Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[a_majoor]

Looking how far back this goes, I can conclude that the problem is people are Historically challenged.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamRusher/2006/07/20/fire,_or_ice

Fire, or ice?
By William Rusher
Thursday, July 20, 2006

The New York Times's headline read, "America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise." Well, what's so new about that? The Times has been having an historic fit about global warming for years, hasn't it?

Yes, but that particular headline ran in the good gray Times on March 27, 1933 -- 73 years ago. What's more, the Times changed its mind dramatically on the subject 42 years later, in 1975, when it startled its readers on May 21 with "Scientists Ponder Why World's Climate is Changing; A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable."

Nor has the Times been the only major periodical to blow hot and cold (if you will forgive me) on the subject of the global climate. On Jan. 2, 1939 Time magazine announced that "Gaffers who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right ... weather men have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer." Yet Time scooped The New York Times by nearly a year when, reversing itself, it warned readers on June 24, 1974 that, "Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age." Today, of course, Time has changed its mind again and joined the global-warming hysteria. On April 3 this year, it announced that "By Any Measure, Earth is At ... The Tipping Point. The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame."

The last major attack of hysteria, in the mid-1970s, focused on the peril of global cooling, and was especially severe. Fortune magazine declared in February 1974 that "As for the present cooling trend a number of leading climatologists have concluded that it is very bad news indeed. It is the root cause of a lot of that unpleasant weather around the world and they warn that it carries the potential for human disasters of unprecedented magnitude." Fortune's analysis was so impressive that it actually won a "Science Writing Award" from the American Institute of Physics.

But the prize for sheer terrorizing surely belonged to Lowell Ponte, whose 1976 book "The Cooling" (a predecessor of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," though from the opposite point of view) asserted that "The cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in poor nations." If countermeasures weren't taken, he warned, it would lead to "world famine, world chaos, and probably world war, and this could all come by the year 2000."

All of the above quotations, and many more, can be found in a wonderful new booklet by R. Warren Anderson and Dan Gainor of the Business & Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Va. (Full disclosure: I am the avuncular and largely indolent board chairman of the latter.) Entitled "Fire and Ice," it quotes alarmist predictions of both global warming and a new ice age dating back to 1895. The authors identify no less than four swings of scientific opinion, with considerable overlapping, from global cooling (1895-1932) to global warming (1929-1969) to global cooling (1954-1976) and now back to global warming (1981 to the present). The booklet can also be read for its sheer entertainment value. (I particularly liked the anecdote about the penguin found in France in 1922, which was widely viewed as an "ice-age harbinger," though wiser heads concluded it had probably escaped from the ship of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.)

The booklet notes sensibly that "Most scientists do agree that the earth has warmed a little more than a degree in the last 100 years. That doesn't mean scientists concur that mankind is to blame. Even if that were the case, the impact of warming is unclear." And in its wisest paragraph it concludes, "This isn't a question of science. It's a question of whether Americans can trust what the media tell them about science."

But if you're looking for a new career, here's a hint: "Global warming is a good business to be in for government funding. More than 99.5 percent of American climate change funding comes from the government, which spends $4 billion per year on climate change research."

 

[Kat Stevens]

Bring on global warming.  I have a cunning plan to develop an alternate fuel source from coconut milk, and 1/4 section of Alberta to plant em on....

 

[couchcommander]

Am I reading this? A global warming debate thread, I really don't know what to say.

Listen, this has been done ad nauseum before.

The earth has natural warming and cooling cycles, yes. Thus the last ice age.

During a period of warming there may be even decades long period of relative cooling (ie the 1970's) - the key is in the long term. As well, during periods of global warming some regions actually decrease in temperature or will see more rain, etc. It's not called "regional warming" for a reason.

Yes, the sun, and volcano's, etc. etc. all do have an effect on global warming and cooling.

HOWEVER, the vast majority of respected climatologists will agree that none of these factors can adequately account for the startling, neverbefore seen rise over the last 150 years which so happens to coincide with the explosion in CO2 production by human factors.

This trends IS PRESENTLY being confirmed, and is actually accelerating faster than previously thought.

As Time put it (a not entirely correct article, but the cover is nice):

Next are we going to debate whether CFC's really deplete the ozone layer?

 

[Kirkhill]

couchcommander, lets assume that you are correct in your belief that man-made interventions have increased the rate of climate change beyond the natural -always assuming that man is not natural, a separate debate.

