What Do We Think About Climate Change

Discussion in 'All Things Boats & Boating' started by Pericles, Feb 19, 2008.

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  1. Jimbo1490
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    Jimbo1490 Senior Member

  2. Jimbo1490
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    Jimbo1490 Senior Member

    Has anyone looked at this paper yet? I found this copy in English (originally published in Hungarian and French).

    Here's the abstract:

    Abstract—In this work the theoretical relationship between the clear-sky outgoing
    infrared radiation and the surface upward radiative flux is explored by using a realistic
    finite semi-transparent atmospheric model. We show that the fundamental relationship
    between the optical depth and source function contains real boundary condition
    parameters. We also show that the radiative equilibrium is controlled by a special
    atmospheric transfer function and requires the continuity of the temperature at the
    ground surface. The long standing misinterpretation of the classic semi-infinite
    Eddington solution has been resolved. Compared to the semi-infinite model the finite
    semi-transparent model predicts much smaller ground surface temperature and a larger
    surface air temperature. The new equation proves that the classic solution significantly
    overestimates the sensitivity of greenhouse forcing to optical depth perturbations. In
    Earth-type atmospheres sustained planetary greenhouse effect with a stable ground
    surface temperature can only exist at a particular planetary average flux optical depth of
    1.841 . Simulation results show that the Earth maintains a controlled greenhouse effect
    with a global average optical depth kept close to this critical value. The broadband
    radiative transfer in the clear Martian atmosphere follows different principle resulting in
    different analytical relationships among the fluxes. Applying the virial theorem to the
    radiative balance equation we present a coherent picture of the planetary greenhouse
    effect."

    One thing I had not realized about the GCM's is that all of them use a discontinuity (modeled as a vacuum) layer between the atmosphere and the Earth's surface (including the ocean's surface!) as a group of 'necessary simplifications'(called the Eddington solution; this practice dates to 1928!). This author (formerly of NASA) is the first to successfully model without this discontinuity, and several other simplifcations. The results are going to be explosive to the AGW via CO2 hypothesis. As you know, (or should well know by now:D ) all the scary predictions of AGW come from the Global Circulation Models.

    Jimbo
     
  3. Guillermo
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    Guillermo Ingeniero Naval

    Very interesting, Jim, thanks.

    From the paper:

    "Considering the magnitude of the observed global average surface temperature rise and the consequences of the new greenhouse equations, the increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations must not be the reason of global warming."

    Cheers.
     
  4. Boston

    Boston Previous Member

    agnotism
     
  5. Guillermo
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    Guillermo Ingeniero Naval

    Do you mean Agnosticism related to Global Warming....?
    If so, define yourself. Here some possible meanings:

    -I don't personally know.
    -I don't know but will lead my life in the assumption that no GW exists.
    -I don't know but will lead my life assuming that GW does exist.
    -I cannot give an opinion because there is no way that we can prove the existence or non-existence of GW given currently available knowledge.
    -I cannot give an opinion because there is no way to know, with certainty, anything about GW, now and in the future.
    -Yes, GW exists. But we do not know anything about GW at this time.
    -Yes, GW exists. But we have no possibility of knowing anything about GW, now or in the future.

    Cheers. :D :D :D
     
  6. Jimbo1490
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    Jimbo1490 Senior Member

    I think he means 'agnosticism' in the sens that he will believe (in the skeptical arguments) when they are firmly proven to him. This is at least an admission that the possibility exists that this could be proven, which is a big step ahead of the blind faith (religious zeal) that many AGW believers seems to exhibit.

    Don't worry, Boston; your proof is coming. The science seems headed inexorably in the direction of the 'skeptics', not the other. As I said early on in this discussion, nature is oblivious to any pet theories to which some people have become attached; all the faith in the world will not change what is real, and what is real will eventually become known.

    Jimbo
     
  7. Boston

    Boston Previous Member

    Agnotology
    Agnotology, formerly agnatology, is a neologism for the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. The term was coined by Robert N. Proctor, a Stanford University professor specializing in the history of science and technology. Its name derives from the Greek word ἀγνῶσις, agnōsis, "not knowing"; and -λογία, -logia. More generally, the term also highlights the increasingly common condition where disinformation leaves one more uncertain than before.

    A prime example of the deliberate production of ignorance cited by Proctor is the tobacco industry's conspiracy to manufacture doubt about the cancer risks of tobacco use. Under the banner of science, the industry produced research about everything except tobacco hazards to exploit public uncertainty. Some of the root causes for culturally-induced ignorance are media neglect, corporate or governmental secrecy and suppression, document destruction, and myriad forms of inherent or avoidable culturopolitical selectivity, inattention, forgetfulness, and most notably profit.
     
