Global Warming General Thread

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Re: Global Warming General Thread

Post by Dardedar »

Excellent comments from a person on Huff Po:

***
"How much warmer seems good for you? 1 degree, 3 degrees? 10?

I.e., we have indirect evidence that ~40 million years ago, atmospheri­­c CO2 levels were comparable to now, along with elevated temperatur­­es.

http://www­­.sciencem­a­g.org/co­nt­ent ... .abs­tract

But for CO2 levels comparable to what's projected for later this century (500 - 650ppmv), global average temperatur­­es eventually rose by as much 29 degs F higher.

Think you'll like another 29 degrees F hotter? How about your great great grand kids? Think they'll agree with you?

Well, OK. Maybe you don't care about your distant progeny. Fair enough. But some of us do.

http://www­­2.ucar.ed­u­/news/36­28­/ea ... e-­climate

***
Even with overwhelmi­ng evidence, scientific theories can't proven; only disproven. But good theories stand the test of time; bad theories are inconsiste­nt with evidence. E.g., volcanoes emit less than 1% the CO2 that fossil fuel burning does. Earth orbital changes take many thousands of years. Our global warming is happening w/i 200 years. Sunshine is in a lull. So, forget those explanatio­ns.

However, multiple methods show

1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which has increased 40% since 1850 when humans started burning fossil fuels BIG.

2) Human CO2 production has exceeded (currently double) its global rise rate since 1850. This says that human causes are large enough to impact CO2 levels and that Earth incomplete­ly absorbs excess CO2 production­.

3) As a greenhouse gas, temperatur­e rises provoked by excess CO2 also increases water vapor, which is also a greenhouse gas. Measuremen­ts show this is happening.

4) So, rising CO2 induces rising temperatur­e due to both itself and increased water vapor.

5) Dead plant/anim­al material stops absorbing new carbon. So the radioactiv­e carbon in it decays, changing its carbon isotope ratio. When changed carbon gets dug up and burned after millions of years, it changes atmospheri­c CO2. isotope ratio. Those changes are consistent with excess CO2 from burning fossil fuels. That fingerprin­t's the clincher.

6) All other accounts fail the evidence.

***
Antarctic ice core data verifies the 40% increased CO2 figure. CO2 is well-mixed world wide. So, Antarctic sampling is representa­tive of the rest of the globe and it's very clean - no contaminat­ion. Atmospheri­c gases get embedded as microscopi­c air bubbles w/i snow, which gets compressed to ice by later snowfall. It snows more in winter. So, you see yearly rings, like tree rings. So, these ice core samples from Epica and Vostok trace very slight yearly changes in atmospheri­c gas compositio­n, as far back as 780,000 years.
'
Quite a feat, eh? Not for wimps.

However, since ~1957, there's direct CO2 measuremen­ts from Mauna Loa Observator­y, starting with Charles Keeling's first 10 year data set, which I viewed in 1968. I think that first set was around 320 - 330 parts per million by volume (ppmv).

It also showed the expected seasonal CO2 dip in the northern hemisphere­'s summer, but with an even stronger climb during northern hemisphere winter. This happens because most of the Earth's land masses and thus vegetation is in the northern hemisphere­. (Oceanic plankton counts for less.) And photosynth­esis (which removes CO2) is stronger in summer when plants have leaves. Plants mostly respire (give off CO2) in winter. Animals of course always respire, as they don't photosynth­esize.

Despite seasonal sawtooth fluctuatio­ns, the yearly upward trend has continued. We're now at 390 ppmv, rising about 2.2 ppmv per year.

Maxwells
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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The Role of Values in Driving Climate Disputes

Excerpt:

"There is not one climate dispute. There are two, and the solutions are
not the same. First, we need to separate the two. The science debate
does not work in politics. If you study the conservative approach to
climate change policy long enough, the implication that they are
trying to participate in a scientific conversation starts to fade away
and you realize the underlying logic they are using actually starts
from the conclusion that regulation and government intervention are
bad and proceeds to the premise that there is no real problem with
climate change, at which point, they pick around for snippets to
support their premise. This allows them to make big, bold, statements
about their identity and character and values rather than wallowing
around in overly-precise, overly-pedantic language and data.