The same climatologists argue that the damage has been done, that no amount of most kyoto-esque tinkering is going to materially change the outcome, and as you yourself acknowledge, sooner or later mankind would face the impact of climate change regardless of origin.

Assuming that we are going to face a flood, whether the cause of the flood is the result of the tide coming in, a natural "Lake Agassiz ice-dam" event or a poorly maintained man-made dam breaking the fact remains that if and when the water rises  the appropriate response at the time is to:

a, move to higher ground
b, build a dyke
c, build a boat
or d, park your chair at the water's edge and wave like King Canute while everyone prays for a miracle.

Option e, looking for witches and sacrificing virgins has been proven to be an unsuccesful strategy in the past.

By all means clean up the environment, do as little harm as possible (you can't "do no harm" any more than you can have a "zero-discharge facility").  I like my skies and my lakes clear as much as the next person.

By all means look for mechanisms by which the environment is changed - then we can stop doing things to the environment that harm us and also stop the environment doing things to us to harm us.

I assume you don't have a problem with us adjusting our environment to suit our needs or would you rather move out of your home now and ditch those clothes?

Lets not kid ourselves that we are going to stop change.  Change happens. It has happened.  It will happen.  The only successful survival strategy has been to adapt to the reality and not what might have been or what could have was.

Cheers, 

 

[couchcommander]

I couldn't agree more Kirkhill. The earth does have it's cycles whether we like it or not, and all we can do is adapt to it. At the same time, i don't think we need to be poking it with a stick...

I am not a believer that we should all go live in the forest and eat only fruit that has fallen, etc. etc. however.

I, personally, would like "sustainability" to be the key environmental concern. It's pretty simple. If you take something like air, or water, put it back the way you found it. If you use a renewable resource like trees, or take arable land for agriculture - do it in such a way as to ensure that these resources, as far as you can control, will in fact be there 200-300 years from now pretty much how they are now. If you take non-renewable resources - limit your supply so that you will be able to use this resource in the future.

Oil is a big thing for me. What are the current projections, 50 years left of Alberta tar sands? Even less for more conventional sources? To me, that seems just plain dumb.


We should limit the supply so that this resource will be around for a few more centuries at the least - then, based off of that, let the market decide whether oil is still such a good fuel. Unfortunately we need oil for more than just cars - pharmaceuticals, plastics, etc. etc. all use this resource as well. If we run out anytime soon, we'll have more to think about than how are we going to fill up our SUV.

IMO, we can accomplish all of this and maintain our current standard of living.

 

[Kirkhill]

It's pretty simple. If you take something like air, or water, put it back the way you found it.

It's not that simple.  Taking something is an action.  Action requires energy.  To undo an action requires more energy.  You can't do anything without having a further impact.

I'll take the personal out of this and use standard journalistic conventions for the discussion.  There are those who would argue (I'm sure I can find him'her if I look long enough) that mother nature is so intricate that man (seldom woman it seems) just can't begin to fathom how all the bits and pieces fit.  As a result of this lack of understanding we are recommended to adopt the precautionary principle and do nothing.

The corollary seems to be that when we do something, whose effects we don't understand, we are supposed to reverse those self-same effects not knowing what they were in the first place.

Alright, I'm being obnoxious again. 

I accept the general principles that we should clean up after ourselves, do as little harm as possible and correct those things we can regardless of who caused them: man, woman, mother nature, God or random chance.

Along the lines of angels on a pin - let's assume that we have all been good little boys and girls.  We have done nothing.  We have had zero impact on the environment.  Lets say it is a time akin to the period before the last ice-age but this time we have capabilities to impact the environment.

When the water starts receding, the deserts start expanding and the ice starts coming south is the environmentally correct thing to act to mitigate those changes, acting in opposition to the environment, or should we just succumb?

 

[couchcommander]

It's not that simple.  Taking something is an action.  Action requires energy.  To undo an action requires more energy.  You can't do anything without having a further impact.

Yes of course, but I think you get my point. If you use water, remove the pollutants before you put it back in the river.

When the water starts receding, the deserts start expanding and the ice starts coming south is the environmentally correct thing to act to mitigate those changes, acting in opposition to the environment, or should we just succumb?

Good question. I don't know at this point.

 

[a_majoor]

There are lots of good reasons to live lightly off the land, and as Kirkhill says, we have choices to make when the situation changes. By training and inclination, I (and I suspect many people on this board) will be out there taking action when the situation changes; it's the human thing to do.