  8. Jimbo1490
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    Jimbo1490 Senior Member

    Sounds like a good description of the AGW hypothesis. The green culture has fostered the idea that everything humans do is evil and destructive. Now a bit of this kind of thinking goes a long way. It got us the Clean Air Act which eventually made most combustion so clean that the only significant emissions are CO2 and water. But now even the non-poisonous trace gas CO2 is labeled 'pollution', when it's nothing of the sort. But such labeling coincides with the cultural ideas that the green movement has embedded in the collective psyche. Couple that with the shocking ignorance of science (also a by-product of the same green culture which detests all modern industry, which is in turn dependent on scientific knowledge) and you have an 'Agnotology' of the shocking weakness and empirical disconnect of the entire AGW hypothesis. They don't know, and they don't WANT to know any better. The leaders (that THEY chose) are becoming increasingly open about the ulterior motives for promoting the AGW hypothesis; look at Hansen's letter. It's all just a great vehicle for the social changes he and his ilk would like to see.

    Agnotology indeed.

    Jimbo
     
  9. Guillermo
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    Guillermo Ingeniero Naval

    Yes, Agnotism seems a quite good word precisely for what most AGW alarmists are doing. Thanks for the term, Boston. :)
     
  10. masalai
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    masalai masalai

    This man teaches "Climate Change" and can be followed on his blog here http://www.wunderground.com/blog/RickyRood/show.html a C & P to start the year...
    Posted by: RickyRood, 6:01 AM GMT on December 31, 2008

    The Next Problems:

    I am about to start to teach my climate change class for the fourth time. When I started teaching this course I did not know what to expect. I went into the course thinking that the discourse needed to change. Most of the conversations that I heard were about Kyoto, and often the conversation was about the Bush administration’s failure to sign the Kyoto Protocol. There was this idea that if the U.S. signed the Kyoto Protocol, then the climate problem would be solved. There was this idea that the solution resided in some movement of federal policy.

    What struck me was that all of the conversations were polarized – this or that. Similarly they were stunningly simplistic. I found that the general knowledge about climate change was quite high. In fact, with regard to the knowledge of the Earth’s climate as a whole, the non-scientists in my class often knew more than the scientists. Therefore, it was not a lack of knowledge of the climate that was the issue. It was the realization that the climate change problem is completely intertwined with society. There was climate and policy, climate and energy, climate and public health, climate and agricultural, climate and this and that. And all of these issues are related, and climate and energy are, today, completely correlated, and energy use is at the core of economic success. It’s a complex problem. It’s a problem motivated by science, but once past the motivation, science comes into relation with all of these other interests. Often science does not bring immediacy to it all. We are faced with this enormous, long-term environmental problem, wrapped up with the immediacy of energy security and at the whim of markets and the economy.

    We are at a governmental transition that, with respect to science (not just climate science), looks to be about as different as it can be. People are positioning themselves, planning for what might be and what they might want to be. With that, I want to return to the science, and what are the science issues that are evolving as the most consequential.

    Here is my list:

    1) Land (and sea) ice is melting faster than predicted in the IPCC Assessment Report 4. This is due to the over simplification of the melting of ice in previous models.

    Rignot, E. and P. Kanagaratnam, 2006: Changes in the velocity structure of the Greenland ice sheet. /Science/.

    Rignot, E. and K. Steffen, 2008: Channelized bottom melting and stability of floating ice shelves. /Geophysical Research Letters/.

    2) Because of the underestimation of ice melt, sea level rise has been underestimated. We are committed to sea level rise, and we need to plan accordingly.

    Shepherd, A. and D. Wingham, 2007: Recent sea-level contributions of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. /Science/.

    Horton, R., C. Herweijer, C. Rosenzweig, J. P. Liu, V. Gornitz, and A. C. Ruane, 2008: Sea level rise projections for current generation CGCMs based on the semi-empirical method. /Geophysical Research Letters/.

    3) The terrestrial and ocean sinks of carbon dioxide are likely to be less effective that previously stated. (Be on the look out for a new paper by Jorge Sarmiento.)

    Behrenfeld, M. J., R. T. O'Malley, D. A. Siegel, C. R. McClain, J. L. Sarmiento, G. C. Feldman, A. J. Milligan, P. G. Falkowski, R. M. Letelier, and E. S. Boss, 2006: Climate-driven trends in contemporary ocean productivity. /Nature/.

    Polovina, J. J., E. A. Howell, and M. Abecassis, 2008: Ocean's least productive waters are expanding. /Geophysical Research Letters/.

