What Do We Think About Climate Change

Thanks bearflag.

It is of no use to pretend anymore the 'faithful' ones to respond with a minimum of logic soundness. They just blindly refuse to hear nothing than their faith.

I would like to go on constructively and try to engage this thread's contributors who are able to work out numbers by themselves, like you, Alan, Paul, Knutsand, bntii, Jimbo1940, etc, in a rational and intelectually challenging debate on the doubts we may set out.

I would appreciate your contribution to that end. I'm going to PM some of the others to find out their reaction.

 

Global warming is real. So is global cooling. There are 2 causes for Rapid Global Climate Shift : asteroids and nuclear war, with only the latter being anthropo-blah-blah.

 

Gully's post no 9390, seem to me to sum up a base we all more or less can agree with. I'll try to think out some way to use my view as a base for furter arguments..
(But fact is; I'm a bit screwed on available time at present.. Some geek will try to put a high house with 60 (or 78, papers aren't quite clear...) appartments pretty close to the house i live in, some building I think is ok, but that's somewhat over the top. I've got very short time to try to go through geology reports, drawings, and sum up a somewhat structured prosest letter, without getting too sarcastic (one problem I tend to have when others dont see the obvious problems with cutting down in something that can be unstable rock areas in closed populated aareas... Sarcasm, like I do it, don't win any arguments... But well, anyway...; Heavy machines doesn't run well on diesel contaminated with eggs )).

 

how many climatologists posting on this thread?

 

Guillermo apparently believes that human activity isn't increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and that CO2 isn't affecting global temperatures anyway. According to him, temperature rise is driving the increase in CO2, rather than the other way around. That's hardly the same thing as just 'disagreeing with the relative contribution' human CO2 is making....

 

This is interesting:

”The climate in the northern regions has never been milder since the last Ice Age than it was about 6000-7000 years ago. We still don’t know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely ice free, but there was more open water in the area north of Greenland than there is today,” says Astrid Lyså, a geologist and researcher at the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU).


http://www.ngu.no/en-gb/Aktuelt/2008/Less-ice-in-the-Arctic-Ocean-6000-7000-years-ago/

 

Negative feedbacks: No runaway greenhouse effect detected

I have worked out a graph plotting the CO2 athmospheric concentrations versus the outgoing radiation at 70 km (well over the stratosphere), using the MODTRAN Infrared Radiation Code program available at: http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/Projects/modtran.orig.html

I just increased CO2 by doubling its concentrations from 5 ppm all the way up to 1280 ppm for a tropical clear sky, leaving the rest of the forcings and parameters as they are at the MODTRAN calculator.

The 'blanketing' for a doubling of CO2 is constant due to its logarithmic nature, around 4 W/m2 (congruent with IPCC 1998 report). For other regions and cloudiness trend results are similar although the graphs are displaced.

"Averaged over the year and over the globe, there is 340 Wm-2 of incident solar radiation at the TOA. Of this, roughly 30% or 100 Wm-2 is reflected by the surface-atmosphere system. Thus, the climate system absorbs 240 Wm-2 of solar radiation so that under equilibrium conditions it must emit 240 Wm-2 of infrared radiation. The CO2 radiative forcing constitutes a reduction in the emitted infrared radiation, since this 4 Wm-2 forcing represents a heating of the climate system. Thus, the CO2 doubling results in the climate system absorbing 4 Wm-2 more energy than it emits and global warming then occurs so as to increase the emitted radiation in order to re-establish the Earth-s radiation balance. If this warming produced no change in the climate system other than tempereature, then the system would return to its original radiation balance with 240 wm-2 both absorbed and emitted. But the warming introduces numerous interactive feedback mechanisms, which introduce considerable uncertainties into ΔTs estimates." (IPCC)

At IPCC 2007 AR4 Ch2 (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter2.pdf) it is stated the CO2 mean forcing in 2005 was of 1.66 W/m2 (+/- 0.17 W/m2), when CO2 concentration was of around 379 ppm.

