Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[carlosy]

So what is this realistic manner in which you view this problem?
What is your alternative to "meaningless" protocols and wishful thinking?

Good question!

I think it needs something big and a shift in the approach. The government panels were not efficient enough, as we have seen in the past 20 years or so. And the time is pretty much up. The only way would be something like this imho, e.g.:

All the big (and not so big) environmental organizations, all the national parks, conservation organizations, pretty much all the activists, biologists, who try to protect and preserve endangered species should agree on a statement. Bring the heads of these organizations to a big summit. Make a big world wide press conference. And declare something like the following:
If there won't be...(very specific measures and timelines)... then we will end all our efforts in trying to protect and preserve our flora and fauna. We do not see any meaning to continue our efforts if we, as a global society, don't act now. Because in 50 - 100 years, we will have a lot bigger issues and problems than trying to protect some species from extinction, preserving rainforest etc... Our work now is getting more and more useless. We are aware that this is a dramatic event but the time is running out now. This is a final attempt.

I know that this sounds like a drama script. But people need to understand the urgency of this issue. And the only chance (if there is any) is to make this issue number one priority for everyone. We learned that it does not work in trying to make it number one for the politics (I don't even blame them). If the people won't change, why should politics? The people need to see drastic measures now. Otherwise they won't change. And a global drastic measure would be if pretty much all the environmental organizations would full stop their work. But why environmental organizations? Because most of those people involved seem to care about this planet and have the knowledge to realize what is at stakes. Maybe they can find a common ground for such a drastic move.


Let me say that I am following the AGW discussions for many years now. And we got through this:
- Climate change? Huh?
- Climate change? They can't even predict the weather for the next 5 weeks. They pretend to predict the climate for next 50 years? Hahahaaa
- Global warming? Bring it on, I love the summer.
- Climate is always changing...
- AGW? that's not even possible.
- Climate change? Yeah maybe, but as long as we can't predict the outcome, we shouldn't rush in our actions.
- Climate change? Yeah maybe, but all the measures are for the profits of some corporations. No thanks.
- AGW/Climate change? Ok, but it's not dangerous. We'll deal with it.
- Climate change? True, it's the sun.
- AGW/Climate change? We can't do anything about it. Let's save our money for other things.
- AGW/Climate change? We'll all die anyway...(bible says so)

Well, it is some kind of tragic comedy imho that we are now at the last two points in this list. Seems to me, the deniers have (almost) won.

 

[bobwtfomg]

This sounds to me so like chalk screeching a blackboard.

Look, y'all. When I hear this kind of things -I hardly see them in written form- I remember my grandfather who was born in a 550,000 people Buenos Aires in 1886 -a few years after Menlo Park- and didn't enjoy electric lights in his home until he was 6 or 8 -he wouldn't remember-. The only modern product my French great-grandmother enjoyed at home when she married was the daily home delivering of ice bars (and also the Basque milkmen adding ice to "preserve" the milk during Summer). Grandpa certainly had a home refrigerator much later, in the late twenties.

Why am I bringing these subjects? Because in 1956 the first commercial scale nuclear power station was opened. Some time before my grandpa died in 1973, I was a kiddo and I was sipping mate and chatting with him about what I believed to be "the news" -probably Apollo 16 or 17- and I asked him: "Did you imagine when you were my age that you would see and hear the man walking in the moon in a box" (TV set) "at your home? How do you feel about it?" (think that when he was my age then he probably hadn't watched his first film, the most recent technical breakthrough by the Lumière brothers) and he answered "This is no longer my world! I almost don't recognize anything I knew. I don't belong here" what was very shocking to hear in such my tender age. He would die a few months after -I hardly recall as I was just a kid-.

Let's translate it to the present: The same way my grandpa enjoyed ice bars and pretty brand new home electric lights -instead of dangerous, unbearably hot during Summer gas lights- in 1895 and a nuclear power plant existed 61 years later, and a man walked in the moon 74 years in the future. How could I -or anyone else- dare to declare what the technology related to energy would be in 2070 or 2100 and what effects all the technological transitions would have on the GHG pool whatever the policies may become?

All this 4°, 6°, 8°C exercise is just hogwash once you jump outside their proper boundaries: confirming that we CAN DO real harm; how what it looks like an innocent temperature increase can translate in shocking regional changes, and other similar to these.

The use out of context is just neo-denialism. It's just trying to prevent actions that may avoid a 0.1 or 0.2°C increase during the next two decades (the horizon of almost constant technology) just because it'd be just a costly drop in an ocean of warming.

