Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[Lennart Hyland]

A few questions for the newcomers and THE old coot:

• During the last few years there were periods up to 20 months long when the sea level didn't change, but they are saying that ice sheets and mountain glaciers continued to melt and the oceans continued to store heat because of the inherent imbalanced energy budget of the planet. Are they lying and the planet is not warming? How is this possible, for Monckton's sake?
• If I could pour large volumes of Xe, H₂ and CH₄O into the atmosphere, would they be greenhouse gases? And if the volumes were small?
• Temperatures during February in Boondocks County, TN show a statistically significant trend to cooling during the period 1913-2013. Temperatures during Easter, same county, same period, show also a statistically significant trend to cooling. Which would be the more significant? Could you estimate a proportion? Suppose you make the proper calculations and you arrive to a number that shows the opposite of what you replied to the previous question (If you need to do some calculation, choose the first division of Tennessee), how would you explain it? When compared with the current climatic normals for Boondocks County, how well do both trends to predict the county's temperatures during 2014?
• The oceans have an uneven salinity and an average temperature that can be mathematically obtained. Suppose you could stir all the ocean water in the planet and make salinity absolutely even. Suppose that such fantastic undertaking takes one second and magically it doesn't imply any energy added to the ocean. Would the average temperature of the whole ocean change? Why?

I'll bump these very interesting questions!

 

[Belz...]

Because it's not conspiracy theory to point out that the human factor involved in Science can make its conclusions imperfect.

But that's not what AGW deniers are doing, is it ? They're claiming that thousands of scientists and related people are lying in order to get research grants, or some other refarious reason. They are intentionally wrong.

 

[DC]

If I could pour large volumes of Xe, H2 and CH4O into the atmosphere, would they be greenhouse gases? And if the volumes were small?

no they would not be, do to their molecular structure.
Xe and H₂ are only atoms, and can thus not be excited by IR.
i am confused with the Methanol. its a fluid?

 

[r-j]

Much as I can't imagine the point of the debate, I do wish it was less hostile and personal. It feels to me, that one's need to label others as either A or B, tends to retard the educational process.

I tend to agree with you, but it's like wishing people would drive slower down my residential street. These are people that actually live on my street, not random strangers in a hurry cutting through. (there is no through traffic). How do you get other people to do the right thing?

You can't force the cops to show up with a radar gun and write tickets. (unless a kid gets hit and dies, they are simply not going to listen)
If you try to do anything about it yourself, you become a "vigilante", now you are the crazy person. Maybe a criminal. There are laws already of course, but with out enforcement they mean little.

Now that I think about it, the same thing is true for pollution. Which leads us to global warming. If you assume the worst case scenario is true, there is little doubt an emotional cascade of troubles will be your lot.

Considering China alone (which is by far NOT the only pollution source) is enough to lose sleep over. What can anyone do to stop the neighbor in the big house from melting the entire arctic sea ice? The soot alone is probably more than enough to create summer melting, leading to a feedback loop, more open water each year, more old sea ice gone, more single year ice, which doesn't stand up to a fresh layer of black dust settling once the snow stops.

Same for the glaciers, covered each summer in fine black carbon, subject to increasing amounts of warm rain, can the extra snow in the winter balance the summer melts?

Will the thawing permafrost release the old vegetation to rot? Release the rich methane deposits? How long did it take for those to form? Is that rotting compost from the last warm period between ice ages? Or from a million years past?

Someone divided up the people by belief systems, concerning global warming. As if that is the important distinction. What do you believe? Are you believing the right things? (which of course means, what you believe)

"There is no debate", a refrain that makes it a religious war. The side of right is quite righteously mad at the heretics, atheist and agnostics. If you are not with us, you are the enemy.

Wars have begun for far less arguments about religion. The climate problem has gone, obviously, from science to politics to religion. The fossil fuel cabal is the new devil, the people who don't believe are sheeple, the media is controlled by the cabal and "it" sows doubt and dissent.

And posts like yours are swept aside like a bit of sand before a tsunami of angry and passionate words. none of which will change a thing.

If I was trying to learn math, for instance, would my initial ignorance on the subject dump me into a math-denialist camp? The subject is too heated.

