Global warming discussion III

[aleCcowaN]

Let's do some clarifications:

The report says if the world continues to spew greenhouse gases at its accelerating rate, it's likely that by mid-century temperatures will increase by about another 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) compared to temperatures from 1986 to 2005. And by the end of the century, that scenario will bring temperatures that are about 6.7 degrees warmer (3.7 degrees Celsius).

http://phys.org/news/2014-08-panel-glob ... erous.html

I add: A lot of news sites parrot this

That is a poisonous, lying paragraph, mala fide; a plain immorality of who wrote it and the whole lot that repeated it.

The Synthesis Report of AR5 is not available yet, but it hardly is going to contradict the summaries for policy makers of all three working groups. From that summary, by WG2:

Here you have that 3.7°C as the "result" of model runs with the RCP8.5 scenario. Nobody with a modicum of information -a few hours reading about the subject- can claim total ignorance about that scenario. It's an old scenario defined in the 90s that supposes mankind in a context of demographic increase, crazy consumerism, relatively slow technological advance and innovation, and ****-you-planet generalized attitude towards the environment. Its name came from the radiative forcing expected by 2100: 8.5 W/m2 above the normals in the 80s, more than 7.5W/m2 above today's.

Of course, models continue to evolve, not only taking advantage of added computing capacity but slowly evolving from "some fixed fraction of the heat is trapped by the ocean" into the current few earth-system models that coexists today with a lot of "vintage" modelling. By 2008-2012 (the time it was developed what the current IPCC's report uses), this scenario was supposed to provoke an increase of about 3.7°C by 2100 (you may follow the scenario evolution through different reports)

The fact is that this scenario is indeed impossible. Our actual behaviour has diverged from the path originally proposed for that scenario and our technology evolves real fast while our natality declines faster than originally proposed in that scenario.

Let's compare this scenario with the other classic ones. From so many papers describing these scenarios, I'm choosing this one. Here's the energy matrix for that scenario and its comparison with the other three by 2100.

This scenario supposes that by 2100 about half of our energy would be coming from coal, some 800 Exajoules per year from coal, about 30 GTons of coal with about 100 GTons of carbon dioxide thrown in the atmosphere every year, only from coal. You can see this scenario not even imagined fracking and the newly added natural gas sources.

Our actual behaviour as a species is very questionable, but it's moving us into a path between the rcp6.0 and rcp4.5, the first if denialists win, the latter if some common sense prevails. Rcp2.6, an ideal path that projects little change in temperature -see figure above- is as impossible as 8.5.

The fact is that the crappy phrase «The report says if the world continues to spew greenhouse gases at its accelerating rate...» has nothing to do with scenario 8.5 and its 3.7°C, so, it's just terrorism (or denialist infiltration ).

And this, just ignoring the elephant in the room: that the 3.7°C were gotten with some 75% of models having serious blemishes. The average of the four main earth-system models is around 2.4°C for this extreme 8.5 scenario, some 1 to 1.5 for what we are probably going to do as a species.

Another topic that should have some hundreds of posts debating it in this thread, but it won't...

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Does anyone ignore that the oceans need to gather 5 x 10²⁴J (one year worth of solar radiation, including that carried in shortwave that is bounced back into space) to warm 1°C as an average.

IIRC, the specific heat of air is considerably smaller than that of water, meaning that an amount of heat that causes very small warming of the oceans would cause a significantly larger warming of the atmosphere.

Besides, how can that warm "swing back" without contradicting the laws of thermodynamics (that is, how does water which warmed from 4°C to 4.1°C to return in turn as heat at the surface of a planet that averages 15°C)

A few guesses:
1) Where the air is warmer than the water, the temperature gradient is reduced which reduces the heat transfer from air to water;
2) The average temperature might be 15C, but it does get colder than 4C at certain times in certain places;
3) Anything that increases the evaporation rate will result in an indirect transfer of heat from ocean to atmosphere through latent heat. Is there any reason that warming of the oceans will directly or indirectly increase the evaporation rate?

 

[Reality Check]

Besides, how can that warm "swing back" without contradicting the laws of thermodynamics (that is, how does water which warmed from 4°C to 4.1°C to return in turn as heat at the surface of a planet that averages 15°C)

That assertion is a bit of a problem for the existence of the oceans, aleCcowaN !
You are assuming that the oceans will warm up every time that the atmosphere warms and will not cool down when the atmosphere cools down. But the atmosphere has swung from warming to cooling many times in the last 4 billion years. The implication being that the oceans should have warmed up and boiled away a long time ago!