The center-left in the U.S. has a persistent problem with this dynamic
because they see every situation where they have a factual advantage
as proof of their superiority and then they proceed to hammer people
with logic while ignoring the repeated lessons of political strategy.
The debate needs to start with values! Science has no values. Science
only describes the physical world.

To win the scientific debate about climate change, we just… oh wait,
we already did. But to win the political debate, we need to spend less
time on the details of the scientific debate and much more on the
underlying values — the costs to humanity, society, and the economy of
extreme weather, local floods, local droughts, freshwater scarcity,
infectious disease, food security, coastline loss, biodiversity loss,
etc., etc. It sounds backwards since the political challengers are
denying the possibility of those dangers, one might think we need to
respond to their challenge.

We do not. That’s what science is for."

New York Times
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Really cool interactive flash graph that lets you view a vast amount of historical science papers on climate change. See it HERE

The complete global warming denialist deck of cards.
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Creationist fundie climatologist Roy Spencer gets busted trying to pass off yet another inept climate science paper full of crapola. Exceptional overview and dismantle here:

Spencer & Braswell 2011: Proof that global warming is exaggerated? Or just bad science?

Image

"I finally became convinced that the theory of creation actually had a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution,
for the creation model was actually better able to explain the physical and biological complexity in the world..." --Roy Spencer, The Evolution Crisis (2007).
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

Post by L.Wood »

We need to hear it over and over for Solar and Wind Power

Coal to gas: the influence of methane leakage

Abstract
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion may be reduced by using natural gas rather than coal to produce energy. Gas produces approximately half the amount of CO2 per unit of primary energy compared with coal. Here we consider a scenario where a fraction of coal usage is replaced by natural gas (i.e., methane, CH4) over a given time period, and where a percentage of the gas production is assumed to leak into the atmosphere. The additional CH4 from leakage adds to the radiative forcing of the climate system, offsetting the reduction in CO2 forcing that accompanies the transition from coal to gas. We also consider the effects of: methane leakage from coal mining; changes in radiative forcing due to changes in the emissions of sulfur dioxide and carbonaceous aerosols; and differences in the efficiency of electricity production between coal- and gas-fired power generation. On balance, these factors more than offset the reduction in warming due to reduced CO2 emissions. When gas replaces coal there is additional warming out to 2,050 with an assumed leakage rate of 0%, and out to 2,140 if the leakage rate is as high as 10%. The overall effects on global-mean temperature over the 21st century, however, are small.

SpringerLink has the full report.

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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Background: a rather noisy, skeptic leaning physicist made a big Ta Doo about going through and checking well established global temps (just to make sure the experts were doing it right). The results are in...

***
Berkeley earthquake called off

Filed under: Climate Science — eric @ 24 October 2011

"Anybody expecting earthshaking news from Berkeley, now that the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature group being led by Richard Muller has released its results, had to be content with a barely perceptible quiver. As far as the basic science goes, the results could not have been less surprising if the press release had said “Man Finds Sun Rises At Dawn.” This must have been something of a disappointment for anyone hoping for something else.

For those not familiar with it, the purpose of Berkeley Earth was to create a new, independent compilation and assessment of global land surface temperature trends using new statistical methods and a wider range of source data. Expectations that the work would put teeth in accusations against CRU and GISTEMP led to a lot of early press, and an invitation to Muller to testify before Congress. However, the big news this week (e.g. this article by the BBC’s Richard Black) is that there is no discernible difference between the new results and those of CRU.

Muller says that “the biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK.” We find this very statement surprising. As we showed two years ago, any of various simple statistical analyses of the freely available data at the time showed that it was very very unlikely that the results would change.