There is currently an imbalance of energy the earth is absorbing more than it's emitting due to the current level of GGs in the atmosphere, even if those levels were to stabilise the earth would continue to warm for many years until it reached a new equilibrium, so unless we can somehow suck the GGs out of the atmosphere we're already committed to at least 0.2 deg C over the next 2 decades. Yes of course there is always the possibility of some new magic technology coming along in the next few decades and doing just that but relying on that possibility is wishful thinking.
Of course there's not much chance that GG levels are not going to stabilise anytime soon as we continue not only to emit GGs but to increase the amount we are emitting every year which is why there's very little chance of keeping GW below 2 degrees. But don't take my word here's a professor of Energy and Climate change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RInrvSjW90U&feature=player_embedded#!

or if you'd rather read here's his peer reviewed paper
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934/20.full.pdf+html

 

[aleCcowaN]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RInrvSjW90U&feature=player_embedded#!

I'll pass. Do you have a written version?

or if you'd rather read here's his peer reviewed paper
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934/20.full.pdf+html

Although it is not clear how the meta-analysis was done nor the review process, prima facie I tell you my expectations about GHG emissions are way above those of the most positive scenarios. 1000 or 1500 GtC budgets for the century are more logical to me, with peaks of 500 ppmv or even 520. What I disagree is that meaning 4°C or more above pre-industrial temperatures by 2100.

 

[aleCcowaN]

There is currently an imbalance of energy the earth is absorbing more than it's emitting due to the current level of GGs in the atmosphere, even if those levels were to stabilise the earth would continue to warm for many years until it reached a new equilibrium, so unless we can somehow suck the GGs out of the atmosphere we're already committed to at least 0.2 deg C over the next 2 decades.

Let's go back to the basics. Current imbalance is about 0.6 w/m2 (0.2-1, 95%)**. That means about a 10²² J gain every year. No seasonal ice melting and land absorb some, let's say, 20% of that. The rest, some speed of 8 . 10²² J per decade, is absorbed by the ocean. If we take a look at

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000m.png

we see that for the last 10 years, more or less.

If we take another look to the 0-700m layer we see

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content55-07.png

that is, not much during the same period. That means most of all heat has been absorbed by deep waters (the 700-2000m layers) which means a rough temperature raise of 0.03°C for those layers (supposing a 5 . 10²² J gain for that layer in a decade).

Why do you think that such a process is not going to continue during the next decades? [I don't think it'll do, but why do you think it won't?] Please answer with an analysis of your own and not with some link to fancy-pancy people drawing conclusions in supposed peer-reviewed conditions from capricious scenarios feeding innominated models working in not explicit ways (I'm not saying they didn't. I'm saying it doesn't show so, what's the benefit?). That's only fine communication among specialists and not intended for the public nor the policy makers.

Also, I ask you and others to stop mixing up "what we have now" -this paper, that model, those technologies- with "what will occur" -in 20, 50 and 100 years-.

** some new studies have suggested it to be 0.8 [0.3-1.3, 95%]

 

[bobwtfomg]

I'll pass. Do you have a written version?




Although it is not clear how the meta-analysis was done nor the review process, prima facie I tell you my expectations about GHG emissions are way above those of the most positive scenarios. 1000 or 1500 GtC budgets for the century are more logical to me, with peaks of 500 ppmv or even 520. What I disagree is that meaning 4°C or more above pre-industrial temperatures by 2100.

As I understand it he is saying that 1500GtC would give a 50/50 chance of keeping GW to 2 deg C but even that(1500) is looking too conservative, his talk on the youtube link was based on this paper, but he had access to another 2 years of emissions data
.
I don't know about their review process but it's a credible publication (it's been going since 1685) run by the UKs top science institution

Philosophical Transactions A is now ranked 7th in the "Multidisciplinary Sciences" as listed in the ISI's 2011 Science Citation Index Journal Citation Reports. Rankings in Eigenfactor have also improved, Philosophical Transactions A is now ranked 5th in Multidisciplinary Sciences.

here's another paper showing if we don't mitigate at all and carry on increasing our CO2 emisssions we could hit 4 deg C by 2070
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934/67.full

 

[macdoc]

that is, not much during the same period. That means most of all heat has been absorbed by deep waters (the 700-2000m layers) which means a rough temperature raise of 0.03°C for those layers (supposing a 5 . 1022 J gain for that layer in a decade).