Yes, but if the math involved adding up the cost of war, or how much a political party stole, or what percent of the national debt is from wealthy criminals fleecing the flock, then the math might be contentious, and anyone who is just asking questions about math will be viewed with great suspicion. Depending on which "side" you appear to be on. Are you trying to defend the politicians with their hand down my pocket?

Or are you trying to help me determine how much of my hard earned money is being wasted?

Then math could become as heated as global warming.

 

[DC]

i find it so strange that people from the so called 1st world, are always bringing up China when they talk about big CO2 emitter. instead of using the US Canada or Europe as examples, we often pick china, as if they had an especially high emission rate. i don't get that. mainly the first world crerated the mess and still is. and we point fingers at deveoping countries? really?

 

[aleCcowaN]

Welcome to the JREF forums. Now either agree with the majority or go away.

Instead of being the voice "in off" playing the role of "disrespected minority", why don't you start providing all the statistic evidence and calculations you were asked after you committed gruesome statistical mistakes.

So far, you played with every possible layman interpretation of "statistically significant" which among many meanings is "different from noise" what is not difficult to get for winter temperatures in Boondocks County, TN, as this supposed county is in planet Earth and it has also stable latitude and longitude.

You also played with the time span for calculating the trend, stretching the process of making it long enough to make it "statistically significant", that is, to have a high ratio signal-noise, so to speak, that leads to normals of 30 consecutive years calculated when a new decade is reached and periods not above 50 years to get and keep the current trend ... well ... current! You instead added previous decades in order to get the trend you fancied, and for that purpose you "neglected" (because you simply don't know the subject) to calculate if that improved the "statistical significance" (it didn't) and making the clumsy mistake -perceivable even for laypeople- of asserting that a better current trend is obtained by adding more years in the distant past.

Later, you suggested a serious reanalysis site to show temperature anomalies in the Bible Belt pointing to cooling trends. It was, as always, just the fallacy of incomplete/suppressed evidence (cherry picking), as I showed you and everybody by finding out the values for last 1, 5 and 10 winters that showed no cooling when compared with 1981-2010 normals.

So far, you have failed consistently in proving your assertions, and in the meantime you have leave no doubts about you being completely unskilled for dealing with the climate change topic and, at the same time, psychologically involved in reaching preformatted conclusions that precede the analysis made to prove them. If some doubt might be left, we have also the moral component in your words.

 

[Dancing David]

I disagree very much. You see, unlike even say 150 years ago, we can migrate faster, safer, and in much larger numbers than any point in history. Read up on the Donner Party for example; you'd have to screw up really bad to repeat that again. However in older times, it wouldn't be difficult to make such a mistake. In addition, we have the ability to set up shelter in remote areas much faster. That is assuming that the need arises to migrate to begin with, which I don't think it will.

Hi, migration is not adapting.


All the coastal people Bangladesh will migrate where?
The UN can barely cope with the 'displaced people' right now, where will millions of people go?
You can't irrigate the Midwest of the US to keep growing grain, or in the Ukraine.
And you can't grow food in the higher latitudes even with AGW, the arable land is just not there.

 

[Dancing David]

Now the water is a concern. I'm not quite sure how fresh water spread through the supercontinent millions of years ago, especially given how far inward the water had to travel. But, it seems to have done so anyways.

Do you know what that is supposed to mean, the Himalayas provide the water for the three great rivers of India and the whole subcontinent. So what that has to do with weather patterns when the sun was cooler and the sub continent was over the southern pole is beyond me.

Do you think that the weather systems then and now are the same?



BTW are you familiar with the watershed issues in California and Oregon for example, the snow fall and melt is a crucial part of the pattern for the water shed, so as an example it just shows how possibly the glacier formation and snow fall issue is important to the Himalaya and Andean watersheds.

 

[Dancing David]

Foolishly, I feel the need to simplify the debate; not for myself, necessarily:

Suppose we focus on a single aspect of some of the changes that have been occurring.
How about the polar ice cap?

It would be hard to argue that it isn't melting.
Never mind, for a moment, what may be causing that.