 

[Reality Check]

Does anyone ignore that the oceans need to gather 5 x 10²⁴J (one year worth of solar radiation, including that carried in shortwave that is bounced back into space) to warm 1°C as an average.

No one is ignoring this, aleCcowaN. You may be interested in the Skeptical Science Heat Widget

Our climate is absorbing a lot of heat. When scientists add up all of the heat warming the oceans, land, and atmosphere and melting the ice, they find our climate is accumulating 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs worth of heat every second.

 

[Reality Check]

Let's do some clarifications:

That is a poisonous, lying paragraph, mala fide; a plain immorality of who wrote it and the whole lot that repeated it.

You need to clarify some things, aleCcowaN:
What are the poisons in the paragraph.
What the lies in the paragraph.
What was the immorality of the authors.
What was the immorality of the whole "lot that repeated it".

Or was that just an kneejerk tirade?

UN panel: Global warming human-caused, dangerous (Update)

The report says if the world continues to spew greenhouse gases at its accelerating rate, it's likely that by mid-century temperatures will increase by about another 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) compared to temperatures from 1986 to 2005. And by the end of the century, that scenario will bring temperatures that are about 6.7 degrees warmer (3.7 degrees Celsius).

I cannot see any poison or lie or immorality there. A link to the actual draft of the synthesis report is missing though.

 

[DC]

If global warming actually becomes a problem, we know how to stop it.

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/511016/a-cheap-and-easy-plan-to-stop-global-warming/

Of course some country with military jets could also use this to destroy the economy (and starve a billion people), if they wanted to. By simply doing it until we return to a little ice age.

AGW is already a problem, your denial does not make it a non problem.
this "solution" has never been tested m we don0t know if it works, we don't know the consequences.

 

[aleCcowaN]

IIRC, the specific heat of air is considerably smaller than that of water, meaning that an amount of heat that causes very small warming of the oceans would cause a significantly larger warming of the atmosphere.

What is this supposed to mean in relation with the text by me you quoted? I'll wait for your answer. Meanwhile, the specific heat of air is almost exactly a quarter or water's. I don't think you meant that while using considerably smaller. You might be thinking in terms of mass and thermal inertia. The ocean/air weight ratio is around 200:1. You have specific qualifications in your profile that may me expect some precision and clearer purpose in your writing.

A few guesses:
1) Where the air is warmer than the water, the temperature gradient is reduced which reduces the heat transfer from air to water;
2) The average temperature might be 15C, but it does get colder than 4C at certain times in certain places;
3) Anything that increases the evaporation rate will result in an indirect transfer of heat from ocean to atmosphere through latent heat. Is there any reason that warming of the oceans will directly or indirectly increase the evaporation rate?

Very strange. Three unrelated points that don't see the climate as a system.Your planet seems to orbit a white dwarf and maybe it even doesn't spin. I mean, heat transfer from air to water seems to be significant in such a planet. And if you were talking of back radiation in point one, the conclusion seems to point in the opposite direction. I'm not sure not because a lack of knowledge but because I don't know what was really in your mind when you wrote that, like staring at a hair in the trunk and calling it "elephant".

Point 2 is true, but that is already happening and, in a generally warming atmosphere with an ocean that follows the trend behind, the area where that statement is true tends to shrink, so the answer is less and lesser. Anyway, not significant as those 4°C going to 4.1°C in my example are way deeper than the mixed layer, and the fact that you find such temperatures in the very surface doesn't imply that was what I meant. On second thought, if I was talking about the whole ocean as a heat sink it was quite obvious that wasn't what I meant.

About the same -but more extended- with point three. You seem to be mixing processes that work on a daily basis on the surface with what was the point in the paper: variations of the deep ocean as a heat sink in the long term. Sorry to say, but your whole post seems a collection of free associations shaped in the form of bait. I'm sure you'll make clear these points and dispel any cloud. So far, it looked a bit idle and not really an argumentation.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Speaking of ocean heat pools in the Northern Atlantic, at the surface this time, is Cristobal going to reach Iceland as a hurricane?

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

What is this supposed to mean in relation with the text by me you quoted? I'll wait for your answer. Meanwhile, the specific heat of air is almost exactly a quarter or water's. I don't think you meant that while using considerably smaller. You might be thinking in terms of mass and thermal inertia. The ocean/air weight ratio is around 200:1. You have specific qualifications in your profile that may me expect some precision and clearer purpose in your writing.

Did not your post contain the implication that it would take an enormous amount of energy to create a small warming of the oceans.