The basic fact of warming is supported by a huge array of complementary data (ocean warming, ice melting, phenology etc). And shouldn’t it have helped reduce the element of surprise that a National Academy of Sciences study already concluded that the warming seen in the surface station record was “undoubtedly real,” that Menne et al showed that highly touted station siting issues did not in fact compromise the record, that the satellite record agrees with the surface record in every important respect (see Fig. 7 here), and that numerous independent studies (many of them by amateurs) also confirmed the warming trend?

If the Berkeley results are newsworthy, it is only because Muller had been perceived as an outsider (driven in part by trash-talking about other scientists), and has taken money from the infamous Koch brothers. People acting against expectation (“Man bites dog”) is always better news than the converse, something that Muller’s PR effort has exploited to the max. It does take some integrity to admit getting the same answer as those they had criticized, despite their preconceptions and the preconceptions of their funders. And we are pleased to see Muller’s statement that “This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change sceptics did not seriously affect their conclusions.” It’s far from the overdue apology that Phil Jones (of CRU) deserves from his critics, but it’s a start.

But Muller’s framing of the Berkeley results is still odd. His statement, that had they found no warming trend, this would have “ruled out anthropogenic global warming”, while true in a technical sense, would not have implied that we should not worry about human drivers of climate change. And it would not have overturned over a century of firmly established radiative-transfer and thermodynamics. Nor would it have overturned the basic chemistry which led Bolin and Eriksson (reprinted here) to predict in 1959 that fossil fuel burning would cause a significant increase in CO2 — long before the results of Keeling’s famous Mauna Loa observations were in. As a physicist, Muller knows that the reason for concern about increasing CO2 comes from the basic physics and chemistry, which was elucidated long before the warming trend was actually observable."

The rest at... realclimate
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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For those who like to cherry pick and pretend 1998 causes a flattening of temps:

Image

LINK
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

Post by Doug »

WASHINGTON — A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.

The study of the world's surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of "Climategate," a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.

Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

He said he went even further back, studying readings from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. His ultimate finding of a warming world, to be presented at a conference Monday, is no different from what mainstream climate scientists have been saying for decades.

...One-quarter of the $600,000 to do the research came from the Charles Koch Foundation, whose founder is a major funder of skeptic groups and the tea party. The Koch brothers, Charles and David, run a large privately held company involved in oil and other industries, producing sizable greenhouse gas emissions.

See here.
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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*Hockey

Excellent resource for defense of Mann's Hockey-stick (favorite canard of climate science deniers).

***
Moreover, by now Michael Mann's original hockey stick graph has been corroborated, not just by his own later research
but by more than a dozen independent research groups, along with as many as eight different review boards.

1. Caspar Ammann and Eugene Wahl
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/ammann.shtml

Also,
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/mill ... ation.html

2. Science 28 January 2011: Vol. 331 no. 6016 pp. 450-453 DOI: 10.1126/
science.1197397

Enhanced Modern Heat Transfer to the Arctic by Warm Atlantic Water

Robert F. Spielhagen, Kirstin Werner Steffen Aagaard Sørensen Katarzyna Zamelczyk
Evguenia Kandiano Gereon Budeus Katrine Husum Thomas M. Marchitto
Morten Hald
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6016/450.short

3. Online January 13 2011 Science Express Index Science DOI: 10.1126/ science.1197175

2500 Years of European Climate Variability and Human Susceptibility

Ulf Büntgen Willy Tegel Kurt Nicolussi Michael McCormick David Frank Valerie Trouet
Jed O. Kaplan Franz Herzig Karl-Uwe Heussner Heinz Wanner Jürg Luterbacher Jan Esper

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/oer ... s2005.html

4. Extracting a Climate Signal from 169 Glacier Records

Science Vol. 308, No. 5722, pp. 675-677, 29 April 2005.
J. Oerlemans, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht University

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/ipc ... c2007.html

5. Chapter 6 Palaeoclimate
In Climate change 2007: the physical science basis.
Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Jansen, E., J. Overpeck, K.R. Briffa, J.-C. Duplessy, F. Joos, V.
Masson-Delmotte, D. Olago, B. Otto-Bliesner, W.R. Peltier, S.
Rahmstorf, R. Ramesh, D. Raynaud, D. Rind, O. Solomina, R. Villalba
and D. Zhang.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mob ... g2005.html

6. Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data
Nature, Vol. 433, No. 7026, pp. 613 - 617, 10 February 2005.

