Global Warming and all that stuff.

[varwoche]

Can you cite one good point -- just one -- in the form of recent (say the last 6 six years) peer-reviewed science that counters the body of scientific knowledge showing that AGW is real?

No op-ed pieces or other forms of armchair speculation please.

Nails, I'm still hoping you will do this legwork and try to locate just one peer-reviewed scientific study making a "good point" you refer to. I suspect if you conduct this exercise you might learn that you are misinformed.

Mind you, no op-ed pieces, no Michael Crichton, no bumbling economics professors, no coal mining engineers, no oil industry businessmen, no construction workers, no Lyndon Larouche, no paid Exxon shills, and no "here". And nope, I'm not making it up that these are all sources that have actually been cited here on a skeptical forum by A/GW psuedo skeptics.
___________

One thing we can safely say about Tim Barnett, marine research physicist from Scripps Institute of Oceanography is that he was naive when he said:

The statistical significance of these results is far too strong to be merely dismissed and should wipe out much of the uncertainty about the reality of global warming.

 

[Dave1001]

What is the actual global cooling article published during the '70s in Time or Newsweek or wherever? Anyone have a link to it? I'd like to see what it says and who was quoted.

ETA: This seems as accurate a sum-up and critique of thought at the time as any:

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

 

[politas]

I see you posted another news item about Aussie drought conditions. Well, here's one you conveniently missed posting. I've been telling you this stuff for a while now. You can't keep increasing population without increasing your country's always marginal water supply and infrastructure. Either you're content to blame it on AGW or too cheap to pay more taxes to upgrade. What kind of a water supply do you want to leave for your children? The time for population culling will eventually arrive if you Aussies don't spread some funds around to improve your infrastructure.

Of course, later on in that articles it talks about the dams being at record low levels. Actually looking at the inflow to Australia's dams over the last few years shows a serious drop in the amount of water flowing into the dams. Is there anyone who is surprised that the water spokesman for the Australian Council for Infrastructure Development is claiming the solution is more water infrastructure development? Couldn't be any bias in Mr Dooley's statements there, could there?

As point of fact, there is substantial investment currently in linking NSWs major dams by pipelines, to allow more efficient use of our limited supply, and more is being done. Of course, what this mostly amounts to is taking water away from rural areas in order to funnel it into Sydney, where the Premier recently declared that water restrictions would never be put in place again (Idiot!).

In any case, the fact is that there's less water going into the dams. Less water. Not just less water per head. Less water per dam. More dams, and yet less water. Doesn't sound like the solution is building new dams to me. Dams are a pretty inefficient water storage method, of course, and there are programs aimed at increasing tank storage. (Oh, would that be development of new infrastructure? I think it would.)

 

[Schneibster]

That seems to be a response to me, since I used the word "draconian" in my post.

Actually, not.

So, are you you advocating something more than the most draconian measures conceivable ?

I was responding to that.

There does seem to be some reasonable debate among the experts (and I don't count industry hacks here) about whether current global warming is substantially AGW, which I think should effect our policy decisions too, depending on what scientific consensus is reached on this question. Am I mistaken? Is the scientific consensus that current global warming is subsantially AGW?

The scientific consensus among climate scientists seems to be that it's AGW. And if you do rudimentary guesswork calculations on the amount of CO2 we have been generating since the start of the industrial revolution, along with a quick look at the volume of the atmosphere (don't forget to account for changing density as you move up in altitude), you'll find that the numbers make fairly good sense; certainly well within the correct order of magnitude, and depending on how good a job you did, perhaps even within a factor of 2, pretty good for work on a napkin. In fact, it appears that some of the CO2 we've made is getting absorbed by something, many of the scientists suspect the ocean, because it looks as if there's some missing.

If so, that's good news of sorts, because it implies, among other things, that we as a species have become technologically powerful enough to influence macro global temperature trends. What's left is for us to use that power in more rational ways, and to transition with minimal negative economic impact towards energy systems that don't arbitrarily raise global temperatures regardless of what's in our interest.

Yes, I enjoy discussing policy in tandem with the science. I don't see anything wrong with it -and in my case it's not a backdoor way to obfuscate the scientific consensus on global warming.

