me that feedbacks are not "runaway" (one-directional) or the Earth would have seen the predicted warming crisis before.

That there is no evidence of any kind of a warming disaster, due to runaway feedbacks, in the entire climate history of our planet, this seems to be one main reason for intelligent scientists to criticize the alarming predictions.

That sort of alarming talk also does a great deal of damage to somebodies credibility. Especially since it is easy to take the scrubbers off of coal plants and send the planet back into a little ice age.

It's ironic that coal produces so much CO2, but also produces SO2 if not cleaned. Would we be in a little ice age if nobody scrubbed coal? If there never was a clean air act?

In any case, if some terrible disaster is created (as most believe), to predict nobody will do anything about it is stupid. If it really is CO2 man will remove it.

But based on recent history, in regards to many things that nobody questions, forcing man to stop doing stupid things is almost impossible. Like over fishing, fertilizer run off, oil spills, mercury poisoning, deforesting, killing off entire species, nuclear disasters, over use of antibiotics, and on and on and so forth.

How does anyone force the rest of the world to do as they are told? In some ways it's like nuclear power. How do you stop a country from building reactors, and bombs, when you yourself are doing it? For the US to tell the world to reduce carbon is like the fat person at the table insisting everyone else stop eating so much.

OK that drifted all over the place.

tl:dr

There has never been runaway global warming, even when the earth was much hotter than now

 

[bobwtfomg]

Wow what a strawman!
CO2 absorbs IR radiation (the greenhouse effect) so increasing the amount in the atmosphere warms the earth's surface until the energy being radiated from the earth is equal to the amount it's recieving, while there are feedbacks both +ve and -ve, it is heading to a new equilibrium. Whist the level of that equilibrium depends on the level of CO2 and other GGs in the atmosphere, and some +ve feedbacks such as methane released from the permafrost haven't been taken into account in the IPCC projections, no scientist AFAIK has ever seriously predicted runaway +ve feedbacks or runaway global warming.

 

[r-j]

I read that Climatologist James Hansen writes in his book Storms of My Grandchildren that burning coal and mining shale oil will result in runaway greenhouse on Earth.

 

[Corsair 115]

I read that Climatologist James Hansen writes in his book Storms of My Grandchildren that burning coal and mining shale oil will result in runaway greenhouse on Earth.

I'm not sure what purpose is served by making a second-hand claim about what Hansen has written in a book. Is it that hard to confirm what Hansen himself has actually written?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

1989
1989
1991

Those are some great sources on recent research.

The point was the failure of peer reviewed literature and the reliance on argument from credentials by journal editors, reporters, and even specialist scientists. I thought that was obvious, since the science at issue was immunology, not atmospheric physics, marine carbon sequestration, dendrochronology, or geochemistry.

 

[Pixel42]

Hansen is quoted here:

http://www.sindark.com/2010/02/04/is-runaway-climate-change-possible-hansens-take/

The paleoclimate record does not provide a case with a climate forcing of the magnitude and speed that will occur if fossil fuels are all burned. Models are nowhere near the stage at which they can predict reliably when major ice sheet disintegration will begin. Nor can we say how close we are to methane hydrate instability. But these are questions of when, not if. If we burn all the fossil fuels, the ice sheets almost surely will melt entirely, with the final sea level rise about 75 meters (250 feet), with most of that possibly occurring within a time scale of centuries. Methane hydrates are likely to be more extensive and vulnerable now than they were in the early Cenozoic. It is difficult to imagine how the methane clathrates could survive, once the ocean has had time to warm. In that event a PETM-like warming could be added on top of the fossil fuel warming.

After the ice is gone, would Earth proceed to the Venus syndrome, a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently? While that is difficult to say based on present information, I’ve come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty.

So he's talking about a very much worse care scenario. My impression is that most climatologists think the chances of a runaway greenhouse effect are very small, but not zero.

 

[lomiller]

That there is no evidence of any kind of a warming disaster, due to runaway feedbacks, in the entire climate history of our planet, this seems to be one main reason for intelligent scientists to criticize the alarming predictions.

What are you calling “runaway feedback” ? There is no such thing as no such thing as unbounded runaway feedback in a finite universe. What can happen is a localized runaway that eventually reaches a new stable state and stops. This happens during de-glaciations, for example.

While the earth hasn’t experienced an event where the new stable state couldn’t support life, Venus has undergone just such an event. The generally accepted view is that for the earth to follow in Venus’s footsteps the oceans would need to evaporate first. There probably isn’t enough carbon in fossil fuels to accomplish this, but there is at least one highly respected climate scientist who disagrees and thinks that if we burn everything there is a chance of a Venus style runway.

It's ironic that coal produces so much CO2, but also produces SO2 if not cleaned. Would we be in a little ice age if nobody scrubbed coal? If there never was a clean air act?

SO2 has a much shorter lifespan in the atmosphere than CO2 so over time the CO2 always wins. I’ve seen it suggested that a coal power plant will have a cooling effect for 10 - 20 years but after that there is warming, and if you ever shut the plant down there is rapid warming.

If it really is CO2 man will remove it.

How? The reason we release CO2 is to get the energy associated with releasing it. If we decide we want to lock it up again where do we get the energy to do that?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

You're back... yay...

Not for long, given...

... stupid claims... I do not give a damn about your little games...your attempts to score points on anything but science....simplistic views...

Now, you have two options: either learn something, or have this explanation pasted into every revisiting of this subject, until you learn something...

Or, avoid "stupid" people who play "little games" to advance "simplistic views".
See you all in another week or so, maybe. The strident, unmoderated ad hominem that passes for argument around here is tiresome.

 

[lomiller]

Hansen is quoted here:

http://www.sindark.com/2010/02/04/is-runaway-climate-change-possible-hansens-take/



So he's talking about a very much worse care scenario. My impression is that most climatologists think the chances of a runaway greenhouse effect are very small, but not zero.

Maybe it was a different discussion, but IIRC he’s basing this on the fact while all this CO2 was in the atmosphere at some time in the past the Sun is considerably hotter now and the combination of more energy from the Sun and large amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere would be enough to kick the planet out of a habitable climate range.

Not quite the same topic, but there is a maximum temperature + humidity in which mammals can survive. If the tropics were to warm 3-4 degrees some humid places would be unable to support mammalian life.