Anders Moberg, Dmitry M. Sonechkin, Karin Holmgren, Nina M. Datsenko & Wibjörn Karlén

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/wil ... n2007.html

7. A matter of divergence: Tracking recent warming at hemispheric scales using tree ring data.
Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres Vol. 112, D17103, doi:
10.1029/2006JD008318 11 September 2007.

Rob Wilson1,2, Rosanne D'Arrigo2, B. Buckley2, U. Büntgen3, J. Esper3,
D. Frank3, B. Luckman4, S. Payette5, R. Vose6, and D. Youngblut7

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/jou ... l2007.html

8.Orbital and Millennial Antarctic Climate Variability over the Past 800,000 Years

Science Vol. 317, No. 5839, pp.793-797, 10 August 2007. doi: 10.1126/ science.1141038

J. Jouzel, V. Masson-Delmotte, O. Cattani, G. Dreyfus, S. Falourd, G.
Hoffmann, B. Minster, J. Nouet, J.M. Barnola, J. Chappellaz, H.
Fischer, J.C. Gallet, S. Johnsen, M. Leuenberger, L. Loulergue, D.
Luethi, H. Oerter, F. Parrenin, G. Raisbeck, D. Raynaud, A. Schilt, J.
Schwander, E. Selmo, R. Souchez, R. Spahni, B. Stauffer, J.P.
Steffensen, B. Stenni, T.F. Stocker, J.L. Tison, M. Werner, and E.W.
Wolff.

9.NRC (2006). Surface temperature reconstructions for the last 2, 000
years. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press. pp. 113–115. ISBN
0-309-10225-1.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309102251&page=2

Also:

10. D'arrigo, Rosanne; Wilson, Rob; Jacoby, Gordon (2006). "On the
long-term context for late twentieth century warming". Journal of
Geophysical Research, 111 (D3);

11. Osborn, T. J.; Briffa, K. R. (2006). "The Spatial Extent of 20th-
Century Warmth in the Context of the Past 1200 Years". Science 311
(5762): 841–844;

12. Appell, David (October 28, 2009). "Novel Analysis Confirms Climate
"Hockey Stick" Graph". Scientific American;

13. Tingley, M. P.; Huybers, P. (2010). "A Bayesian Algorithm for
Reconstructing Climate Anomalies in Space and Time. Part I:
Development and Applications to Paleoclimate Reconstruction Problems".
Journal of Climate 23 (10): 2759–2781;

14. Tingley, M. P.; Huybers, P. (2010). "A Bayesian Algorithm for
Reconstructing Climate Anomalies in Space and Time. Part II:
Comparison with the Regularized Expectation–Maximization Algorithm".
Journal of Climate 23 (10): 2782–2800.

***
Regarding claims of wrongdoing:

1. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 1032a.html
U.S. National Academy of Science

2. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/post-c ... ts_in.html
Commerce Dept.
http://www.oig.doc.gov/Pages/OIGSearchR ... ig.doc.gov

Inspector General Completely Clears Michael Mann This investigation was the one demanded by Republican Oil-backed Senator James Inhofe

3. First of two review boards at Pennsylvania State Univ.
http://www.research.psu.edu/orp/Finding ... nquiry.pdf

4. Second of two review boards at Pennsylvania State Univ.
http://live.psu.edu/story/47378

Also 3 U.K. reviews, including the House of Lords, one in the Netherlands, and the U.S. EPA, (among others).
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

Post by Dardedar »

Heads in the Sand

As climate-change science moves in one direction, Republicans in Congress are moving in another. Why?

