Our Oceans are Under Attack

Anyway, on another note, I'm currently finding this ancient CO2 levels stuff interesting. One of the good things about examining bad arguments is that it can be educational. I've learned a lot this way over the years.

That infamous graph of CO2 levels from the start of the Cambrian onwards, that some people like to claim means high CO2 levels would be just fine, got me thinking a bit more. I'm still putting it all together, but the short version is that there are several other important factors apart from the reduced solar heat output back then. I'm getting a very clear picture of exactly why such CO2 levels would be an extremely bad thing these days. I'll post about it, for those who are interested, once I get it compiled properly.

 

Martin Hellman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford and co-inventor of public key cryptography, estimates the odds at 1 percent per year going forward.
"If the odds are 1 percent per year, in 10 years the likelihood is almost 10 percent, and in 50 years 40 percent if there is no substantial change," he said.
The 20-kiloton nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki required 6 kilograms of plutonium, which could fit into a can of soda, Bunn said. Three soda cans full of highly-enriched uranium would provide enough nuclear material to produce a bomb of similar destructive power. The Department of Energy has determined that a nuclear weapon could be fashioned from just 4 kilograms of plutonium.
Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, as well as despots around the world, are looking to acquire nuclear materials from enterprising nuclear smugglers.
Nearly 80 percent of the national security experts surveyed in 2005 said that a nuclear attack would be mostly likely to originate with a terrorist group.
"Al Qaeda is especially notable for its longstanding interest in weapons of useable nuclear material and the requisite expertise that would allow it to develop a yield-producing improvised nuclear device,".

 

To follow on what NoEyeDeer posted yesterday.

Pentagon Signals Security Risks of Climate Change | New York Times

Yob, even the Military thinks you are a dinosaur. Come join the Dark Side.

 

The cost of fighting climate change detailed in new book | Tech Times

 

Ok, the ancient CO2 thing. That started in this thread (as far as I know) when Petros made this post:

The graph of past CO2 levels he was referring to is the following one, from this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere



The first point to note is that the graph gives CO2 levels in multiples of the Quaternary average level. The Quaternary is the period from circa 2.5 million years ago to the present, during which CO2 levels have generally been fairly close to current values. The average for this period works out around 270 ppm, as far as I can tell from the graph. Current levels are around 400 ppm. Until fairly recently, levels were around 350 ppm, which is 1.3 times the Quaternary average.

Note that the highest levels on the graph are roughly 26 times the Quaternary average, or roughly 20 times recent levels. Petros, who claims to be "trained in science" and should therefore be able to read a basic graph, somehow thought 20 times recent levels = 170 times recent levels. So, we can write that claim off straight away. The graph he quoted clearly shows Petros was wrong, by a factor of 8.5 to 1.

Anyway, that led me into this post, where I took into account the changing solar heat output over time. This indicated that, all else being equal, the global average temperature 500 million years ago should have been about 16 degrees C lower than the current value, or around -2 degrees C.

The geological record indicates that the world was not this cold at all. There's another handy graph on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record




This one has the timeline flipped horizontally compared to the previous graph, and also uses a varying scale that changes at several points. To make the comparison easier I re-scaled the second graph and flipped it around so it matches the first one for timeline, then put them together in one image.





Now this is interesting, because although the match is not absolutely perfect (there is some degree of uncertainty in these records anyway, and some other factors to consider) the changes in global average temperature do track the changes in atmospheric CO2 levels, as shown by the GEOCARB III line, quite well. The match is good enough that you'd frankly have to be blind to not see it.

Note that I am referring to changes in temperature tracking CO2 levels, not absolute values of temperature. Because of changing solar output, etc the absolute values won't be the same at all times even if CO2 levels are the same.

If solar heat output was the only factor affecting global temperature, and CO2 had no effect, the lower solar output 500+ million years ago would have led to results like this:





Now that indicates that the global average temperature during the Cambrian was around 30 degrees C higher than it would have been if CO2 levels had been close to their current levels. From this it follows that if we had Cambrian levels of CO2 today, temperatures would probably be around 30 degrees C higher than they are.