I don't mind it either; the problem is, what's the point in discussing policy or what we might do when you've got a bunch of fundies holding a book-burning? The first policy change will need to be to ADMIT THERE'S A PROBLEM. Until that happens nothing changes.

 

[a_unique_person]

Bobk has come up with this map before

Which looks great, Australia actually has an increasing rainfall.

However, when you look at this one.

http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/...iable=rain&region=aus&season=0112&period=1950

You see that all the major population centres have falling rainfall. The rising rainfall areas are thousands of kilometres away, where no-one lives.

People are talking about building pipelines across a continent, but that is going to cost a fortune.

The thing is, the rainfall for various regions is changing, and it is changing due to climate change.

 

[CapelDodger]

Is there anyone who is surprised that the water spokesman for the Australian Council for Infrastructure Development is claiming the solution is more water infrastructure development? Couldn't be any bias in Mr Dooley's statements there, could there?

Which is not to cast aspersions on Mr Dooley, of course. When what you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. It's a common enough phaenomenon.

 

[Verde]

So, are you you advocating something more than the most draconian measures conceivable ?

No, I am suggesting that reducing CO2 emissions may not be the only means to halt global warming.

OK, do you have suggestions as to what else may be used to halt GW?

As I recall, the most favorable of the practical global Carbon Balance proposals would only stop the increase in CO2 levels. To get to even that point would require, as Dave put it, draconian measures; yet would be unlikely to provide a solution.

Ah, but you were talking of something other than the CO2 problem. I am interested to see what you think may be possible here.

My particular concern is with the melting of the permafrost. I do not see it merely as an indication of warming, but rather as a very large source of methane. CH4 is at least an order of magnitude more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Any release provides a positive feedback mechanism.

I hope not to sound like a chicken-little type here, as it would appear that any seriously bad effect is still several generations away. But, a threshold has been crossed, and to claim that we mere humans can effect a cure is, I think, false.

As RHPS puts it, And crawling on the planet's face, some insects called the human race...

 

[a_unique_person]

And here is information on the increase in rainfall to the North of Austalia.

Asian particulate pollution is behind the increase in rainfall, and, as has been stated before, the particle pollution is short lived, CO2 has a long lifetime in the atmosphere.

http://www.csiro.au/csiro/content/standard/ps2l5.html

Even if we build massive infrasrtucture to pipe water from the North to the South, ( a distance of several thousand kilometers), in a short time it could be useless anyway.

“Until now, there has been ample evidence that these particles have important effects on climate in the Northern Hemisphere but little such evidence in the Southern Hemisphere,” says CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research scientist, Dr Leon Rotstayn.
“What we have seen in our latest climate simulations is that the ‘Asian haze’ is having an effect on the Australian hydrological cycle and generated increasing rainfall and cloudiness since 1950, especially over northwest and central Australia. The effect occurs because the haze cools the Asian continent and nearby oceans, and thereby alters the delicate balance of temperature and winds between Asia and Australia. It has nothing to do with Asian pollution being transported directly over Australia.”
Dr Rotstayn says this implies that decreasing pollution in Asia later this century could reverse this effect and lead to an increase in Australian drying trends.
“We are really at the beginning of understanding the trends but sooner or later these emissions will be cleaned up and then a trend of increasing rainfall in the northwest and centre could be reversed. This is potentially serious, because the northwest and centre are the only parts of Australia where rainfall has been increasing in recent decades.”

 

[Schneibster]

My particular concern is with the melting of the permafrost. I do not see it merely as an indication of warming, but rather as a very large source of methane. CH4 is at least an order of magnitude more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Any release provides a positive feedback mechanism.

You got a real nightmare scenario there, and lemme add a little fuel to the fire. Down in the mud on the sea bottoms, mostly in shallow locations, there are these places where methane, a really uncomfortable amount of it in fact, is trapped in ice in a form called "methane hydrate" or "methane clathrate." This stuff is stable up to about 18C, and after that it releases all the methane. So if the ocean gets warm enough...

I hope not to sound like a chicken-little type here, as it would appear that any seriously bad effect is still several generations away. But, a threshold has been crossed, and to claim that we mere humans can effect a cure is, I think, false.