Excerpt:

OVERWHELMING SCIENCE

"The data showing that combustion of fossil fuels produces emissions that warm the Earth’s atmosphere are ample and historic, and have been rigorously reviewed.
Over the past 18 years, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has produced more than 40 scientific reports and studies on climate change. The most recent, released in May, concludes, “Climate change is occurring, is very likely caused by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems. Each additional ton of greenhouse gases emitted commits us to further change and greater risks…. The environmental, economic, and humanitarian risks of climate change indicate a pressing need for substantial action to limit the magnitude of climate change and to prepare to adapt to its impacts.”
The world’s largest general-scientific society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has published this official statement: “The scientific evidence is clear: Global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society.… The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse-gas emissions is now.”
The world’s major national scientific institutes, including the official academies of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and the United Kingdom have independently published concurring conclusions.
So have the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, the American Medical Association, the American Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society, the American Society of Agronomy, the American Society for Microbiology, the Crop Science Society of America, the Geological Society of America, the Soil Science Society of America, and the World Health Organization—among many other scientific bodies.
In June 2010, a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that 97 percent of climate scientists agree on the tenets of anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change, a level of consensus that the journal called “striking,” given the uncertainty often present in scientific research.
No scientific body of national or international standing has offered a dissenting opinion.
“It’s a very, very strong consensus,” says Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences and chair of the National Research Council. The level of certainty within the scientific community that burning fossil fuels warms the global atmosphere is comparable, he said, to the level of scientific certainty that vaccines prevent diseases such as measles and polio.
Perry and some other skeptics say that the scientific consensus on climate change is a fraud perpetrated by scientists working in concert—and that climate scientists falsely manipulate evidence to show that climate change is taking place so they can secure funding or prominence. Scientists say that the rigors of the independent peer-review process effectively make the former claim impossible—and that the latter claim simply doesn’t make sense, because what brings the greatest fame and fortune in science is successfully disproving accepted theories.
“The whole system works on evidence, repeatability, doing the same calculations, testing rigorously to get the same result,” Cicerone says. “If you’re working on a topic the public is interested in, there are more and more people watching what you’re doing. You couldn’t perpetrate a fraud if you wanted to.”

National Journal
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

Post by Dardedar »

*1998

Complete roast of the "warming stopped in 1998" canard:

The Real Global Warming Signal

The raw data — before the natural fluctuations are removed — look like this:

Image

All five records show similar changes, including an upward trend over the 32 years studied. They also show large fluctuations, more so for the satellite data than the surface data. This has spurred numerous false claims of silly things like “global warming stopped in 1998″ (due to the large spike from the powerful el Nino of that year). Large fluctuations also make it more difficult to establish the statistical significance of trend, leading to meaningless statements about “no statistically significant warming for 15 years” (or 10 years, or 7, or since last Thursday).

After the natural influences are removed, the adjusted data look like this:

Image
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

Post by Mike-Rosen »

Hey Darrell, I finally got a username and am ready to ask those question I've been telling you about for nearly a year...haha

Ok so now here's the big list of questions I promised earlier. I don't expect anybody to answer these. I stand before you as an honestly misinformed and/or uninformed individual who has spent much time researching this topic, but I've found myself asking more questions, than finding answers. Many of these questions may already have been answered, I just don't know where to find the answers. This is gonna be a long one so here it goes.

So we all hear the common claim that humans are not causing global warming, we are accelerating it. Well ok, now what? Have we quantified this rate of acceleration?

Just how much are humans contributing to global warming? Do we have a percentage%? For example humans contribute 3% of all CO2 emissions but that does not mean we only contribute 3% to the effect of global warming. Then there's of course other variables besides CO2. The common answer is feedback. So with that being said, how do we quantify feedback? and where do humans fit into this equation?