As for the constant assertion that this is somehow unique or caused by human agency (despite even greater temperature swings in historical periods like the Little Ice Age or the European Warm Period, long before there were great numbers of humans in the world), well all I can say is this seems driven more by an agenda than science in the way it is commonly understood (examine the evidence, propose a hypothesis, test it against the evidence. Can you make predictions based on your hypothesis? Are your results reproducible?)

As for the "consensus" mantra, there was a "consensus" many years ago about the existence of "luminiferous either", which also seemed to explain a great many things about the way the universe worked, but once some careful experiments and observations were made, the "consensus"  disappeared.

 

[couchcommander]

Re: the scientific method, not true. There is a vast, vast, vast amount of "traditional" science that has been done. If you want, PM me, and I will give you access to the university ejournal archive and you can go looking through it all you want (it's over my head). The climatologists do "test" their hypothesis. They will create a model, input historical factors, see if they can predict what has already happened. If that works, then they throw in what is happening now and try and "predict the future"  (crudely put, it's so much more complex than that I really have no idea). This is being refined all the time. No, not perfect. Unfortunately for us, the better the models are getting though, the worse it's looking.

Re: we've been wrong before, who's saying we are right now?

Nothing. We have been wrong before, we could be wrong now. This, however, is the best we've got. You could also be sitting in a vat hooked up to an evil genius' machine. You really know nothing - all just a bunch of best guesses.

Despite that, I am sure you still trust what you see and hear fairly regularily.

In the end though I, personally, am not smart enough to understand things like:

The general circulation model (GCM) that we used is based on the third Hadley Centre coupled ocean–atmosphere model, HadCM37, which we have coupled to an ocean carbon-cycle model (HadOCC) and a dynamic global vegetation model (TRIFFID). The atmospheric physics and dynamics of our GCM are identical to those used in HadCM3, but the additional computational expense of including an interactive carbon cycle made it necessary to reduce the ocean resolution to 2.5° times 3.75°, necessitating the use of flux adjustments in the ocean component to counteract climate drift. HadOCC accounts for the atmosphere–ocean exchange of CO2, and the transfer of CO2 to depth through both the solubility pump and the biological pump8. TRIFFID models the state of the biosphere in terms of the soil carbon, and the structure and coverage of five functional types of plant within each model gridbox (broadleaf tree, needleleaf tree, C3 grass, C4 grass and shrub). Further details on HadOCC and TRIFFID are given in Methods.

(too lazy to do proper reference, so Nature, Volume 408, Nov 9 "Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model")

However, I do understand a statement like:

The continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide due to anthropogenic emissions is predicted to lead to significant changes in climate. About half of the current emissions are being absorbed by the ocean and by land ecosystems, but this absorption is sensitive to climate as well as to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, creating a feedback loop. General circulation models have generally excluded the feedback between climate and the biosphere, using static vegetation distributions and CO2 concentrations from simple carbon-cycle models that do not include climate change. Here we present results from a fully coupled, three-dimensional carbon-climate model, indicating that carbon-cycle feedbacks could significantly accelerate climate change over the twenty-first century

This makes me go- oh no! So I look at the source, Nature, a well respected, peer reviewed scientific journal (hard to find a better type of source). However, knowing that even articles in peer reviewed scientific journals get things wrong, I run an EBSCO search for the title of the article, and then the authour (to see if anyone else has published a rebuttal in another peer reviewed scientific journal). Nope. However, I did find this little tid bit by the same author 5 years later:

Atmospheric aerosols counteract the warming effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gases by an uncertain, but potentially large, amount. This in turn leads to large uncertainties in the sensitivity of climate to human perturbations, and therefore also in carbon cycle feedbacks and projections of climate change...
Strong aerosol cooling in the past and present would then imply that future global warming may proceed at or even above the upper extreme of the range projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

(once again too lazy: Nature, Volume 435, June 30, "Strong present-day aerosol cooling implies a hot future")

UH OH!

My point being I am really not smart enough to understand the science behind all of this. I am however smart enough to understand abstracts and search engines. Thus, when presented with a scientific question such as this, I will find articles in peer reviewed scientific journals, read them for what I can, and then look for rebuttals from people who are way smarter than I am in other peer reviewed scientific journals. When held up to these, editorials or op-ed pieces really don't compare unfortunately.

With global warming, you'll find that in the vast vast vast majority of cases, the "consensus" as it is, is for global warming; and now recently, global warming even worse than we thought. Once again Mr. Majoor - don't trust me in this regard - I will give you access to these journals to make up your own mind and confirm that there really is "science" behind it.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>There is a vast, vast, vast amount of "traditional" science that has been done.

