Global warming discussion III

[bit_pattern]

yeah saw that episode, that was Katharine Hayhoe. As an Atheist i was noding my head in agreement about her cliamtology statements and rolling my eyes about here god stuff
but liked her effort.

in the other story, the old Pastor let his daughter, that accepted AGW speak to the sheeple in the church to explain it to them, after they visited that fischerman

I was similarly torn, lol, but that idea of speaking to people's values is an important one for all communicators to understand I think (although I am terrible at it personally)

 

[DC]

Oh my, the revisionism begins.


Of course it should be easy to quote and link to these posts. Cite please.





(it will never happen, because he made that up)

did i explain AGW to you several times or not?

 

[Belz...]

You exemplify the scientific expertise of the world.

And that's a bad thing, right ? We all know that scientists are a bunch of frauds who are trying to... er... I don't know -- what's the point of global warming again ?

 

[greybeard]

And the oceans. CO2 is water soluble, and cold water holds more than warm. As temperatures rise the oceans warm and release some of their dissolved CO2, as they fall the oceans cool and absorb it again, but there's a lag. It typically takes several centuries for the oceans to switch from being a net source of CO2 to a net sink when temperatures start to drop, and vice versa.

Atmospheric samples trapped in ice cores tell us that atmospheric CO2 goes from about 200ppm during periods of glaciation to about 300 ppm at the peak of an interglacial.

ETA: Incidentally nearly half of the CO2 we've put into the atmosphere has been absorbed by the oceans. This is causing its own problems:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

That is something else that the contrarians tend to sweep under the carpet. We are subjecting the planet that our very existence depends on to a huge experiment.

However, while the chemistry is predictable, the details of the biological impacts are not. Although scientists have been tracking ocean pH for more than 30 years, biological studies really only started in 2003, when the rapid shift caught their attention and the term "ocean acidification" was first coined. What we do know is that things are going to look different, and we can't predict in any detail how they will look. Some organisms will survive or even thrive under the more acidic conditions while others will struggle to adapt, and may even go extinct. Beyond lost biodiversity, acidification will affect fisheries and aquaculture, threatening food security for millions of people, as well as tourism and other sea-related economies.

Link here.

Also geologically unusual is the rate at which ocean chemistry is currently changing. While the geological record is incomplete, sometimes difficult to interpret, and with the potential for as yet undiscovered surprises, we would probably have to go back at least 65 million years (the time at which the dinosaurs went extinct) to maybe find an ocean chemical change as fast as we are experiencing today (Ridgwell & Schmidt 2010. The rate of change is important as organisms with longer generation times and used to living and evolving in relatively stable environments such as cold water corals (e.g., Lophelia) (Maier et al. 2009) may be unable to adapt quickly enough if their environment changes very rapidly.

It is important to recognise that there may be winners as well as losers as a consequence of ocean acidification, either because some species may actually ‘prefer' lower pH, or because reductions in numbers of one species will leave more resources available for another. However, changes taking place in marine resources and the species we eat may be costly — or simply unpopular — to adapt to. Proposals to neutralise the acidity in the ocean and/or extract CO2 from the atmosphere (e.g., Kheshgi 1995) are currently at the drawing-board stage and likely to be more costly still. Natural processes will eventually act to re-set the chemistry of the ocean, but these processes — dissolution of carbonate sediments lying at the bottom of the ocean and the weathering of rocks on land — require many hundreds of thousands of years to occur (Ridgwell & Schmidt 2010).

Link here.

Of course the marine environment is going to suffer a double whammy. Warming seas and acidification.

 

[macdoc]

It is very serious but yes there will be winners and losers as niches are filled.

I'd almost suggest a thread on acidification as the 900 lb gorilla being ignored.
One of the scientists noted the CO2 absorbed from 50 years ago is showing up in the shallows now where the most damage will occur - there is not one thing we can do to ameliorate that....as he says " the train has left the station"

This is the Monaco accord

30 January, Paris - More than 150 leading marine scientists from 26 countries are calling for immediate action by policymakers to reduce CO2 emissions sharply so as to avoid widespread and severe damage to marine ecosystems from ocean acidification. They issued this warning in the Monaco Declaration, released on 30 January.