We know there is a causal relationship between CO2 emissions, concentration, and global warming. But do we have any numbers? Timeframe? Have the effects been quantified? And if they have, what do those numbers mean? For example- Temperature increase by 1/2 degree by the year "such and such", well so what? Sea level rises 1 inch by the year "such and such" So what? How much we these variables like temperature, and sea level, rise within a given timeframe? Is there a set rate? How hot will it need to be for the sea level to rise? This is just an example

Ok so there's the big complex questions, I figure I'd get them out of the way first. So here's some more basic questions. If I had some numbers, I think that I would better understand this stuff because I'm tying to follow data, not media hype.

What is considered normal CO2 level? perhaps a concentration in ppm?

What is the current CO2 level? perhaps a concentration in ppm?

What proportion of the current CO2 level are humans responsible for? How much CO2 do humans emit? Perhaps tons/year and does it have a relationship with CO2 concentration in the atmosphere? Is there some kind of equation?

And I saved the most difficult for last.

What do humans do to get CO2 levels down to normal levels, and how do we keep it there? Even if we pull that off, what about other variables that effect climate change? How long will it take for those to catch up with us, and what do we do then?

Remember this is not a challenge for debate, these are just honest questions that I have, and I'm sure many others have similiar questions, and I hope we can work together to find answers.
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

Post by Dardedar »

Good questions Mike, I'll respond to all of them. Feel free to ask for follow up for further clarification.
Mike-Rosen wrote: So we all hear the common claim that humans are not causing global warming, we are accelerating it. Well ok now what?
Not causing but accelerating? Well, if we are accelerating it, then it seems we would be causing that. From the science perspective, we are supposed to be in a long term cooling trend right now as we head toward a long cycle ice age (very slowly). So I would say the claim "we are not causing global warming" is wrong, and the claim "accelerating it" necessarily goes right along with "causing it." It doesn't need to be accelerating to be a very big problem, so I wouldn't focus on the term "accelerating" (although it may be doing that).
Have we quantified this rate of acceleration?
I am not familiar with a claim of "acceleration." The trend doesn't need to be accelerating to be a problem. See the chart in this post. A steady increase in warming. Any estimates of future events have ranges of error. See the recent model/data comparisons here.
Just how much are humans contributing to global warming?
See the answer in this article What percentage of global warming is due to human causes vs. natural causes?.

Excerpt:
Climatologists Gavin Schmidt explains:
"Over the last 40 or so years, natural drivers would have caused cooling, and so the warming there has been … is caused by a combination of human drivers and some degree of internal variability. I would judge the maximum amplitude of the internal variability to be roughly 0.1 deg C over that time period, and so given the warming of ~0.5 deg C, I’d say somewhere between 80 to 120% of the warming. Slightly larger range if you want a large range for the internal stuff."
Do we have a %?
Yes. But it is an estimate with considerable error bars.
For example humans contribute 3% of all CO2 emissions but that does not mean we're 3% responsible or that we contribute 3% to the effect of global warming.
Right. Think of it as a bank account. Nature has emissions and sinks, a natural balance. Our contributions, about 29 billion tons per year, throw off that balance and get added each year. Answer:
Manmade CO2 emissions are much smaller than natural emissions. Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 gigatonnes. The ocean releases about 332 gigatonnes. In contrast, when you combine the effect of fossil fuel burning and changes in land use, human CO2 emissions are only around 29 gigatonnes per year. However, natural CO2 emissions (from the ocean and vegetation) are balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Land plants absorb about 450 gigatonnes of CO2 per year and the ocean absorbs about 338 gigatonnes. This keeps atmospheric CO2 levels in rough balance. Human CO2 emissions upsets the natural balance." LINK
More info at that link.
Then there are of course other variables besides CO2.
Yes, but CO2 is the big one. While it is only .04% of our atmosphere, it provides 60 degrees of warming. Without it, the average temperature of the planet would be below freezing. Regarding the other gases note:

--The amount of methane in the atmosphere is more than double (x2.5) what it was in 1750.
--The amount of Nitrous oxide in the atmosphere is 16% higher than it was in 1750.