Why do you think that such a process is not going to continue during the next decades? [I don't think it'll do, but why do you think it won't?]

Alec that will mean a decrease in the ability of the ocean to pick up released C02 and also mean that the ocean will be radiating more even in the dark and even at the higher latitudes.
Are you sure the uptake lower down will stay on the brakes against the positive feedback of a warming upper level.

The one aspect I find curious is more frequent La Nina's which says to me a faster convection is in play .... might delay or mute the atmospheric rise.

 

[Upchurch]

Remember: Global Climate Change is a Hoax!

As of this very moment on December 3rd in St. Louis, MO, it is 71 degrees outside. We had a draught this past summer and a warmer-than-normal winter before that.

But global climate change is a hoax.

Okay, okay, I know this is just a single data point and proves nothing. But, for some reason, the same people who ask me "Where's that global warming now? Har, har, har!" every time it is *********** freezing around here are strangely silent about the topic now.

/rant

 

[aleCcowaN]

As I understand it he is saying that 1500GtC would give a 50/50 chance of keeping GW to 2 deg C but even that(1500) is looking too conservative, his talk on the youtube link was based on this paper, but he had access to another 2 years of emissions data
.
I don't know about their review process but it's a credible publication (it's been going since 1685) run by the UKs top science institution


here's another paper showing if we don't mitigate at all and carry on increasing our CO2 emisssions we could hit 4 deg C by 2070
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934/67.full

I don't want to be misunderstood: I'm not saying it is a minor paper in a run-of-the-mill publication. I'm saying that it is a meta-analysis departing of many papers which conclusions are not reviewed nor methods criticized, and they make a good analysis of both the risk assumed when that 2°C top was settled and the consequences of the "in" countries doing their chores while the "out" ones abandon themselves to a pollution orgy. They somewhat succeed doing this analysis, but that doesn't mean the models are predictive and what it is not discussed in the paper is "the truth" nor "common knowledge".

About the Cabot Institute, it seems to be more economics oriented and pretty far from climate science. I may be wrong, but the "about us" part is not very promising. At least we don't need to buy what they bought.

What I want to be clear is about the inconvenience of having a decade or more of little change in temperatures with records that start to resemble the variability around a central value -in fact, a slight slope up- and simultaneously being announcing with horns "it's going 4°C up!", "No, they told me they're 6!!", "Shut up! I know straight from the horse's mouth it's 7 or even 8!!!" like there's some delayed warming that it's going to come together with all the warming that is already coming, and the warming that we deserve, plus more warming for being incredulous, and then some. It's not serious. And not only it's not serious: It's counterproductive.

I still recommend you to do your own analysis with your own number-crunching. It's liberating and deeply enlightening. My informed guess is that we are going to experience some 0.8 to 0.9°C additional temperature raise in an erratic fashion, and CO2 will reach 500 ppmv, all by 2050. The consequences will be dire enough. Beyond that year it's no longer my problem and I don't presume the nostradamic vanities of foretelling via graphical quatrains plotted in Excel.

 

[TimCallahan]

I wonder if there's a pass / fail test climate change deniers would accept by which they would accept that anthropogenic climate change is real, assuming the test went against them. I seriously doubt that there is.

 

[BenBurch]

66 here in the NW Chicago suburbs.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Alec that will mean a decrease in the ability of the ocean to pick up released C02 and also mean that the ocean will be radiating more even in the dark and even at the higher latitudes.
Are you sure the uptake lower down will stay on the brakes against the positive feedback of a warming upper level.

The one aspect I find curious is more frequent La Nina's which says to me a faster convection is in play .... might delay or mute the atmospheric rise.

If the deep ocean took that heat, warmed waters must have reached those layers coming from the first 100-150m (the part the sun warms). Let's do some more number crunching: lets suppose those 5 . 10²² J reached the lower layers as a, say, 3°C temperature delta, so, what is the downwelling flow? It is 12.5 sv (the warm downflow coming out from Gibraltar is 0.85 sv, the "gulf" stream varies between 15 and 150). How much carbon does that flow bring? Departing from the average of 3µg or carbon by litre just as organic sediment, we have ... about 1 GT per year.

It looks like with a downwelling of 20 sv you may absorb all the heat imbalance, even with a downwelling of 40 sv you may cool it a bit. Of course this is not to last during centuries, but it helps by now. The question is simple: how is up/downwelling represented in computer models nowadays?