In terms of the complexity of the subject, we still have very little knowledge.  Don't be intimidated by what appears to be a large volume of work.  If the sum of human knowledge of a complex subject (eg. climate, the brain, gravity) is sparse, being an "expert" isn't particularly meaningful.  The difference between what we know and what we need to know is what matters.

>The climatologists do "test" their hypothesis. They will create a model, input historical factors, see if they can predict what has already happened.

If a model accurately reproduces results for only a narrow set of initial conditions then it has probably been tuned to produce that result, which makes it nearly worthless as a basis for general speculations.  What we need are models into which we can plug any known initial conditions and reproduce, over the long term, the general known climate.

The real sniff test for this is on your TV every night.  How far in advance can weather be accurately predicted?  If it's not very far, then it means the experts don't really understand climate and weather very well.

 

[couchcommander]

There is a difference between a global climactic model over a century and trying to figure out if it is going to rain or just be cloudy for edmonton on x night. The systems and models used are vasty different.

re: What we need are models into which we can plug any known initial conditions and reproduce, over the long term, the general known climate.

For this model I believe they were using 1860 information and testing it against current or near current conditions. My offer to you is the same, if you want, PM me and I can give you access.

 

[acclenticularis]

There is a difference between a global climactic model over a century and trying to figure out if it is going to rain or just be cloudy for edmonton on x night. The systems and models used are vasty different.
+1

We are definitely talking two completely different animals there.  Even so, the vast majority of the populace does not know that short term forecasts are more accurate than they think.  Forecasts are for a geographic area that usually makes up a considerable amount of real estate.  If the forecast calls for precipitation in a forecast area and it precipitates anywhwere for any duration in that area, then the forecast is correct.  If the forecast adds an accumulation component, then it becomes harder to stay accurate.  So, if it rains somewhere in the geographic area encompassing Edmonton, the foreceast is correct, even if it did not rain directly over your house.  In terms of comparing the global climate model long or short term to small area short term forecasts, they just are not comparable.  Some introductory climatology or meteorology reading would dispel that notion fairly quickly.

In terms of scientific agreement on global warming (the term 'climate change' seems politically motivated), I am sure that you can find articles that point to the rarity of agreement on findings that we are experiencing today.  I too do not understand the nitty gritty science behind the models and findings, but, can also understand coles notes.

 

[Brad Sallows]

You sort of missed the point.  Predicting local weather patterns is a much less complex problem than predicting global climate.

 

[acclenticularis]

I did get the point.  It was quite clear.  I just don't believe that the two are comparable.  Since I am not a climatologist nor a meteorologist, I cannot go on ad nauseum about the science behind the differences, other than offer gross generalizations that are bound to fail to convince.  However, the scientific community that deals with climate could do.  Maybe you should contact someone in the know to get an educated explanation as to why they are not comparable and further, maybe some information on what the scientific community agrees on with respect to global warming.  Unless, of course, it is as it appears, and you think it is a pile of rubbish and the scientists involved have no business conspiring to offer such predictions. 

 

[Kirkhill]

Brad, he is relying on the power of statistics.  You remember.  The science of averaging that proves that one foot in a bucket of ice water and the other in boiling water results in you feeling comfortable with an average temperature of 50C or warm bath water.

 

[a_majoor]

Although it is accepted that the Global temperature has risen 1.80 over the last century, there is no mechanism to account for this (despite reams of papers). The 1.80 figure is so small that I wonder how it was teased out of the data (the temperature in my office fluctuates more during the day), but I will let the scientists fight over that one.

The reason I am so adamant in saying this is agenda vs science driven is you have to account for ALL the data. The European Warm Period and Little Ice Age are well documented through historical records, as well as physical data such as ice cores and pollen counts, they show far wider swings than are happening now at a time when human agency was very limited.

Going farther back, historical records and climactic data suggest (although do not prove) that similar warming and cooling periods were responsible for the rise and fall of various civilizations, such as a global cooling is thought to have resulted in widespread famine and the end of the Bronze Age civilizations in the Mediterranean and Middle East.

Since human agency is the only mechanism suggested for Global Warming (only approved method anyway), but it is historically demonstrated human agency was not possible for past occurances of Global warming, then the hypothisis is not proven (at the very best). Alternative models such as variations in solar output have a lot more in their favor; for example the Sun underwent the "Maunder minimum " which rougly coincides with the Little Ice Age, nuclear physics predicts the Sun's luminosity increases over time and current Global warming is mirrored on the planet Mars, which suggests an external factor is at work. If this is indeed the cause of Global Warming, then we can spend the trillions of dollars needed for the Kyoto Accords to build an occultation disc in the Earth/Sun L-1 point instead.