Then there are tipping points. As we warm the earth, it speeds up the release of methane stored in natural sinks such as the arctic permafrost and in the ocean.
The common answer i feedback. So with that being said, how do we quantify feedback? And where do humans fit into this equation?
Answered in the first article referenced above, here.
We know there's a causal relationship between CO2 emissions, concentration, and global warming. But do we have any numbers?
Yes, see article above. We've known how CO2 warms the earth since 1824. See the whole timeline and history of our knowledge here. Quite interesting.
Timeframe? Have the effects been quantified?
You'll need to be more specific. We know exactly how CO2 warms the earth and quite precisely how much it warms it. How much warming additional CO2 causes additional warming is known with less precision. This is addressed in the first article referenced and the answer is a doubling of CO2 alone, with feedbacks, causes about 3 degrees of warming. That's a very big deal.
And if they have, what do those numbers mean? Example-temperature increase of half a degree by the year “????”, so what?
And increase of half a degree per year would be many times greater than anyone has ever predicted. So that's not a "so what."
Sea level rise 1 inch by the year “????”, so what?
Far less than that, and still a very big deal.
How much will the sea level rise within a given time frame? Is there a set rate? How hot will it need to be for the sea level to rise? This is just an example.
See here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise.htm
What is considered normal CO2 level? Perhaps a concentration in ppm?
"Normal" is a human abstract and for our purposes means what humans and our civilization has evolved to live and thrive with. We are on track to cause a doubling of CO2 within a few decades from now, and that is a very big deal.
What is the current CO2 level? Perhaps concentration in ppm?
Going back 400,000 years we get:

Image

Since 1960 we've taken it from 315ppm to 395:

Image
What proportion of the current CO2 level are humans responsible for?
You know this because you said 3% above, and that's about right. More at this link given above: LINK.
How much CO2 do humans emit?
Directly, about 29 billion tons per year.
Perhaps tons/year and what is the relationship with CO2 concentration in the atmosphere? Is there some kind of equation?
Again, the current .04% concentration causes about 60 degrees of warming. A doubling of concentration, with feedbacks, causes about a 3 degree increase.
And I saved the most difficult for last
Excellent.
What do humans do to get CO2 levels down to normal levels, and how do we keep it there?
No one really knows. That's a political question, not a science question. Probably either run out of fossil fuels or become massively less dependent upon them. I am not optimistic about the political solutions.
Even if we pull that off, what about other variables that effect climate change?
That's a little vague.
How long will it take for those to catch up with us, and what do we do then?
Not clear what time frame you are talking about, tens of thousands of years?
Remember this is not a challenge for debate, this are just honest questions that I have, and I'm sure many others have similar questions, and I hope we can work together to find answers.
I hope these resources help. Feel free to follow up if you have more. There is quite a bit of information just within this "Global Warming General Thread."

Also, most of the answers to these questions can be found buried in this extensive list of responses to skeptical arguments/claims. This can be viewed here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

I especially recommend starting here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/10-Indi ... hange.html

D.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

Post by jamaluddin »

We need to discover another planet and then we will send all industrialists there to destroy that one! Money is everything for these greedy people!
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

Post by Dardedar »

Passed along from an acquaintance:

***
The accuracy and inclusiveness of these historical papers is utterly amazing.

Gilbert N. Plass, Tellus, v.8, 2,1956, "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change"

http://journals.sfu.ca/coaction/index.p ... 2664/14433

predicted 3.6 degs C of warming for doubled CO2 concentrations,
and continued warming for at least the next several centuries (no
possibility of an ice age), for CO2. Moreover, he predicted that CO2
levels at the time were about 7% higher than the cut-off level that
would allow a resumption of the glacial/interglacial cycle.

Even earlier, G. S. Callendar wrote in Quart. Roy. Met. Soc., pps. 223-237, 1938

"By fuel combustion man has added about 150,000 million tons of
carbon dioxide to the air during the past half century. The author
estimates from the best available data that approximately three
quarters of this has remained in the atmosphere."

