Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Matt Giwer]

A question for folk here more in tune with the issues than I am. My understanding is it takes a lot of energy to thaw a ton of ice. Is much of the heat energy being added due to greenhouse gasses being consumed by the melting of the polar ice instead of raising temperatures?

I hesitate to answer as your question is not framed in terms of physics. A question based upon misapprehensions cannot be answered clearly. So let me start at the top and with a very broad brush as the concepts are not always simple.

Yes it takes a lot of energy to thaw a ton of ice but it also requires losing an equal amount of energy to produce a ton of ice.

The only simple fact in glaciers is their size is determined by how much snow is added in winter against how much melts in summer. If more is added than melts they grow and vice versa.

The first complexity comes from the colder the air the less snow and thus less is added in winter. It works out that because snow depends upon the moisture capacity of the air is unrelated to the freezing and melting point a colder winter can result in retreating glaciers because the rate of winter increase is not exactly balanced by summer melting.

Of course that is not the case as we can see the difference in glaciers as we move between the poles and the equator. The problem is by this first order analysis it should not be so easily observable.

And that is because of several second order effects on top of altitude contributing.

The currently popular example is Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa. It is almost on the equator. It as a rapidly retreating glacier. ALL the predictions regarding warming say the least effects will be at the equator yet the Kilimanjaro glaciers are retreating.

This has been explained. The windward side used to be jungle that created a lot of moisture which the winds blew to higher altitudes where it precipitated as snow. Today the windward side is farmland where a premium is on avoiding losing water to evaporation. Thus there is less added as snow but the melting is the same to the glacier retreats.

I have no interest in discouraging you as you appear to be thinking right but simply missing some basics. Formulating the question as to come before collecting the data and formulating the math. But understanding requires neither. But understanding the complexity of the problem does not imply being able to calculate an answer.

Most physics is not hard to understand it is simply different from everyday experience. The difficulty is in "separating the variables" when thinking about a problem as different from common knowledge. It is just a different way of thinking. It can be fun if you approach it right. Not all that easy but I did have one success interesting a musician type in seeing it was as much fun as understanding the foundations of composition. Admittedly only one but if you give it a try you might enjoy it.

 

[CapelDodger]

A question for folk here more in tune with the issues than I am. My understanding is it takes a lot of energy to thaw a ton of ice. Is much of the heat energy being added due to greenhouse gasses being consumed by the melting of the polar ice instead of raising temperatures?

I've seen some numbers on this, and the energy involved is relatively little. Huge in absolute terms, of course, but a tiny fraction of the energy absorbed by the oceans, which is where most of it's going.

 

[lomiller]

A question for folk here more in tune with the issues than I am. My understanding is it takes a lot of energy to thaw a ton of ice. Is much of the heat energy being added due to greenhouse gasses being consumed by the melting of the polar ice instead of raising temperatures?

It takes a lot of energy to melt ice, the worlds entire nuclear arsenal probably would not be enough to melt the ice Greenland is losing each year but this is still tiny in comparison to what even a small amount of greenhouse warming.

Most of the energy ends up in the oceans. IIRC the yearly energy added to the worlds oceans by current 3W/m^2 forcing is larger then the impact energy of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

 

[macdoc]

SciAm had a full article on it in the 50s.

••

Good article here on the convergence of information turning a skeptic to an activist....

The Flipping Point
How the evidence for anthropogenic global warming has converged to cause this environmental skeptic to make a cognitive flip
By Michael Shermer May 22, 2006 17

snip

It is a matter of the Goldilocks phenomenon. In the last ice age, CO2 levels were 180 parts per million (ppm)--too cold. Between the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, levels rose to 280 ppm--just right. Today levels are at 380 ppm and are projected to reach 450 to 550 by the end of the century--too warm. Like a kettle of water that transforms from liquid to steam when it changes from 99 to 100 degrees Celsius, the environment itself is about to make a CO2-driven flip.