 

[couchcommander]

Mr. Majoor, this current period of warming is unique in how pronounced it is. Though, as you are right, there have been many, drastic swings before, none have happened so quickly over so short a time, in fact this is something along the lines of 10 times faster than ever previously recorded.

Re: the sun - solar influences would fail to produce the rise we have experienced - though it may very well be a contributing factor, it cannot account for it.

In fact, and very importanty, there does not exist a climate model, only using natural factors, that can account for the rise we are experiencing.

This all brings up a big question for me to you.... please explain how a 30% rise in the second most important greenhouse gas (behind water) would NOT lead to increasing global temperatures?

I should add that references can be found, if you want them, for the above statements.

 

[a_majoor]

Mr. Majoor, this current period of warming is unique in how pronounced it is. Though, as you are right, there have been many, drastic swings before, none have happened so quickly over so short a time, in fact this is something along the lines of 10 times faster than ever previously recorded. 

The ten times faster figure is very suspicious, since the Mycenaeans and the Vikings did not practice the science of climatology. Even given that, the abrupt collapse of Bronze age civilizations across the Middle east and Mediterranean and the sudden end of the Viking settlements in Greenland and Labrador suggest whatever happened, happened quickly. The onset of the European Warm Period roughly coincides with the rapid re establishment of trade and the growth of human population, agriculture and industry in the norther part of Europe, very suggestive that this happened quickly as well. Actual accurate records only go back about a century, a very short baseline to be working from. Historical data is usually from inference, the archeological data suggests the collapse of Bronze age civilization happened within a human lifetime, but cannot say it happened September 10, 1400 BC.

Even the Ice ages began and ended in relatively short time periods, and of the four most recent ice ages, Homo Sapiens missed the last three. Once again, the hypothesis that human agency is responsible for climate change is unable to account for historical and geological evidence, so armies of learned scribes who either don't know or ignore these facts are not doing the "human agency" model any good.

 

[couchcommander]

Mr. Majoor, climactic models can simulate past changes all the way back to the last glacial maximum. "Natural", as opposed to human interference, DOES adequately explain the previous warming and cooling trends.

A coupled atmosphere-ocean-sea ice-land surface climate system model developed at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) is used to investigate the response to glacial ice-sheet topography and decreased CO2 representative of the last glacial maximum (LGM, roughly 21,000 years before present).

Climate Dynamics, "A coupled climate model simulation of the Last Glacial Maximum, Part 1: transient multi-decadal response", August 2002, Volume 19, numbers 5-6

The current trend cannot be explained without taking into consideration human activities, even in models which have been validated by correctly simulating previous climactic trends as well as taking into account all the factors you have listed and more

Simulation results using an atmosphere-ocean general circulation model that includes estimates of the radiative effects of observed temporal variations in greenhouse gases, sulfate aerosols, solar irradiance, and volcanic aerosols over the past century agree with our observation-based estimate of the increase in ocean heat content. The results we present suggest that the observed increase in ocean heat content may largely be due to the increase of anthropogenic gases in Earth's atmosphere.

Science, "Anthropogenic Warming of Earth's Climate System", April 2001, Volume 292, number 5515.

People are putting numbers out there way higher than 10 times faster as well.

But Tim Flannery, a respected Australian paleontologist and author of previous books on science for the public, argues persuasively in "The Weather Makers" that the time for "controversy" is past. And, he laments, "one of the biggest obstacles to making a start on climate change is that it has become a cliche before it has even been understood." ....
....He further notes this is a rate of change 30 times faster than ever recorded, including during previous ice ages.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/02/RVGHAHTD511.DTL&type=books

And there are MANY MANY ways that we can determine what the temperature was long before written records.

Here is a paper on it, including methodology for more recent determinations as well.

http://iri.columbia.edu/~goddard/EESC_W4400/CC/mann_etal_1998.pdf

 

[acclenticularis]

Just for information as to what the scientific community is up against.  And a bit of why there is so much opposition to believing in man-effected global warming and consequences:

http://www.desmogblog.com/slamming-the-climate-skeptic-scam

This is by a well respected and influential spin doctor in Canada.  A BS artist who finds the anti-global warming BS spinners too much to bear.