"The radiation absorption coefficients of carbon dioxide and water
vapour are used to show the effect of carbon dioxide on "sky
radiation." From this the increase in mean temperature, due to the
artificial production of carbon dioxide, is estimated to be at the
rate of 0.003 degs. C. per year at the present time."

"The temperature observations at 200 meteorological stations are
used to show that world temperatures have actually increased at an
average rate of 0.005 degs. C per year during the past half century."

Or this 1979 report: Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment,

http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~brianpm/down ... report.pdf

lead by the late, great meteorologist, Jule Charney includes the
words "global warming" on p. 2 in its Summary and Conclusions.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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A common complaint of climate change deniers is that models can't be trusted or have no value. The following refutes this handily:

***
Are the Models Untestable?

"Are the models, in fact, untestable? Are they unable to make valid predictions? Let's review the record. Global Climate Models have successfully predicted:

That the globe would warm, and about how fast, and about how much.
That the troposphere would warm and the stratosphere would cool.
That nighttime temperatures would increase more than daytime temperatures.
That winter temperatures would increase more than summer temperatures.

Polar amplification (greater temperature increase as you move toward the poles).
That the Arctic would warm faster than the Antarctic.
The magnitude (0.3 K) and duration (two years) of the cooling from the Mt. Pinatubo eruption.
They made a retrodiction for Last Glacial Maximum sea surface temperatures which was inconsistent with the paleo evidence, and better paleo evidence showed the models were right.

They predicted a trend significantly different and differently signed from UAH satellite temperatures, and then a bug was found in the satellite data.
The amount of water vapor feedback due to ENSO.
The response of southern ocean winds to the ozone hole.
The expansion of the Hadley cells.

The poleward movement of storm tracks.
The rising of the tropopause and the effective radiating altitude.
The clear sky super greenhouse effect from increased water vapor in the tropics.
The near constancy of relative humidity on global average.
That coastal upwelling of ocean water would increase.

Seventeen correct predictions? Looks like a pretty good track record to me.

Are there problems with the models, and areas where they haven't gotten it right yet? Sure there are. The double Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone which shows up in some coupled models, ENSO variability, insufficiently sensitive sea ice, diurnal cycles of moist convection, and the exact response of climate to clouds are all areas of ongoing research. But the models are still the best thing we have for climate prediction under different scenarios, and there is no reason at all to think they're getting the overall picture wrong."

Extensively referenced here
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Conservati­ve Climate Scientist Dr. Barry Bickmore:
----------­--

"I’ve recently been involved with other scientists and scholars in Utah trying to stop the spread of outright lies, half-truth­s, abuses of data, and distortion­s about climate change. Much of this disinforma­tion is coming from (or through) some Republican members of the Utah Legislatur­e...

I'm a Republican myself, and it galls me that my own party has locally fallen for a bunch of conspiracy theories and scientific­ally incompeten­t trash. In my opinion, something has to be done to save the party from disaster in the long run...

Democracy depends on accurate informatio­n being readily available to the public, and I see people who propagate such disinforma­tion campaigns as enemies of Democracy."

http://bbi­ckmore.wor­dpress.com­/about-thi­s-blog/
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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"The new projection­s, published this month in the American Meteorolog­ical Society's Journal of Climate,
indicate a median probabilit­y of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probabilit­y range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees."

http://web­.mit.edu/n­ewsoffice/­2009/r ... 0519.h­tml

These are profoundly bad numbers.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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Re: Global Warming General Thread

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Peter Gleick roasts the latest piece of anti-science junk being peddled in the WSJ which refers to 16 "scientists."

FORBES

"But the most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall
Street Journal in this field is the fact that 255 members of the
United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a comparable (but
scientifically accurate) essay on the realities of climate change and
on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue,
offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down."

"2011 was the 35th year in a row in which global temperatures were above the historical average and 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record."

How much longer is this nation going to put up with widely distributed mainstream publications blatantly lying to the public? The level of dishonestly this nation tolerates from its media is a disgraceful farce.
"I'm not a skeptic because I want to believe, I'm a skeptic because I want to know." --Michael Shermer
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