According to Flannery, even if we reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by 70 percent by 2050, average global temperatures will increase between two and nine degrees by 2100. This rise could lead to the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which the March 24 issue of Science reports is already shrinking at a rate of 224 �41 cubic kilometers a year, double the rate measured in 1996 (Los Angeles uses one cubic kilometer of water a year). If it and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melt, sea levels will rise five to 10 meters, displacing half a billion inhabitants.

Because of the complexity of the problem, environmental skepticism was once tenable. No longer. It is time to flip from skepticism to activism.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-flipping-point

and that was 4 + years ago....the evidence and the GW have both grown...

 

[lomiller]

I hesitate to answer as your question is not framed in terms of physics. A question based upon misapprehensions cannot be answered clearly. So let me start at the top and with a very broad brush as the concepts are not always simple.

Eh? It was really a pretty simple physics question.

How much energy it takes to melt a Km^2 of ice straightforward to calculate, so multiple that by the ice lost each year which is documented well enough for a rough answer at least. Likewise how much extra energy the earth is retaining is fairly straightforward to calculate, simple take the documented radiative forcing and multiply it by the surface area of the earth.

edit
that should be Km^3

 

[CapelDodger]

Far from ignoring it several years ago the melters declared warming could mean cooling and therefore they are willing to use and have use both warmer and colder to declare warming is happening.

It's the warming of the globe which demonstrates global warming. Who these "melters" are is anybody's guess : I guess they're a fabrication myself. I've never heard any scientist claim that AGW will lead to global cooling, and why would it?

In other news up is down and left is right.

Neither is, in fact, the case.

Reciting well known facts such as the inapplicability of statistics to deterministically created data is doing no more than reminding people of the well known facts. I emphasize reminding as one must know such elementary facts to discuss the subject.

It's more about trying to sound clever without having any substance, I suspect.

Statistics can be applied to time-series data to determine trends. If those trends are caused by something, they are deterministic. These may not be well known facts, but facts they are.

I recited the facts which establish there is in fact a media conspiracy.

I do not accept your recitation as establishing anything. You first claimed "the media" had decided to announce a conspiracy, you then refined "the media" to mean a group of journalists (I suppose one could argue that "the media" is "a group of journalists", but a group of journalists is not "the media"). Nowhere do you provide any evidence for this, unless it's held up in moderation. You'll forgive me if I don't simply take your word for this.

That is all I said. I have not presented an opinion on UCAR but the link silent on the matter.

However I can click on the link and discover its funding is derived from six agencies of the US government. Speaking from personal experience all six of those agencies promote political agendas. That UCAR might be immune from the political nature of its sponsors is beyond imagining.

Again, I'm sure you'll forgive me for not putting much store by your "personal experience". You might be pleased to hear that there are atmospheric institutions outside the US who are not subject to the policy-making of these insidious gumment agencies and they come to the same conclusions.

Presumably these agencies' political agendas were determined by the Cheney Administration for most of the 2000's, but it's hard to see any evidence of it in UCAR's work at that time.

Some evidence for something you claim would be nice to see. Just taking your word for it is simply not in my nature, and that doesn't make me unusual around here.

 

[CapelDodger]

Unsurprisingly most of the ideas of even the best minds of the 19th c. have been found to be in error.

No they haven't, in science at least. Many have been found to be insufficient, but that is not equivalent to being in error. Science made enormous advances in the 19thCE, on which foundations yet more advances have been made.

These errors were largely due to simplifications to make the matter tractable but did not in fact represent a true analysis. You are reciting errors which have since been corrected.

For example in 1) the simplification was that CO2 was sort of a mirror high up in the atmosphere the reflected heat back.

This is not the case. The infra-red spectrum was discovered in the late 18thCE, and Fourier was not postulating any sort of mirror in 1824.

Of course CO2 is at all altitudes. It relies upon reflected heat having a longer wavelength that is absorbed and re-radiated by CO2. Note the short wavelength heat passes through. What is missed is that most of the heat the earth receives is at the longer wavelengths. The more CO2 the less gets through in the first place.