It is estimated that in the far future, when the solar output increases another 10%, this will eventually lead to runaway evaporation of the oceans. This is not boiling of the oceans, just the point where evaporation always exceeds precipitation, meaning the oceans end up as dry salt plains and the atmosphere is full of water vapour. This process will start when the average global temperature reaches 47 degrees C, or 33 degrees higher than it is now.

So, if we had Cambrian levels of atmospheric CO2 today, we would also have a climate only a few degrees short of the point where the oceans would evaporate. Pretty obviously, this would massively screw all sorts of things we don't want screwed. We are extremely lucky that we don't have Cambrian levels of CO2 today. Anyone who suggests that they would be fine, because they were fine in the Cambrian, is missing large chunks of the picture.

Then there's the definition of "fine". Back in the Cambrian, when it was around 14 degrees hotter than now, there were no animals or plants, at all, living on land. That means we have no guarantee that today's land animals (including us) or plants could survive such conditions. Given that they aren't adapted for such conditions, it's highly likely they couldn't survive. So, even if the same levels of CO2 only caused the same temperature now (ie: ignoring solar output) we definitely wouldn't want such CO2 levels anyway.

Last tasty morsel is this one, which shows a nice red line where the Permian-Triassic extinction event was:





As you can see, it falls right on top of a large spike in atmospheric CO2, after the low levels during the Permian (when levels weren't that far off today's levels), and right on top of a large spike in average global temperature. The results were like this:

The CO2 and temperature spikes associated with this events took 20 million years to reach their highest levels. We're much smarter than nature. We can increase levels much faster than that. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Personally, I get the impression that screwing around with atmospheric CO2 levels with our brains in neutral seems to be a rather bad idea.

 

http://www.wunderground.com/climate/extreme.asp

"Has extreme weather increased in recent years? The science is still unsettled on whether climate change has resulted in more intense hurricanes, so let's restrict our attention to tornadoes and heavy rain. There is evidence that global warming has caused an increase in very heavy precipitation events--the kind most responsible for major floods. However, there is no evidence that climate change has caused in increase in tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, though preliminary research suggests this may occur late this century.

Tornadoes

Are tornadoes and severe thunderstorms getting more numerous and more extreme due to climate change? To help answer this question, let's restrict our attention to the U.S., which has the highest incidence of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms of any place in the world. At a first glance, it appears that tornado frequency has increased in recent decades (Figure 1).


Figure 1. The number of tornadoes reported in the U.S. since 1950. Image credit: High Plains Regional Climate Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Source.

However, this increase may be entirely caused by factors unrelated to climate change:
1.Population growth has resulted in more tornadoes being reported.
2.Advances in weather radar, particularly the deployment of about 100 Doppler radars across the U.S. in the mid-1990s, has resulted in a much higher tornado detection rate.
3.Tornado damage surveys have grown more sophisticated over the years. For example, we now commonly classify multiple tornadoes along a damage path that might have been attributed to just one twister in the past.

Given these uncertainties in the tornado data base, it is unknown how the frequency of tornadoes might be changing over time. The "official word" on climate science, the 2007 United Nations IPCC report, stated it thusly: "There is insufficient evidence to determine whether trends exist in small scale phenomena such as tornadoes, hail, lighting, and dust storms."

Furthermore, we're not likely to be able to develop methods to improve the situation in the near future. The current Doppler radar system can only detect the presence of a parent rotating thunderstorm that often, but not always, produces a tornado. Until a technology is developed that can reliably detect all tornadoes, there is no hope of determining how tornadoes might be changing in response to a changing climate. According to Doswell (2007): I see no near-term solution to the problem of detecting detailed spatial and temporal trends in the occurrence of tornadoes by using the observed data in its current form or in any form likely to evolve in the near future.

Violent tornadoes are not increasing

Violent tornadoes (EF4 and EF5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, or F4 and F5 on the pre-2007 Fujita Scale), though rare, cause a large fraction of the tornado deaths reported each year. These storms are less likely to go uncounted, since they tend to cause significant damage along a long track. Thus, the climatology of violent tornadoes may offer a clue as to how climate change may be affecting severe weather. Unfortunately, we cannot measure the wind speeds of a tornado directly, except in very rare cases when researchers happen to be present with sophisticated research equipment. Tornadoes are categorized using the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale, which is based on damage. So, if a violent tornado happens to sweep through empty fields and never destroy any structures, it will never be rated as a violent tornado. Thus, if the number of violent tornadoes has actually remained constant over the years, we should expect to see some increase in these storms over the decades, since more buildings have been erected in the paths of tornadoes.