Can't we agree what the results might be, in that lost reflectivity?
Oceans picking up heat, that they were denied for a very long time?

Simply addressing this factor; not even requiring any effects of increased GHGs; isn't the outcome rather predictable; unemotional; indisputable; regardless of the size of that contribution to warming?

I can imagine a stance within this small bit of data, which might revel in the new shipping lanes opening up, and how this might actually save a huge amount of fuel being consumed...and then we'd see some math equating the saved fuel and the absorbed solar radiation; some talk about the effects of various ocean streams being disrupted...that sort of thing.

I see I have become irrelevantly nebulous.
It's too late to start at the beginning.

You are fine Quarky, is seems to reasonable people who actually do some reading that there are convergent lines of data that are suggesting very strongly that the planet is warming. However there seem to be people who really have not done any reading and just get their data from some very odd sources.

In short, the planet sure seems to be warming and some people use rhetoric and really strange stuff to try to show otherwise.

 

[aleCcowaN]

no they would not be, do to their molecular structure.
Xe and H₂ are only atoms, and can thus not be excited by IR.
i am confused with the Methanol. its a fluid?

But you are not a newcomer nor a coot. You are a learned person, in spite of your burgerflipper disguise. H2 is not "atom", but sure, it's not a greenhouse gas. About methanol, well, why do methanol bottles have corks? or maybe better, why water is a greenhouse gas if it is a fluid? An isolated datum: there's a moon in the solar system which surface shows an absorption (don't use absorbtion or r-j will lecture you) feature at a wavenumber around 2800 cm^-1. That may be related with the right answer to this. This datum is an independent hint to confirm the conclusion one can infer from the molecular structure of methanol.

By the way, good link. It's refreshing to have some science in this thread that has become so verbose.

 

[GeneMachine]

H2 is not "atom", but sure, it's not a greenhouse gas. About methanol, well, why do methanol bottles have corks?

Well, to be absolutely precise, H₂ has IR absorption in the Paschen series, but that is so minute that we can safely ignore it, I guess. Methanol has a high low enough vapour pressure so that it should be greenhouse active if we had large bodies of liquid methanol around. The C-O stretching and bending vibrations should definitely have an effect. It would, though, substitute for the liquid water in our real system here, in that case.

 

[lomiller]

i find it so strange that people from the so called 1st world, are always bringing up China when they talk about big CO2 emitter. instead of using the US Canada or Europe as examples, we often pick china, as if they had an especially high emission rate. i don't get that. mainly the first world crerated the mess and still is. and we point fingers at deveoping countries? really?

I listed a number of climate deneir positions a couple days ago and pointed out that the only thing they really have in common is that they they all follow up with an unspoken "so we don't have to do anything emissions"

I.E.
"the earth isn't warming, so we don't have to do anything about CO2 emissions"

"Greenhouse gases don't cause warming, so we don't have to do anything about CO2 emissions"


"it's all just unexplainable natural cycles, so we don't have to do anything about CO2 emissions"

"it's not going to hurt anything, so we don't have to do anything about CO2 emissions"

"The scientists are making it all up, so we don't have to do anything about CO2 emissions"


"The earth will counteract any warming, so we don't have to do anything about CO2 emissions"




It's really obvious if you follow the debate at all that every single anti-AGW argument is driven not by science or fact but are simply rationalizations for not doing anything about CO2 emissions. Blaming China and India is just anther in the list. If it''s their fault, then we don't have to do anything about our CO2 emissions.

 

[Robert Prey]

I listed a number of climate deneir positions a couple days ago and pointed out that the only thing they really have in common is that they they all follow up with an unspoken "so we don't have to do anything emissions"

I.E.
"the earth isn't warming, so we don't have to do anything about CO2 emissions"

"Greenhouse gases don't cause warming, so we don't have to do anything about CO2 emissions"


"it's all just unexplainable natural cycles, so we don't have to do anything about CO2 emissions"

"it's not going to hurt anything, so we don't have to do anything about CO2 emissions"

"The scientists are making it all up, so we don't have to do anything about CO2 emissions"


"The earth will counteract any warming, so we don't have to do anything about CO2 emissions"




It's really obvious if you follow the debate at all that every single anti-AGW argument is driven not by science or fact but are simply rationalizations for not doing anything about CO2 emissions. Blaming China and India is just anther in the list. If it''s their fault, then we don't have to do anything about our CO2 emissions.