Most of the energy the Earth receives is in the visible spectrum - shorter wavelengths than infra-red. The energy which is not reflected straight back is absorbed by the global system (mostly at the surface, but a little in the atmosphere).

Next it is clearly not a "mirror" reflecting heat back.

Nobody but you has suggested otherwise.

Rather being at all levels it is nothing more than a contribution to the heat capacity of the air at the same temperature.

Meaningless.

It was demonstrated by experiment nearly 100 years ago that greenhouses are warm solely because they trap warmed air and has nothing whatsoever to do with long wavelength IR not escaping.

I'm sure we can agree that "greenhouse effect" is a very unfortunate name for the phaenomenon. Let's keep greenhouses out of it, they really aren't relevant.

One has to remark upon the nonsense intrinsic in talking about a "greenhouse' gas when greenhouses are known not to increase in temperature by means of containing infrared.

Indeed, so let that be the end of it.

The 1910 or so experiment simply replaced glass which does "trap" IR with sheets of salt which are transparent to long wave IR and thus does not "trap" heat.

Presumably you're referring to the experiment designed by Angstrom, which was of dismal quality. See http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm for details. Where rock-salt comes into it is anybody's guess.

The internal temperature of both greenhouses was essentially the same. Trapping and no trapping but the same temperature. As there is no temperature change in a real greenhouse whether or not there is IR trapping it is difficult to accept what does not happen in a greenhouse would happen for the entire world for the same reason which has been demonstrated to be false.

Greenhouses aside, the inaptly-named greenhouse effect has in fact been observed. Demonstrably.

In any even the 1910 experiment was conceived as a test of the 19th c. theoretical pronouncements and demonstrated they were false. Theory is great but experiment rules.

Indeed, and there's an absolutely enormous experiment going on right now. You may not have noticed yet but you will soon enough.

I do not see the point of this repertoirial posting of material which is well known to be refuted by experiment.

Many errors can be described as well-known, or "commonly held". You're holding one yourself.

These sources are no different from, although less well known than, the equally scientific sources saying man can never fly nor leave the earth nor survive travelling more than 50 miles per hour.

(Never put too much faith in a Royal Astronomer, I say.) Angstrom's errors are well-known around here, and now you know about them as well. Or will when you read the referenced piece.

What is the point of these posts? Why regale the thread with the equivalent of "man can never fly" pronouncements discredited a century ago? It is annoying to say the least. The posts are as a priori as nonsensical as "man can never fly."

Sense can derive from an erroneous proposition, such as yours (that the greenhouse effect has been falsified by experiment). What doesn't make sense is the idea that the world of science kinda missed Angstrom's announced result despite him being a big name (one of the biggest) and the fact that his result held up research into the effect for decades.

 

[JonathanQuick]

Climate News from the science press

What the world needs is many, many more papers, and much, much more *research* to confirm what every Global Warmist claims is absolutely factual.

Meanwhile, thousands of Global Warmists are dining at taxpayers' expense in Cancun, Mexico.

No need to videoconference and practice what you preach when you can fly and dine on the public dime.

Punchbowl full of hypocrisy, anyone?

Here is a list of more Global Warming Conferences for Hypocrites.
Be sure you attend every single one, while the hypocrites themselves call for anthropogenic carbon dioxide reductions of 80%.

How they will continue to fly and dine on the public dime while cutting their own footprint 80% has yet to be explained. Nor will it ever be.

http://www.conferencealerts.com/environment.htm

 

[Mikemcc]

What the world needs is many, many more papers, and much, much more *research* to confirm what every Global Warmist claims is absolutely factual.

Meanwhile, thousands of Global Warmists are dining at taxpayers' expense in Cancun, Mexico.

No need to videoconference and practice what you preach when you can fly and dine on the public dime.

Punchbowl full of hypocrisy, anyone?