I dunno. We've made it through some pretty tough times- the Wurm ice age, for starters. 'Course, we didn't have much in the way of civilization then. But I'm certainly not ready to give up yet. However, I'll point out yet again that unless a majority of us agree that there's a problem in the first place, there's no point in discussing solutions. And the big problem is, there's all these people with political and economic agendas who are going around making up arguments to try to convince everyone there's no problem because they're scared of what we might have to do to solve it. So I think, in terms of ordering, that we have to take care of that first of all.

As RHPS puts it, And crawling on the planet's face, some insects called the human race...

Hmmm, have you ever come home to find a three-inch wide trail of ants across your kitchen floor and the entire sink and both adjacent counters completely covered with them? I think we're getting to be pretty powerful in terms of our effects on our biosphere, and if we don't start taking a stewardship attitude toward it we're going to wind up in a heck of a mess.

 

[CapelDodger]

My particular concern is with the melting of the permafrost.

In the larger scheme of things, this isn't terribly significant. Compare the carbon stored in the permafrost over the last 12ky or so and the fossil carbon burned over the last two centuries and I think you'll see my point. The effect will be seen in the rate of warming in the shorter scheme of things, the sort of scale that encompasses human lifetimes. Such as ours.

 

[a_unique_person]

Australia drying out.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/natio...rying-australia/2006/12/29/1166895479295.html

SATELLITES have been used to map all of Australia's fresh water for the first time, and the picture is bleak.
In three years, the continent has suffered a net loss of 46 cubic kilometres of fresh water — enough to fill Port Phillip Bay twice.
Initial results of an extraordinary international satellite project provide yet another indication that Australia is drying out.
Based on current consumption patterns of about 1.5 billion litres a day, the water lost could have quenched Sydney's thirst for more than 80 years.
The discovery has been made with two American and German satellites designed to map all the world's water stocks, a task never before possible.
Launched by a Russian rocket in 2002, GRACE, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, involves two identical craft circling 220 kilometres apart, 485 kilometres up.
By repeatedly plotting variations in the tug of Earth's gravity, GRACE can estimate changes in the mass of all the water below — "even water in aquifers", said Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine.
It also measures water in river basins and reservoirs.
While the main findings will not be published until next year, Professor Famiglietti calculated the overall decline observed in Australia's fresh water.
Australia lost the 46 cubic kilometres between February 2003 and January this year

 

[Verde]

You got a real nightmare scenario there, and lemme add a little fuel to the fire. Down in the mud on the sea bottoms, mostly in shallow locations, there are these places where methane, a really uncomfortable amount of it in fact, is trapped in ice in a form called "methane hydrate" or "methane clathrate." This stuff is stable up to about 18C, and after that it releases all the methane. So if the ocean gets warm enough...

Ah, I had forgotten about that. "In nature, one cubic meter of hydrate turns out to contain up to 164 m3 of methane." Mind you, if the sea-bed gets to 18C we would probably have a few other problems.

I dunno. We've made it through some pretty tough times- the Wurm ice age, for starters. 'Course, we didn't have much in the way of civilization then.

And that could be a significant difference. Of course, there are them what would say that we are are not particularly civilized at the moment.

But I'm certainly not ready to give up yet.

Well, of course not! I'm not talking about giving up, as in throwing my hands in the air and laying down in front of the next bus. I have a great life, a wonderful family, but I still wouldn't recommend to my grandchildren that they buy ocean-front property in Florida. (The oldest is only 18months old, so he may not grasp the concept quite yet.)

However, I'll point out yet again that unless a majority of us agree that there's a problem in the first place, there's no point in discussing solutions. And the big problem is, there's all these people with political and economic agendas who are going around making up arguments to try to convince everyone there's no problem because they're scared of what we might have to do to solve it. So I think, in terms of ordering, that we have to take care of that first of all.

That's pretty close to what really gets my goat. I have no doubt whatsoever that there is a problem. I have no doubt that us Anthropos had a part in it. I do have strong doubts that we can do anything in the long term to fix things. However, at the local and immediate level there is a lot that can be done, and needs to be done. Air quality is the big thing here in the city, but there are many concerns that get swamped by the directions of the Political winds. GW is just a good excuse for whatever policy du-jour they wish to push. But then, government is us, and it's the best money can buy.