    4) The acidification of the ocean is likely to be more disruptive sooner than expected.

    J. Timothy Wootton, Catherine A. Pfister, and James D. Forester, 2008: Dynamic patterns and ecological impacts of declining ocean pH in a high-resolution multi-year dataset, /Proceedings National Academy of Sciences/.

    Orr, J. C., V. J. Fabry, O. Aumont, L. Bopp, S. C. Doney, R. A. Feely, A. Gnanadesikan, N. Gruber, A. Ishida, F. Joos, R. M. Key, K. Lindsay, E. Maier-Reimer, R. Matear, P. Monfray, A. Mouchet, R. G. Najjar, G. K. Plattner, K. B. Rodgers, C. L. Sabine, J. L. Sarmiento, R. Schlitzer, R. D. Slater, I. J. Totterdell, M. F. Weirig, Y. Yamanaka, and A. Yool, 2005: Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms. /Nature/.


    -----

    Given our poor representation of the physics of melting in land ice, abstracting this to a tendency to underestimate changes that are associated with phase changes of water, melting of permafrost and release of greenhouse gases stored in permafrost is likely to be underestimated.

    We must pay increased attention to adaptation. There is no reason to believe that we can mitigate our ways out of the above. We need to develop the capability to do Climate Impact Assessments for both 'geo-engineering" and the geo-engineering that we will do because of energy policy and land-use and the vagaries of billions of people. This leads to a type of modeling that is different from the type of modeling that most scientists advocate.

    As I have stated before, our knowledge of climate change gives us unprecedented knowledge of the future. We have opportunity. We have responsibility.

    Thanks for all of the feedback from this blog, and I am looking forward to the next year.
     
  11. Knut Sand
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    Knut Sand Senior Member

    Thanks Mas.

    http://www.wunderground.com/climate/Glaciers.asp#FurtherInfo

    Check fig 2, 3 and 5.... Scandinavian glaciers are adding a little, rest is loosing, hadn't expected that, as the 2 I've seen are retracting, and also seem to be thinning. I guess Guillermo is right in a link he provided; short story; (many/ most) Glaciers in Norway are adding mass... Nice to learn something.... even though I personally believe we have enough ice here...

    Ok, climate in Norway is pretty cold, compared to the most of the world, humid air need a place to release weight, that's where we come in, it seem.... On the radio yesterday they said that energy from waterfalls and inland waters would be much easier to predict in the future, and it would be more of it, a problem for some, a curse for others... (Norway is one of the large users/ "makers" of this renewable energy source). More water here.... well it'll need to come from somewhere,, and I don't believe they bring it up by plane; so higher water temperatures, and drier land areas in the more heated land areas seem to be a sure guess.

    And a few year back, the city board sold their stock/ shares in the local waterfall energy company, since then the value of what we HAD has had a stedy pace toward the sky. Clean renewable energy, money well spent in other shares in other companies....... They are pretty silent about that thing these days....

    Rain, snow, more than already.... Damn... I need to get that canvas top on that boat fixed.... And that automatic pump in the dinghy fixed.....
     
    Last edited: Jan 7, 2009
  12. Guillermo
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    Guillermo Ingeniero Naval

    The left-wing blog Huffington Post surprised many by featuring an article on January 3, 2009 by Harold Ambler, demanding an apology from Gore for promoting unfounded global warming fears. The Huffington Post article accused Gore of telling, “the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind,” because he claimed the science was settled on global warming. The Huffington Post article entitled “Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted” adds, “It is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers,” not skeptics. :)

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html

    By the way: It's freezy cold here in Spain and sanitary authorities are expecting a prety bad flue epidemy this winter. Attached photo showing the Cíes islands at the mouth of the Vigo Bay, was taken yesterday from an snowed surrounding mountain. I haven't seen this for a long, long time.

    Cheers.
     

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  13. masalai
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    masalai masalai

    Wow, the ice age cometh for the northern hemisphere - 'tis still quite hot in the antipodes?
     
  14. steveroo
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    steveroo Junior Member

    Speaking from the recliner I ponder the pundits..If Gaia has been having Ice ages around every 10,000 years or so, and our last one was roughly 10,000 years ago, it stands to reason that we may be on the brink of another one.I have even wondered about the methane release of six BILLION humans never mind their combined weight tossing us out of orbit.Maybe my moorage will move a little closer to home. The thing that's always worried me is that you can travel 24,000 miles at sea level and all is well but only 3 miles up, and you're a goner....
     

  15. Guillermo
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    Guillermo Ingeniero Naval

    What do we think in Europe about Al Gore nowadays...:D

    Cheers.
     

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