So why individuals be impoverished via government theft to cut down on CO2 emissions? Especially since CO2 is necessary for life and has no apparent connection to weather????

"-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions
OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461

 

[DC]

So why individuals be impoverished via government theft to cut down on CO2 emissions? Especially since CO2 is necessary for life and has no apparent connection to weather????

"-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions
OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461

there are other factors that influence surface temperature, not only CO2. so in order to show that CO2 is not causing any warming, you would have to show us what those other factors did. did they ramain unchanged? did they cause more warming or more cooling?
nobody claimed CO2 is the only thing controlling temperatures.
so tell me what did the other factors do?

 

[aleCcowaN]

Well, to be absolutely precise, H₂ has IR absorption in the Paschen series, but that is so minute that we can safely ignore it, I guess.

I barely remember that, but I think in that case H₂ would be more an obstacle for a tiny itty-bitty (scientific meaning) of sun radiation to reach the Earth surface, while the long-wave energy radiated by the Earth will pass through it. I bet oxygen and nitrogen are worse obstacle that hydrogen for actual radiation going any of both ways (I bet my lucky cent)

 

[lomiller]

OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar.

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461

Unfortunately for their premise there is no statistically detectable change in the earths warming trend.

 

[GeneMachine]

I barely remember that, but I think in that case H₂ would be more an obstacle for a tiny itty-bitty (scientific meaning) of sun radiation to reach the Earth surface, while the long-wave energy radiated by the Earth will pass through it. I bet oxygen and nitrogen are worse obstacle that hydrogen for actual radiation going any of both ways (I bet my lucky cent)

Of course. Paschen is the n'=3 electronic line. It's not like that would be populated to any meaningful extent, compared to the vibration and bending and stretching signal in the IR. Just brought it up for pedantry's sake Can't be arsed to do the math on this, but you may keep your lucky cent

 

[macdoc]

1998 was a such a convenient outlier for the deniers.

 

[bobwtfomg]

So why individuals be impoverished via government theft to cut down on CO2 emissions? Especially since CO2 is necessary for life and has no apparent connection to weather????

"-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions
OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461

Your link is broken, here's another one
http://www.economist.com/news/scien...ing-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions

I don't think this article atually says what you think it says, the worst part of it is the first paragraph, including the out of context quote from Hansen, which you repeated. This paragraph gives a strong impression that global warming is no longer a problem, the article as a whole much less so. It certainly doesn't say CO2 has no apparent connection to weather, nor does it equate cutting down on CO2 emmissions with government theft !

here are my own admittedly cherry-picked quotes (you can always read the whole article if you want to)

The climate may be heating up less in response to greenhouse-gas emissions than was once thought. But that does not mean the problem is going away

It does not mean global warming is a delusion.

Carbon dioxide itself absorbs infra-red at a consistent rate. For each doubling of CO₂ levels you get roughly 1°C of warming. But things are not that simple, for two reasons. One is that rising CO₂ levels directly influence phenomena such as the amount of water vapour (also a greenhouse gas) and clouds that amplify or diminish the temperature rise. This affects equilibrium sensitivity directly, meaning doubling carbon concentrations would produce more than a 1°C rise in temperature. The second is that other things, such as adding soot and other aerosols to the atmosphere, add to or subtract from the effect of CO₂. All serious climate scientists agree on these two lines of reasoning.


A study in Geophysical Research Letters by Kevin Trenberth of America’s National Centre for Atmospheric Research and others found that 30% of the ocean warming in the past decade has occurred in the deep ocean (below 700 metres). The study says a substantial amount of global warming is going into the oceans, and the deep oceans are heating up in an unprecedented way. If so, that would also help explain the temperature hiatus.

 

[OCaptain]

Because it's not conspiracy theory to point out that the human factor involved in Science can make its conclusions imperfect

Sure, but imperfect conclusions are not patently falsifiable conclusions.

Would you not agree?