I think I'm getting into a bit of a rant now, so I'll stop.

Hmmm, have you ever come home to find a three-inch wide trail of ants across your kitchen floor and the entire sink and both adjacent counters completely covered with them?

Boy, your kitchen sounds worse than mine, and that is really saying something!!

 

[Verde]

In the larger scheme of things, this isn't terribly significant. Compare the carbon stored in the permafrost over the last 12ky or so and the fossil carbon burned over the last two centuries and I think you'll see my point.

Not really. We're talking the products of carbon, not carbon itself. The volume of the permafrost is enormous, and biological degradadation is very efficient. It also generates methane, not that little wimpy CO2 that human activity produces.

The effect will be seen in the rate of warming in the shorter scheme of things, the sort of scale that encompasses human lifetimes. Such as ours.

I'm certainly interested in the short-term, as my life is pretty darned important to me, but most of my comments were focused on the longer term general human situation.

 

[BobK]

AUP,

Since you put great stock in climate models, just thought I'd post this item.

THE drought gripping southeast Australia is due to natural variations in climate rather than the greenhouse effect.
The finding, based on CSIRO research, undermines claims - made by South Australian Premier Mike Rann at a water summit in Canberra last month - that Australia is in the grip of a one-in-1000-years drought.

"It is very, very highly likely that what we are seeing at the moment is natural climatic variability," researcher Barrie Hunt has told The Australian, saying the CSIRO's model of 10,000 years of natural climate variability put the current drought into perspective.

I wonder how far "very, very highly likely" is from 100%. I guess AGW isn't causing your water woes.

You said.

People are talking about building pipelines across a continent, but that is going to cost a fortune.

California's annual rainfall in no greater that Australia's. Yet the population is more than one and 1/2 times that of your entire continent. Enormous sums of money have been spent on the water infrastructure. I would suggest this one item alone is a major reason they have an economy that would give them a world rank of about eight if they were a country.

You complain about the drought. You complain about infrastructure costs. Is it your intention to just keep complaining? You seem to be unwilling to acknowledge that increasing population is only going to make things worse unless you people start spending some serious funds on water supply upgrades.

Find sand, insert head, doesn't work forever.

 

[The Atheist]

California's annual rainfall in no greater that Australia's. Yet the population is more than one and 1/2 times that of your entire continent. Enormous sums of money have been spent on the water infrastructure. I would suggest this one item alone is a major reason they have an economy that would give them a world rank of about eight if they were a country.

Haven't you got a chicken/egg scenario here?

If there wasn't the population, the infrastructure wouldn't be needed and given the size of the Ca. economy, the expenditure is isn't a problem.

Not to mention the size disparity between Ca. and Oz - it's easier to suppy someone 100km away than someone 2100km away.

 

[politas]

OK, do you have suggestions as to what else may be used to halt GW?

No, I'm not a climate scientist.

 

[rockoon]

Some hoary old myths never die. Who was going on about global cooling when?

Should I do your legwork?

They even suggested a solution to global cooling might be covering the polar caps with black soot in order to melt them!

The environmentalists were 'skeptical' that world governments would do what was 'necessary' to prevent the recession back into an ice age.

They cried that there will be major food shortages worldwide.

Doom Doom Doom

The actual problem talked about in the 70's was acid rain, and the solution proposed was to reduce sulphur emissions from fuel, which has subsequently been done. Not exactly "the same", is it?

Um, they talked about that too.

They talked about global cooling. They even talked about global cooling in front of the U.S. Congress.

Here is a newsweek article from 1975:

http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf

A time article from 1974:

http://www.junkscience.com/mar06/Time_AnotherIceAge_June241974.pdf

That last one is a classic because it says that the global mean temperature had quickly dropped by an amazing 2.7 degrees fahrenheit and noted this figure was backed up by other 'convincing data' (hello mr proxy)

Don't you think in retrospect its probably a good thing that we didnt react and pour soot over the ice caps?