For the 1998 report a figure of 1.2ºC was adopted for the forcing in 1996, when the CO2 concentration was of around 362 ppm, thus a difference in temperature of 0.46ºC for a 17 ppm difference in CO2 concentration.

But log17 is approximately equal to 1.23 instead of the found 0.46, so the feedbacks seem to have been strongly negative during the period, tending to maintain the planet in equilibrium rather than producing the feared runaway greenhouse effect. Or then what in fact happens is that CO2 effect is negligible and the other factors (clouds, albedo, water vapour, etc) are the ones really in charge.

Now, where am I wrong?

 

No, it is exactly the same thing.

Why can't temperature both be driving CO2 concentrations and CO2 driving temperature? Is that too hard of an idea for you?

Ocean temperature, and other factors, but primarily ocean temperature, determines the rate of in-gassing and out-gassing of CO2 dissolved in the water. (Henry's law)

Atmospheric CO2 in the troposphere contributes to some warming, in the stratosphere it causes cooling.

Its probably better to look at all the factors as a large electrical circuit (as a figurative metaphor only) where each of the contributing factors is sort of like a resistor, inductor, capacitor, etc. Where the global temperature is more of a feedback loop instead of just a single dimensional heat trap.

 

no worries
but you mistake a rather humorous approach to your questions as scorn, although I'm sure some would scorn your tactics that action implies a failure to consistently engage your errors with a light hearted reply



maybe you could eliminate the assumptions and stick to the science and then maybe we can discuss some of the solutions that you propose
now that would be a helpful way to begin this process again

oh
might want to leave off the deceptions as well cause your not fooling anyone with them

just a few suggestions

love
B

 

Guillermo,

Boston sort of has you on the CO2 being constant over the last 400,000 years up to the industrial era.

However, it is in conflict with your previous statements. Because in your past statements you agreed with my position that there is a strong correlation between Co2 and temperature, but that the record seems to indicate that CO2 concentrations is more of a lagging rather than driving indicator. (ie just a few posts back when you were discussing multi-century and multi-decade solar cycles.

We all get winded in these lengthy and mostly meaningless back and forth's could you please clarify which is your position, because it can't be both constant and cyclical, unless by constant you mean the data tracks one another. Regardless, that would be appreciated, thx.

 

Well, no. It absolutely isn't 'exactly the same thing.' That's such an audaciously inane and fatuous statement that I'm not even sure how to respond to it.

 

CO2 Lions, Tigers and Bears OHH MY!!! (is the only thing doing anything)

The one dimensionality of your thinking boggles the mind.

 

No. What boggles the mind is that you either don't understand the difference between cause and effect, or don't care. You might as well try to tell me that "cancer affects our lifespan" is 'exactly the same thing' as "our lifespan is the cause of cancer." Your argument, such as it is, is about on a level with some of Sarah Palin's more bizarre political pronouncements...

 

your both right and your both wrong depending on perspective

my take is that the normal system fluctuates and as it does so these two parameters work in close concert with one another. I'm sure is some normal circumstances temp may rise for other reasons than CO2 ( for instance in the methane hydrate releases presented a few thousand posts ago) and in others CO2 mill drive temp

however that being said we are not living in the natural system today

that pesky little bit about the industrial age
we have artificially raised CO2 concentrations by a huge number
something like 30% and this is throwing temp completely off its normal cycle as has been pointed out many times

the speed of the change is unprecedented and its that speed of change that is continually being ignored by the deniers

its got nothing to do with change itself, thats a given, whats not a given is how fast these changes are occurring

there is a big difference in what "was" seen in the "natural" system and what "is" seen in this new system we have created by altering the atmospheric chemistry as fast as we have in the industrial age

cheers
B

 

Sure, I don't disagree at all with what you are saying here in the broad strokes. I am just of the opinion that the "recent human contribution" is a smaller contributor than you believe it is. That is about it. (maybe some other minutiae, but that is the jist of it.)