The scientists note that ocean acidification is already detectable, and is accelerating. They caution that its negative socio-economic impacts can only be avoided by limiting future atmospheric CO2 levels.

Prince Albert II of Monaco has urged political leaders to heed the Monaco Declaration as they prepare for climate negotiations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this year. “I strongly support this declaration, which is in full accord with my efforts and those of my Foundation to alleviate climate change,” he said.


The Monaco Declaration is based on the Research Priorities Report developed by participants at last October’s 2nd international symposium on The Ocean in a High-CO2 World, organized by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP), with the support of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and several other partners.


“The chemistry is so fundamental and changes so rapid and severe that impacts on organisms appear unavoidable.” said James Orr of the Marine Environment Laboratories (MEL-IAEA) and chairman of the symposium. “The questions are now how bad will it be and how soon will it happen. The report from the symposium summarizes the state of the science and priorities for future research, while the Monaco Declaration implores political leaders to launch urgent actions to limit the source of the problem.”

http://www.ioc-unesco.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=99&Itemid=112

 

[greybeard]

In the UK we have experienced the warmest year so far since records began.

In 1963 the average temperature between January and September was 7.8C. It got warmer over the following decades, reaching a peak in 2006 when temperatures between January and September were 10.2C.
That record was broken this year - temperatures to September have been 10.6C. September 2014 was not only the warmest on record, it was also the driest September on record, though the period between January and September this year was still the sixth wettest due to this year’s winter rain.
According to Bob Ward, policy and communications Director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in London, the figures show the inexorable march of climate change in the UK. Climate change is not an issue for far in the future, he says, something to think about in 50 years’ time, but it is happening now.

The weather has been very nice for much of the time as well if you weren't one of those devastated by last winters floods that is.

 

[hgus]

You exemplify the scientific expertise of the world.

You have said it, so it must be true.

Again, your reasoning can not be refuted.

Now you are just being silly!

 

[Belz...]

"Now" ?

 

[ehcks]

http://www.natureworldnews.com/arti...anded-in-alaska-due-to-melting-arctic-ice.htm

A band of 35,000 Pacific walrus are stranded in northwest Alaska, one of the last places they have to rest ashore, for melting Arctic ice is robbing them of their beach real estate, according to reports.

According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, reductions in summer and fall sea ice have prompted the agency to consider granting Endangered Species Act protections to the Pacific walrus.

Well that's just awful.

 

[CapelDodger]

but when you create something like a WHI (World heat index) and take the heat content of the atmosphere and the oceans together, you also have only one number.

True, but it's a new number and remember who we're dealing with - they are easily confused by new things.

Also, with a Surge coming, is this really the time? We've had the Pause (up to here, frankly ), now let's exploit the Surge and enjoy the sight of AGW deniers suddenly insisting that OHC does matter after all.

 

[a_unique_person]

Just an aside about the Oregon petition. This from the first search result on google. It happens to be wikipedia but it's backed up with sources.



Yet we see people who are wiling to believe it's bona fide in the science section of a sceptic forum.

Don't touch that raw data!

 

[CapelDodger]

When a new hottest year on record is set every few years (1998, 2005, 2010), does it make any sense to talk about when it was still warming?

It really doesn't, does it? And even less so when 2011 was the warmest La Nina year on record.

Intriguingly, we may be living through the warmest ENSO-neutral year on record. Only two months to go for the meteorological year, three for the calendar year. Of course all of this only refers to surface warming but hey, that's what grabs the headlines.

 

[CapelDodger]

Don't touch that raw data!

Good point - I hope somebody archived the original before the Disney characters were adjusted out.

 

[macdoc]

Intriguingly, we may be living through the warmest ENSO-neutral year on record. Only two months to go for the meteorological year, three for the calendar year. Of course all of this only refers to surface warming but hey, that's what grabs the headlines.

I'm not surprised - the weather here in NA is behaving as if it were an ENSO year.
The current advisory still shows 60-65% chance of El Nino.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.pdf

This colorful map of ground temperature shows the tapestry of American weather on September 30. Undeniably beautiful, it owes its rich color gradient to a powerful new scientific tool for modeling the weather for incredibly small chunks of both time and space.