Very strange. Three unrelated points that don't see the climate as a system.Your planet seems to orbit a white dwarf and maybe it even doesn't spin. I mean, heat transfer from air to water seems to be significant in such a planet. And if you were talking of back radiation in point one, the conclusion seems to point in the opposite direction. I'm not sure not because a lack of knowledge but because I don't know what was really in your mind when you wrote that, like staring at a hair in the trunk and calling it "elephant".

Is the reason that my furnace runs more on a really cold day than on a somewhat cold day solely due to colder air seeping into a non-air tight building or is some of the extra heat loss due to greater loss through the walls because of the larger temperature gradient between the interior and the exterior?

Point 2 is true, but that is already happening and, in a generally warming atmosphere with an ocean that follows the trend behind, the area where that statement is true tends to shrink, so the answer is less and lesser. Anyway, not significant as those 4°C going to 4.1°C in my example are way deeper than the mixed layer, and the fact that you find such temperatures in the very surface doesn't imply that was what I meant. On second thought, if I was talking about the whole ocean as a heat sink it was quite obvious that wasn't what I meant.

A colder mass of air is warmed by the ocean so that as it gets warmer the heat flux from the ocean to the air decreases is an argument against the proposition that heat can flow from the ocean to the atmosphere?

About the same -but more extended- with point three. You seem to be mixing processes that work on a daily basis on the surface with what was the point in the paper: variations of the deep ocean as a heat sink in the long term.

Actually, the transfer of energy to the atmosphere through latent heat release, especially through latent heat release in tropical convention, is a major driver of the general circulation. Wasn't the question how warming can get from a colder ocean to a warmer atmosphere? Or isn't my English comprehension very good?

 

[aleCcowaN]

And yet moving again several steps out of the point.

Did not your post contain the implication that it would take an enormous amount of energy to create a small warming of the oceans.

Yes, so you were just rounding the notion then.

Is the reason that my furnace runs more on a really cold day than on a somewhat cold day solely due to colder air seeping into a non-air tight building or is some of the extra heat loss due to greater loss through the walls because of the larger temperature gradient between the interior and the exterior?

There seems to be a question mark belonging to your previous paragraph. Both as a question or as an assertion I fail to see any relation of this paragraph with mine, with the corresponding paragraph in your previous point, and with my original sentence. I don't see which "gradient" is in your mind ("gradient" because, do you have any doubt what direction the heat flows in your wall? Here, only architects call "gradient" the temperature function in a wall and its surroundings).

The fact is there's close to null transmission of heat from hot air to cooler water because of the very reason you named elsewhere: latent heat of evaporation. There's some, by night, in the opposite situation, but it's more important in land. The problem is, we were talking of the deep ocean as heat sink in terms of decades, so we're no talking of heat transactions completed in, at most, a circadian cycle. And basically, radiation and latent heat of evaporation are the almost exclusive mechanisms of heat exchange between two (almost, for the sake of simplification) transparent media.

If you want to change the subject, go ahead, but take care of defining what the new subject is.

A colder mass of air is warmed by the ocean so that as it gets warmer the heat flux from the ocean to the air decreases is an argument against the proposition that heat can flow from the ocean to the atmosphere?

Do you want my reply to that question totally unrelated to the quoted paragraph? Again, if you want to change the subject, be explicit. And please, keep tabs on where you are talking of heat exchange between warmer air and cooler open water or cooler air and warmer open water.

Actually, the transfer of energy to the atmosphere through latent heat release, especially through latent heat release in tropical convention, is a major driver of the general circulation. Wasn't the question how warming can get from a colder ocean to a warmer atmosphere? Or isn't my English comprehension very good?

Can you parse this phrase of yours for me: «how warming can get from a colder ocean to a warmer atmosphere»? Referred to my original paragraph you quoted, I add: "yes, you are mixing processes". Again, if you want to discuss a new different subject, go ahead, but define the subject first. My reply to "wasn't the question ..." definitively is "what question? quote the text with what you believe to be the question".

I like talking with you but these verbal Rorschach inkblot tests must come to an end.

As a general reflection for you -and everybody-, does what you have written lately look like the way a trained professional in exact sciences communicate?

 

[Mikemcc]

AGW is already a problem, your denial does not make it a non problem.
this "solution" has never been tested m we don0t know if it works, we don't know the consequences.

To be fair, there was a bit of unintended testing in the 60s and 70s, and acid rain was not a particularly good thing...

 

[TellyKNeasuss]

Yes, so you were just rounding the notion then.