Here is a list of more Global Warming Conferences for Hypocrites.
Be sure you attend every single one, while the hypocrites themselves call for anthropogenic carbon dioxide reductions of 80%.

How they will continue to fly and dine on the public dime while cutting their own footprint 80% has yet to be explained. Nor will it ever be.

http://www.conferencealerts.com/environment.htm

What we would wish for is just one scientific paper that conclusively disproves AGW. Unfortunately it ain't going to happen. The papers may refine our understanding of it, but the chance of them disproving it is vanishingly small. But this is OT, the discussion thread is thatta way --------------->

 

[Geckko]

SciAm had a full article on it in the 50s.

••

Good article here on the convergence of information turning a skeptic to an activist....



snip



http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-flipping-point

and that was 4 + years ago....the evidence and the GW have both grown...

That was indeed a disppointing article from Shermer.

What is interesting though and something I would like to discuss with Shermerm should I ever meet him is a comparison of his 2006 statement that

"skepticism was once untenable. No longer."

with his more recent comment I read:

"what now appears to be reasonably solid evidence for anthropogenic global warming"
http://www.michaelshermer.com/2010/


Either he has softened, not hardened his view on dangerous AGW, or he holds the opinion that "reasonably solid evidence" is sufficent to make "skepticisim untenable" for a subject.

Logically the former is more likely than the latter for Shermer I would suggest.

 

[Geckko]

What we would wish for is just one scientific paper that conclusively disproves AGW. Unfortunately it ain't going to happen. The papers may refine our understanding of it, but the chance of them disproving it is vanishingly small. But this is OT, the discussion thread is thatta way --------------->

I am waiting for something that conclusively proves the Dangerous AGW hypothesis.

The hypothesis must be able to validate itself surely, tested on its ability to make accurate prediction (not simply to make prediction).

Skeptics tend to note that no matter what the observable data and whatever the prior predictions, everything is classed as "consistent with" the hypothesis.

Predict an increase in hurricane numbers and force; witness no trend; conclusion - consistent with.

Predict an acceleration in sea level rise; witness no accelration or even decelration; conclusion - consistent with.

Predict declining Southern Hempisphere sea ice; witness no change or even increase in SH sea ice; conclusion - consistent with.

Predict 2 degree per century temperature trend; witness no trend or singificantly reduced trend; conclusion - consistent with.

There is a limitless number of examples.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Meanwhile, thousands of Global Warmists are dining at taxpayers' expense in Cancun, Mexico.

No need to videoconference and practice what you preach when you can fly and dine on the public dime.

Punchbowl full of hypocrisy, anyone?

Here is a list of more Global Warming Conferences for Hypocrites.
Be sure you attend every single one, while the hypocrites themselves call for anthropogenic carbon dioxide reductions of 80%.

How they will continue to fly and dine on the public dime while cutting their own footprint 80% has yet to be explained. Nor will it ever be.

http://www.conferencealerts.com/environment.htm

Speaking of hypocrisy, you seem to be using a computer. Here is a list of conferences for computer scientists:
http://campus.acm.org/calendar/

Publication of research results at conferences, together with the accompanying personal interactions (both critical and collaborative), serve to advance the field, ultimately improving the lives of computer users such as yourself.

That's likely to be just as true for environmental sciences as for computer science.

 

[BenBurch]

"Predict declining Southern Hempisphere sea ice" - not predicted. Southern Hemisphere will be the last to react. And you KNOW this, and are being mendacious.

And you ALSO know that the effects predicted are predicted to be SMALL in the present. And you know that we are only just now at the point where they are above the error bars.

So, stop with the political army of straw.

 

[Mikemcc]

I am waiting for something that conclusively proves the Dangerous AGW hypothesis.

The hypothesis must be able to validate itself surely, tested on its ability to make accurate prediction (not simply to make prediction).

Skeptics tend to note that no matter what the observable data and whatever the prior predictions, everything is classed as "consistent with" the hypothesis.