After five years of work, NOAA unveiled the new model, called High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR), on September 30. Like its predecessor, HRRR will update every hour. But, HRRR fine tunes the forecast every 15 minutes by constantly digesting radar reports, so that the hourly update is as accurate as possible. Each forecast starts with a 3-D radar snapshot of the atmosphere that it modifies with data from NOAA’s vast network of weather stations, balloons, and satellites.

The added timeliness is important, but where the HRRR really shines is in its spatial resolution. While the previous model could only model the weather in 8-mile chunks, HRRR has a 2-mile spatial resolution. This is important because even a small front can contain dozens of individual storms. Forecasters will have the ability to read the weather on a neighborhood scale, rather than a city-wide scale.

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/hrrr-weather-map/

This rather dramatic image from a new 3km weather map from NOAA shows a classic east coast flow of warm air...it was a lovely 24 here in Ontario today going down to 3 on Sunday.

 

[CapelDodger]

I'd almost suggest a thread on acidification as the 900 lb gorilla being ignored.

I've long suspected that the first mass culling event will originate in the oceans. It's not just acidification that's a problem, of course; there's also industrialised fishing and pollution. The oceans are being beaten to death, and it's just a question of how long it takes.

 

[macdoc]

This is a very depressing docu on just that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6WOvY_C-_I

 

[CapelDodger]

Originating from Kestrel :

Using the term hiatus is misleading. The heating effect caused by the increase in CO2 continues, getting a bit stronger every year. But in some years the effect may be masked by cooling linked to events such as the El Niño cycle or volcanic eruptions.

A paper was published in 2005-ish which determined that such is the scale of noise compared to signal that a decade, or even two, without surface warming is not only possible but to be expected - and the term "hiatus decade" was introduced. I can't recall who wrote the paper , but I do remember the AGW denier cult misrepresenting it as a prediction that we were in for two decades of cooling starting right then.

 

[CapelDodger]

Semantics aside, the conclusions you're trying to draw from Cohen et al. are a gross misrepresentation. The authors don't seek to argue that the modelling (not the theory) is wrong, rather that they are incomplete at seasonal timescales- something that no climate modeller would reject. The theory can be perfectly sound even if there are uncertainties at regional and seasonal scales. Work like that conducted by Cohen et al. simply serve to improve the higher resolution understanding of the theory.

I've been looking at the NH winter trend using http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global and r-j's preferred measure of NH Land Dec-Feb 1995-2014 which shows cooling, and I've found some interesting things. December in that period shows warming - slight, but it's there. January the same. February shows a cooling. So r-j's "winters are cooling" reduces to " NH Februarys are cooling".

Why might this be? Increased snow-cover in the higher latitudes comes to mind. December will start with fairly low cover, and by the time it builds up the Sun is low. The Sun remains low through January, but by February it's getting fairly high. So the increased albedo effect can be expected to be at its highest in February - the month showing cooling.

One obvious test (obvious but not sufficient, of course) is to look at ocean temperatures for February, since there's no snow-cover there. And that shows warming - still slight, but it's there. So maybe I'm onto something. I could even suggest a mechanism to explain the increased snow-cover.

Of course somebody might have beaten me to it ...

 

[r-j]

You are confusing two different things. Cohen et al used 1988-2010 for their 2012 paper, and 1990-2014 for the latest. They are looking at the cold areas, not the entire NH. They make no claims about global averages and the boreal winter.

I've been looking at the NH winter trend using http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global and r-j's preferred measure of NH Land Dec-Feb 1995-2014 which shows cooling, and I've found some interesting things. December in that period shows warming - slight, but it's there. January the same. February shows a cooling. So r-j's "winters are cooling" reduces to " NH Februarys are cooling".

It's good that you are checking, because that is how science works.

Now check the snow extent records and you will see the mechanism Cohen et al proposes, as well as what various other papers about this are discussing.

It's hard to argue for a direct connection still. But it's a good hypothesis.

 

[CapelDodger]

I was similarly torn, lol, but that idea of speaking to people's values is an important one for all communicators to understand I think (although I am terrible at it personally)

When you've got 'em by their values their hearts and minds will follow.