Let's see. The specific heat of water is about 4 times that of air. The mass of the oceans is about 500 times the mass of the atmosphere. If I did the math correctly, that means that the heat needed to warm the oceans by 1C would warm the atmosphere by 2000C.

There seems to be a question mark belonging to your previous paragraph. Both as a question or as an assertion I fail to see any relation of this paragraph with mine, with the corresponding paragraph in your previous point, and with my original sentence. I don't see which "gradient" is in your mind ("gradient" because, do you have any doubt what direction the heat flows in your wall? Here, only architects call "gradient" the temperature function in a wall and its surroundings).

The fact is there's close to null transmission of heat from hot air to cooler water because of the very reason you named elsewhere: latent heat of evaporation. There's some, by night, in the opposite situation, but it's more important in land. The problem is, we were talking of the deep ocean as heat sink in terms of decades, so we're no talking of heat transactions completed in, at most, a circadian cycle. And basically, radiation and latent heat of evaporation are the almost exclusive mechanisms of heat exchange between two (almost, for the sake of simplification) transparent media.

If you want to change the subject, go ahead, but take care of defining what the new subject is.

Do you want my reply to that question totally unrelated to the quoted paragraph? Again, if you want to change the subject, be explicit. And please, keep tabs on where you are talking of heat exchange between warmer air and cooler open water or cooler air and warmer open water.

You raised the question of how warming the oceans could result in warming the atmosphere if the oceans were still cooler than the average temperature of the atmosphere. I posted 3 possible ways. You can accept or reject them, but it seems that you prefer to post word salad instead.

s a general reflection for you -and everybody-, does what you have written lately look like the way a trained professional in exact sciences communicate?

Is this a new requirement that anyone posting here must be a professional scientist? Your posts hardly look like something written by a scientist.

 

[macdoc]

No more pause: Warming will be non-stop from now on

18:00 31 August 2014 by Michael Slezak
For similar stories, visit the Climate Change Topic Guide
Enjoy the pause in global warming while it lasts, because it's probably the last one we will get this century. Once temperatures start rising again, it looks like they will keep going up without a break for the rest of the century, unless we cut our greenhouse gas emissions.

http://www.newscientist.com/article...will-be-nonstop-from-now-on.html#.VAOnLUtuFic

snip

Using 31 climate models, they showed that if emissions keep rising, the chance of a hiatus – a 10-year period with no significant warming – drops to virtually zero after 2030. The current hiatus will probably be followed by rapid warming as the heat trapped in the ocean escapes back into the atmosphere, so we are unlikely to get another decade of no warming before 2030. England believes it could be another century or more before the next hiatus.

While we see these in glabal terms....clearly the northern regions are seeing higher gains.....what is the projection for nothern temperate and higher???
If Canada's winters are up 3.3 C in 60 years....where are we headed with this steadier increase??

Clearly regional impacts differ...seasonal impacts differ.
Focusing on global increases of x per decade ignores those areas that are in the amplified zones.

Stalling weather systems are not helping either.

 

[macdoc]

some hiatus....

Antarctic sea-level rising faster than global rate
Date:
August 31, 2014
Source:
University of Southampton
Summary:
A new study of satellite data from the last 19 years reveals that fresh water from melting glaciers has caused the sea-level around the coast of Antarctica to rise by 2cm more than the global average of 6cm. Researchers detected the rapid rise in sea-level by studying satellite scans of a region that spans more than a million square kilometers. The melting of the Antarctic ice sheet and the thinning of floating ice shelves has contributed an excess of around 350 gigatonnes of freshwater to the surrounding ocean.

more
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140831150207.htm

no wonder there is a lot of sea ice as well - easier to freeze lower salinity water.. Speeding glaciers and run off...interesting times in the far down under.

 

[Lennart Hyland]

Anyone seen the documentary "The Global Warming War"? I have a link and a password too it if anyone want to wast 1 hour Though I dont know if I'm allowed to link it here...

 

[macdoc]

T'would seem to be a denier fluff piece....am I correct?

 

[r-j]

Never heard of it before.

http://www.theglobalwarmingwar.com/

Science says if it is skeptical it must be wrong.

 

[Mikemcc]

It's Svensmark's Cosmic Ray silliness.

 

[r-j]

What is up with this cosmic ray nonsense? Next thing you k now, somebody will publish a paper that blames the changing sunlight from cosmic cycles for climate change.

 

[CapelDodger]

What is up with this cosmic ray nonsense? Next thing you k now, somebody will publish a paper that blames the changing sunlight from cosmic cycles for climate change.

Sunlight comes from cosmic cycles? That's news.