However, if we look at the statistics of violent U.S. tornadoes since 1950 (Figure 2), there does not appear to be any increase in the number of these storms. In fact, there was only one tornado of EF5 intensity reported during the eight year period 2000-2007, the tornado that devastated Greensburg, Kansas in 2007 (although Canada did report its first EF5 tornado in history on June 22, 2007). The previous eight year period of 1992-1999 had six F5 tornadoes, so we can't say that climate change has caused an increase in the strongest tornadoes in recent years. Note that the EF scale to rate tornadoes was adopted in 2007, but the transition to this new scale still allows valid comparisons of tornadoes rated EF5 on the new scale and F5 on the old scale."

and this is an AGW site.

Also, Dr Pielke reported to the senate, it will take 60 or 70 more years of data to hope to be able to see a signal of increased severe weather events attributable to global warming. Or NOT! And HE is an AGWer.

He also warns the current fanaticism of false claims AGW is causing severe weather and on the increase is not factual and unsupported by evidence, and damaging to the credibility of AGW!

 

Far more indicative and recent are the Roman warm period and the Medieval warm period. a 1000 year cycle recurring now?

I know AGWers DENY the MWP because it cuts the legs from CO2 drives climate.
They make many claims such as reduced volcanic activity, not global, increased sun radiance. even try denying it occurred at all anywhere.
But from recent research we KNOW it occurred simultaneously in Europe, N. America, S. America, China, and New Zealand.
Strong evidence it WAS global and warmer than now, and NOT related to CO2!

"AGU published research paper, "Evidence for a ‘Medieval Warm Period’ in a 1,100 year tree-ring reconstruction of past austral summer temperatures in New Zealand". Looks like it had world wide effect. http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/CookPalmer.pdf
Tree ring data shows Sierras survived 500 years of fiery drought during the Medieval Warm Period. http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2010/03/18/sequoias_endured_500_years_fire_and_drought/
This source seems to say that the Medieval Warm Period is associated with an elevated level of volcanic activity? http://www.tetontectonics.org/Climate/Ward081217 AGU Poster.pdf

 

Brian never a truer word spoken. I am a new member I have read the forums before but have just signed up. I am the new owner of the HawksBill 56 ft John Alden RI. I have noticed in previous discussions of yours that you knew of the HawksBill. Right now the boat is on the hard and we are doing a big restoration. IE. New Transom which is nearly done now, headliners, floors, certain ribs and planks etc etc. We think the old boat is well worth it .Like to hear from you if possible any comments feel free. Or anyone else that maybe conversant with the HawksBill thanks all !

 

FFS Barnacle, you could have just posted the same blurb once. Posting it three times doesn't make it more authoritative. Then again, neither does your frequent use of CAPSLOCK and exclamation marks!

Little fact for you: science journals have quick and easy methods of recognising nutters when articles are submitted. Two of the primary indications that the author is likely to be a nutter are the use of CAPSLOCK and exclamation marks. The more of either, the nuttier the author. It's not a good look.

Anyway, it's funny how deniers just love that graph of ancient CO2 levels until somebody does a bit of analysis and correlation with it, then suddenly it's not at all relevant. Good one. Tell me something, if global average temperature changes have tracked atmospheric CO2 changes over millions of years, what make you think this would suddenly become irrelevant? Do you think the laws of physics have suddenly changed?

The MWP is not as straightforward as you would like it to be. It seems to have been a time of wide variation in regional climates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

And none of that says anything about the observed link between higher modern CO2 and higher modern temperatures. Just because we don't know everything about a period for which we have little data, it doesn't necessarily follow that cherry-picking stuff out of that is going to invalidate what we do know for the modern period where we have stacks of data.

ETA: And you really should look up Tiktaalik and the recurrent laryngeal nerve. I can explain them for you if you really need it. If that's too much for you, perhaps you could give a good definition of your Biblical "kinds". If you can do that, you'd be the first creationist in history to manage it. Most of them seem to put it anywhere between phylum and subspecies, depending on what is convenient at the time.