Now we have 'convincing data' about AGW. Maybe in retrospect it will be a good thing that kyoto wasn't invoked? I think thats highly likely.

The trouble with data mining is that you can't tell the difference between cause, effect, coincedence, and noise. Its not science.

 

[Dave1001]

Should I do your legwork?

They even suggested a solution to global cooling might be covering the polar caps with black soot in order to melt them!

The environmentalists were 'skeptical' that world governments would do what was 'necessary' to prevent the recession back into an ice age.

They cried that there will be major food shortages worldwide.

Doom Doom Doom



Um, they talked about that too.

They talked about global cooling. They even talked about global cooling in front of the U.S. Congress.

Here is a newsweek article from 1975:

http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf

A time article from 1974:

http://www.junkscience.com/mar06/Time_AnotherIceAge_June241974.pdf

That last one is a classic because it says that the global mean temperature had quickly dropped by an amazing 2.7 degrees fahrenheit and noted this figure was backed up by other 'convincing data' (hello mr proxy)

Don't you think in retrospect its probably a good thing that we didnt react and pour soot over the ice caps?

Now we have 'convincing data' about AGW. Maybe in retrospect it will be a good thing that kyoto wasn't invoked? I think thats highly likely.

The trouble with data mining is that you can't tell the difference between cause, effect, coincedence, and noise. Its not science.

What do you think about claims on the wikipedia global cooling link that most scientists were skeptical of global cooling theories, that institutional reports such as from the National Academy of Science primarily claimed that what was needed was more study, and that the mechanism causing cooling at the time was uncertain, in contrast to what appears to be a much greater scientific consensus today both about global warming and its primary causes.

 

[rockoon]

What do you think about claims on the wikipedia global cooling link that most scientists were skeptical of global cooling theories, that institutional reports such as from the National Academy of Science primarily claimed that what was needed was more study, and that the mechanism causing cooling at the time was uncertain, in contrast to what appears to be a much greater scientific consensus today both about global warming and its primary causes.

I think that the mechanism which caused the cooling is still uncertain, but hey why bother working on that when you can work on data mining for the mechanisms 'causing' the new scare instead?

They have a 'consensus' do they? That can be argued but its actualy moot to argue it. A consensus isn't science. A hypothesis followed by a series of relevant tests is science. An untested hypothesis isnt even a theory. Tell me, is AGW a hypothesis or a theory?

 

[a_unique_person]

AUP,

Since you put great stock in climate models, just thought I'd post this item.


I wonder how far "very, very highly likely" is from 100%. I guess AGW isn't causing your water woes.

You said.

California's annual rainfall in no greater that Australia's. Yet the population is more than one and 1/2 times that of your entire continent. Enormous sums of money have been spent on the water infrastructure. I would suggest this one item alone is a major reason they have an economy that would give them a world rank of about eight if they were a country.

You complain about the drought. You complain about infrastructure costs. Is it your intention to just keep complaining? You seem to be unwilling to acknowledge that increasing population is only going to make things worse unless you people start spending some serious funds on water supply upgrades.

Find sand, insert head, doesn't work forever.

I have flown over California and Australia. California has massive snow capped mountains, and has diverted a lot of the water from the Colorada River. Australia has nothing like the mountains that the USA has, and nothing like the rivers it has in the South. To divert the Northern Rivers from the top of Australia to the South is just not feasible with current technology and costs, given the vast distances involved. As I said already, the whole of Western Europe would fit inside Australia. Australia is not much smaller than the whole of the United States. I doubt anyone would think of a project to send water from Germany to Spain, California to New York.

"With its diverse climate and landscape, California contains the greatest variety of rivers found anywhere in the United States. Over the last 150 years these rivers have been dammed, diverted, polluted, lined, and leveed to supply the needs of an expanding population and economy. In spite of these changes, rivers and the waters they carry remain one of California's most significant natural hazards and most contested resources"--Jeffrey Mount, California Rivers and Streams.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/WRCA/exhibit.html#colo

Australia doesn't have that resource to tap.


http://www.ga.gov.au/education/facts/dimensions/compare.htm

You deride models, but they are the best explanation we have. To say that they are not perfect is just stating the bleedin obvious. To risk manage, they are all we have.