Predict an increase in hurricane numbers and force; witness no trend; conclusion - consistent with.

Predict an acceleration in sea level rise; witness no accelration or even decelration; conclusion - consistent with.

Predict declining Southern Hempisphere sea ice; witness no change or even increase in SH sea ice; conclusion - consistent with.

Predict 2 degree per century temperature trend; witness no trend or singificantly reduced trend; conclusion - consistent with.

There is a limitless number of examples.

You'll have a long wait for something like that, nothing like imposing impossible hurdles.

As for accurate predictions. The main problem now is that a lot of the predictions are too conservative. For instance, AR4 sea-level rise predictions ignored ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica because the data they had at the time of writing was not considered to be sufficient quality. CO2 production is still tracking along the worst case scenario. HadCRUT3 consistantly under-estimates temperature rise because it ignores the polar regions where the warming has been the strongest... That's just three examples off the top of my head without having to go digging for info.

 

[Mikemcc]

I am waiting for something that conclusively proves the Dangerous AGW hypothesis.

The hypothesis must be able to validate itself surely, tested on its ability to make accurate prediction (not simply to make prediction).

Skeptics tend to note that no matter what the observable data and whatever the prior predictions, everything is classed as "consistent with" the hypothesis.

Predict an increase in hurricane numbers and force; witness no trend; conclusion - consistent with.

Predict an acceleration in sea level rise; witness no accelration or even decelration; conclusion - consistent with.

Predict declining Southern Hempisphere sea ice; witness no change or even increase in SH sea ice; conclusion - consistent with.

Predict 2 degree per century temperature trend; witness no trend or singificantly reduced trend; conclusion - consistent with.

There is a limitless number of examples.

My second thought about your post is that the proof you are after is not how scientific study is conducted. Supporting studies only contribute to the body of supporting evidence, it cannot 'prove' a theory, only show that it is more likely to be true. It can dis-prove a theory.

 

[lomiller]

I am waiting for something that conclusively proves the Dangerous AGW hypothesis..

FYI asking for “conclusive proof” is a rejection of science itself, which by its nature never conclusively proves anything. Real sceptics don’t ask for conclusive proof they ask for evidence, and in the absence of sound contradictory evidence accept that evidence at face value. This is why you will generally see qualifiers like “reasonably sound evidence” when sceptics address scientific concepts.

The hypothesis must be able to validate itself surely, tested on its ability to make accurate prediction

What “predictions” has evolution made? By it’s very nature all evolution can “predict” are things that have happened long ago and it’s more accurate to say this evidence fits the model. Climate science, of course can and does make similar predictions.

Skeptics tend to note that no matter what the observable data and whatever the prior predictions, everything is classed as "consistent with" the hypothesis.

Complaining “there must be something wrong because all the evidence is consistent with the theory” is generally associated with conspiracy theories, not sceptics.

Predict an increase in hurricane numbers and force; witness no trend; conclusion - consistent with.

Don’t make up your own “predictions”. There is little agreement on number of hurricanes, some even predict global warming will decrease the number of hurricanes. There is more acceptance that global warming will result in stronger hurricanes but isn’t very well quantified. The evidence does suggest stronger hurricanes, however.

Predict an acceleration in sea level rise; witness no accelration or even decelration; conclusion - consistent with..

Another strawman, if not an outright falsehood. The last IPCC report for example specifically avoided the issue of acceleration in sea level rise. There is considerable emerging science to point to > 1m of sea level rise over the next 100 years and the record of the past 100 and even the last 50 does show acceleration in sea level rise.

Predict declining Southern Hempisphere sea ice; witness no change or even increase in SH sea ice; conclusion - consistent with.

Again, this has never been a prediction. The prediction is warmer air and water temperatures in the southern hemisphere, and this prediction has been validated. Regardless of sea ice, air and water temperatures match predicted increases.