 

The question of whether tornado intensity or frequency will increase due to global warming is both old news and somewhat irrelevant news.

Old news, because I reported on Dr Pielke's analysis of tornadoes two years ago.

Somewhat irrelevant news, because the interaction between increased warming and tornado intensity is ambiguous enough that firm conclusions cannot yet be made.

Tornadoes and Global Warming: Is There a Connection? | National Geographic

 

Yes, the Medieval Warming Period happened.

No, it did not happen globally.

Your New Zealand tree-ring paper was published in 2002. However, the MWP analysis I posted just last month was done in 2009, and presumably incorporated your NZ study. Looking at the MWP chart (below) shows that NZ was indeed a bit warmer during the MWP then many other parts of the world. But that chart also shows that, on the whole, the Earth was considerably cooler than it is now.

I wonder how soon it will be before the MWP argument is again brought up for discussion?

How does the Medieval Warm Period compare to current global temperatures?

To save you the trouble of generating another go-round about Mann here's the location of your previous reply to my post. And following your post is a bunch of other posts rebutting your post. Ho-hum. Anyone want to discuss another topic?

 

Fabrications and contrived "pictures" agenda driven by maniacs. Shame on all who make these spurious charts and those who post them.
"more than 1,000 tree-ring, ice core, coral, sediment and other assorted proxy records spanning both hemispheres"?
1000 for the entire world?
The TRUTH is, we keep finding more and more data in more and more areas, that it WAS global.
Based on the all the evidence gathered so far, NOBODY can make more than a estimate and the jury is still out.
But we KNOW these periods occurred in Roman and medieval times about 1000 years apart, simultaneously in much of the world. And more and stronger indicators it was global than it was not. And warmer than now, example Greenland was green!

Greenland back then only a local phenomenon? Oh, like Antarctic ice increasing while arctic and Greenland ice melting in current period. Hmm?

The possibility, even likelihood these are part of a 1000 year climate cycle, re-occurring NOW, should be getting far more attention and research than it is.

But there isn't any money in proving current hysteria and panic are baseless and predicated on political agendas rather than science data.
There IS lot's of money and many reputations on the line to MAINTAIN the illusion.

I'm optimistic about the climate.

I think we need a list of everybody supporting the current mania, so in a few years when AGW finally is totally discredited, we know who the hysterics among us are.
Then when the NEXT mania comes along, we compare lists and say, look, it's the same NUTS again! Ignore them!

 

quote NoEyeDeer

"FFS Barnacle, you could have just posted the same blurb once. Posting it three times doesn't make it more authoritative. Then again, neither does your frequent use of CAPSLOCK and exclamation marks!"

Not responsible for computer glitches. I deleted the extra posts.
This isn't a science journal and some here I could point at, aren't looking for anything more than vulnerabilities to attack.

I use boldened and capped phrases the same way bullet statements are used in professional documents.
To call attention to salient points.
Because even with the emphasis, YOU frequently MISS them!

 

Yes Barnacle, Greenland was GREEN!

Apart, that is, from the humungous great ice sheet that has been around for nigh on half a million years.

Meh. Oi, do your homework.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/greenland-used-to-be-green.htm

Small bits of it may have been green for a fairly short period, but that's all.

Oh for... not this again.

This is turning into just another game of pigeon chess. I think I've had about enough. Go ahead and declare victory, Barnacle. You would anyway, regardless of what anybody threw at you.

 

There is much data indicating the current climate change is natural and cyclic.
And much data the AGW movement is less than honest, less than accurate, politically driven, and appeals to the hysterical. You'll always find some chicken littles.
And much evidence CO2 does not drive climate.
And much logic that says, we couldn't reduce CO2 by a significant amount if we reduced to zero emissions. We only produce 3.5% of CO2, anyway.
I Win? Not yet!
When the nonsense stops, we all win!
Or should I say the nonscience of AGW stops, we all win?

You think you can explain away every objection and bit of skeptical evidence.
But your 'explanations" are not consistent across the board.
You don't have an "explanation' for the totality of evidence against AGW, except to attack skeptics as less bright than your side, or running a scam themselves.

Who do, who do you think you're foolin?