About the CO2 content, the problem is with the upper few layers. The upper half of the ocean has warmed just about 0.09°C in half a century. 1 degree is not to have much effect on the CO2 content. It still weight more the jump from 280 ppmv to 395, and soon 500. The low layers of the ocean hardly have noticed that change.

To me La Niña might mean that the heat is going down. On the other hand, La Niña/El Niño are typical phenomena of the Water Hemisphere. We have now that the Land Hemisphere had warm a lot (almost all the lands and the Atlantic and Arctic oceans plus the coastal parts of the Pacific and Indian) and the Water Hemisphere not so much (all the rest). There were also the imbalances between both rotational hemispheres -the traditional Northern and Southern-. Well, a good deal of levelling has happened in recent years.

From the circadian cycle of 5 to 50°C variation according to latitude, season and humidity, to an ocean core capable of absorbing all the energy the sun gives, including what is reflected, and raise its temperature only about 1°C per year, we have a tremendous tangle of processes with different scales and very different paces, all of them entwined in a fashion that it is not plenty, nor thoroughly nor evenly understood.

If it is not so, please, show me a model that running backwards departing from today it show a decade of stability in a context of CO2 change as a part of reasonably representing the planet's recent climatic past, and then show an increase of 4 to 8°C when running forward 60 to 90 years.

 

[ConspiRaider]

Last year in Cleveland was The Year Without Winter. Folks getting suntans in February and March because some days it was 80 degrees. Fortunately when the ebil libruls came outta the woodwork to trumpet the arrival of the Global Warmings we threw snowballs at the troublemaker smart-alecks. Hostess ones, those pink ones which are my fave.

 

[BenBurch]

I agree. In 2010 the call from the scientific community was "we must stop the increase in carbon emissions by 2015 or else". Nothing will happen by 2015.

I have a grandchild due next June. I despair for his or hers future.

And note that fear confusion and doubt was created intentionally to ensure that nothing was ever done.

Largely this came from the coal interests.

One wonders if the Guillotine will stage a comeback once people know how they have been used?

 

[BenBurch]

Last year in Cleveland was The Year Without Winter. Folks getting suntans in February and March because some days it was 80 degrees. Fortunately when the ebil libruls came outta the woodwork to trumpet the arrival of the Global Warmings we threw snowballs at the troublemaker smart-alecks. Hostess ones, those pink ones which are my fave.

And in retaliation ebil libruls destroyed the Hostess company.

 

[truethat]

I don't think there are people saying the planet isn't getting warmer, they seem to be saying that it's not the people causing it, it's a normal cycle.

 

[Seismosaurus]

I wonder if there's a pass / fail test climate change deniers would accept by which they would accept that anthropogenic climate change is real, assuming the test went against them. I seriously doubt that there is.

We've already seen the shift in phases of denial from "global warming is a myth" to "Okay global warming is real but we didn't cause it."

I'm always reminded of the Yes Prime Minister scene :

Sir Richard: "Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis. In Stage One we say that nothing is going to happen."
Sir Humphrey: "Stage Two, we say something may be going to happen but we should do nothing about it."
Sir Richard: "Stage Three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do."
Sir Humphrey: "Stage Four, we say maybe there is something we could have done, but it's too late now."

And that's when the right will admit that we cause global warming. When they can say "Yeah, okay, it's true, but it's too late to do anything about it now so we should just keep on as we are."

 

[Upchurch]

I don't think there are people saying the planet isn't getting warmer, they seem to be saying that it's not the people causing it, it's a normal cycle.

Oh, there are, but they are mostly people I see on Facebook or overhear at the office. Occasionally, I hear it from the local conservative radio talk show people. No one of any real consequence.

 

[Brainster]

As of this very moment on December 3rd in St. Louis, MO, it is 71 degrees outside. We had a draught this past summer and a warmer-than-normal winter before that.

But global climate change is a hoax.

Okay, okay, I know this is just a single data point and proves nothing. But, for some reason, the same people who ask me "Where's that global warming now? Har, har, har!" every time it is *********** freezing around here are strangely silent about the topic now.

/rant

So when it's cold it doesn't disprove global warming and when it's hot it proves global warming.

 

[bit_pattern]

So what is your position on global warming?

He's a bona fide climate scientist. Can be a tad cryptic and his opinions can be acerbic but he's definitely one of the good guys

 

[daredelvis]

So when it's cold it doesn't disprove global warming and when it's hot it proves global warming.

No. When you ask climate scientists, the vast majority say it is real, when you ask some politicians and radio hosts, they say it is not. I know who I put my lot with, you?

Daredelvis