Predict 2 degree per century temperature trend; witness no trend or singificantly reduced trend; conclusion - consistent with..

The second half of that statement is outright false, there is simply no evidence to support any change in warming trends.

 

[lomiller]

You'll have a long wait for something like that, nothing like imposing impossible hurdles.

And moving goalposts. It’s a little like ID’ers who like to talk about the “holes” in the fossil record rather then the record itself and say that because there are “holes” we need to be “sceptical”.

 

[macdoc]

Originally Posted by Geckko
I am waiting for something that conclusively proves the Dangerous AGW hypothesis.

The hypothesis must be able to validate itself surely, tested on its ability to make accurate prediction (not simply to make prediction).

Perhaps tell us what accurate predictions plate tectonic theory has produced....

You are not asking honest questions - you are merely being rhetorical in a sarcastic manner...
You have a set of pre-drawn conceptions you are trying to forward under the cloak of skeptical inquirer.

Just more of the same as noted here...

Sunday, 13 June, 2010
How climate skeptics mislead

In science, the only thing better than measurements made in the real world are multiple sets of measurements – all pointing to the same answer. That’s what we find with climate change. The case for human caused global warming is based on many independent lines of evidence. Our understanding of climate comes from considering all this evidence. In contrast, global warming skepticism focuses on narrow pieces of the puzzle while neglecting the full picture.

What is the full picture? Humans are emitting around 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air every year. This is leaving a distinct human fingerprint:

From space and the Earth’s surface, we see more heat being trapped by carbon dioxide
Nights are warming faster than days
The upper atmosphere is cooling while the lower atmosphere is warming
Signs of warming are found all over the globe (here are just a few):

Ice sheets are melting
Sea levels are rising
Biological changes in tens of thousands of species
Glaciers are retreating
Seasons are shifting
Species are becoming extinct

On the question of human caused global warming, there’s not just a consensus of scientists – there’s a consensus of evidence. In the face of an overwhelming body of evidence, the most common approach of climate skepticism is to focus on narrow pieces of data while neglecting the full picture.

more

http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-climate-skeptics-mislead.html

It would be enlightening if you were to actually follow up your claims about failed predictions with links and sources from climate science sources supporting your argument.....
we'll wait

 

[Matt Giwer]

No they haven't, in science at least. Many have been found to be insufficient, but that is not equivalent to being in error. Science made enormous advances in the 19thCE, on which foundations yet more advances have been made.

And thus Lamarck correctly described the method of passing on traits to future generations. And we know it is impossible for two different molecules to have the same number of the same atoms.

It continued into the 20th c. where it was clear the center of the sun was not hot enough for fusion to occur. But later it was shown that the statistical distribution of temperatures caused a small fraction of protons to be hot enough. Speaking of stars the discovery of galaxies and that we are in only one of them was in the early 20th c. -- meaning one should not quote 19th c. astronomers about those patches light might be. Just this week the estimated amount of stars in the universe at least tripled which means the universe is only about half dark matter rather than some 80% of it or maybe it was the low estimate a light matter than leads to the foolish idea of dark matter.

But the 19th c. has spoken and science is never wrong so stones really do not fall from the sky.

It is false to cherry pick ideas from the old days without verifying they are still considered correct today.

There is an embarrassingly huge number of one time truths once held by scientists which are simply not true. The good news is these misinterpretations are commonly corrected by the person who first promoted the misinterpretation.

You have named some from the 19th c.

This just in, completely melting the Greenland glaciers will result in the level of the sea around Greenland falling. Gotta love how the real world doesn't respond by supporting political sound agendas.

 

[Matt Giwer]

...
Statistics can be applied to time-series data to determine trends. If those trends are caused by something, they are deterministic. These may not be well known facts, but facts they are.

As I reminded the group, the raw data is often "massaged," that is changed, for various reasons. When that is done statistics can no longer be applied. As humans have changed the input data the only possible thing to attribute a deviation from the proper distribution is the human changes to the data.