question to the right leaning folks here

by MaxEntropy_Man Fri Jan 03, 2014 9:56 am

where do you stand on human influence on climate change? do you buy your party line of denying it completely, or do you take a different view?

by Hellsangel Fri Jan 03, 2014 10:06 am

by MaxEntropy_Man Fri Jan 03, 2014 10:10 am

hellsu toes the party line. got it. funny cartoon though.

by Hellsangel Fri Jan 03, 2014 10:15 am

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:hellsu toes the party line. got it.

by Hellsangel Fri Jan 03, 2014 10:00 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:funny cartoon though.

In other news:

BBC News - Antarctic rescue: Chinese ship Xue Long 'stuck in ice'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25598705

by MaxEntropy_Man Sun Jan 05, 2014 8:54 am

funny cartoons aside,

http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice-intermediate.htm

by Merlot Daruwala Mon Jan 06, 2014 12:57 am

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:funny cartoons aside,

http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice-intermediate.htm

The comments are quite educative themselves. One of the reasons why climate skepticism abounds is the alarmism and exaggerration that has plagued climate-change news. Also, there is a cultish quality to the discourse - questioners are ridiculed as low-brow ignoramuses.

by Petrichor Mon Jan 06, 2014 3:23 am

2014 lemma: If you don't even have Science on your side, let alone facts or law, argue based on obfuscation. Second order derivatives such as 'cultish behavior' and 'ridicule' are valid ways of pounding the table and having skin in the game to amass carbon credits.

ps. suspiciously, low-brow ignoramuses seem to be twiddling their checkbooks in their pockets even while they claim skepticism of science.

by MaxEntropy_Man Mon Jan 06, 2014 6:16 am

at least in the US the "skepticism" about anthropogenic climate change is from the same crowd that thinks evamalooshun is just a "theory". 97.3% of the climate science research community subscribe to an anthropogenic origin of climate change.

by Merlot Daruwala Mon Jan 06, 2014 6:59 am

That's ok. 100% of the scientific community believed in the geocentric theory at one point.

Personally, I buy the climate change bit. I just have trouble with the anthropogenic bit. The earth has gone through multiple glacial cycles in its history. The peak temperature in the last cycle - when man had no role to play - was much higher than the current level. So why the drama now? Oh that's because the earlier cycles were triggered by the earth's orbital cycles whereas this one is because of CO2. We know so. EOD.

by MaxEntropy_Man Mon Jan 06, 2014 7:04 am

the percentage is important because that's one of the many obfuscatory tactics employed by the evamalooshun crowd, to claim that a non negligible consensus against anthropogenic climate change exists. and the concerns aren't only about rising temps but also about sea levels and ocean acidification. google kiribati.

by Hellsangel Mon Jan 06, 2014 7:07 am

Merlot Daruwala wrote:That's ok. 100% of the scientific community believed in the geocentric theory at one point.

Personally, I buy the climate change bit. I just have trouble with the anthropogenic bit. The earth has gone through multiple glacial cycles in its history. The peak temperature in the last cycle - when man had no role to play - was much higher than the current level. So why the drama now? Oh that's because the earlier cycles were triggered by the earth's orbital cycles whereas this one is because of CO2. We know so. EOD.

The problem starts when people like Al Gore start preaching about climate change and carbon footprint. People start treating that with scepticism.

by Merlot Daruwala Mon Jan 06, 2014 7:22 am

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:the percentage is important because that's one of the many obfuscatory tactics employed by the evamalooshun crowd, to claim that a non negligible consensus against anthropogenic climate change exists. and the concerns aren't only about rising temps but also about sea levels and ocean acidification. google kiribati.

I've not been following the debate in recent years, but like I said, there's no denying climate change, melting ice, rising sea level etc.

My only question is why couldn't this be a perfectly natural event like the ones during earlier glacial cycles? Here's an article: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data2.html

Given that this field of study is still in its infancy, and many key phenomena are not entirely understood, I just don't get how everyone can be so certain about this, and demand all kinds of restrictions that are designed to handicap the developing nations the most.

by MaxEntropy_Man Mon Jan 06, 2014 7:59 am

merlot, look at the article you linked to and the mechanism it postulates for ice formation and recession:

question to the right leaning folks here Data2-dome-fuji-lg

question to the right leaning folks here Data2-dome-fuji-lg

the temperature changes almost mimic the CO2 changes in the atmosphere. in particular when there have been sharp increases and decreases in temperatures, they have coincided with increases and decreases in CO2 levels respectively. by and large the CO2 level changes have oscillated between 200 and 300 ppm in the pre-industrial age. now the levels are at 400 ppm. if you were to postulate nothing but the mechanism you already seem to buy into to explain prior freeze-thaw cycles, you would attribute the current warming to CO2 increases. the CO2 level increase from an average between 200 and 300 ppm in the pre-industrial age to 400 ppm today has no origin other than anthropogenic. that figure seems to stop at 300 ppm (labeled as time t=0). that must be a few years old. today the levels are 400 ppm.

by Merlot Daruwala Mon Jan 06, 2014 8:10 am

The article attributes the glacial cycles to the earth's precessional cycles. But assuming for a second that CO2 is the cause and not a correlation, what is the explanation for the cyclical peaking of atmospheric CO2 coinciding with the precessional cycles? Why is human contribution to blame this time and what gives believers the certainty that cessation of human activity will change anything?

by MaxEntropy_Man Mon Jan 06, 2014 8:45 am

Merlot Daruwala wrote:The article attributes the glacial cycles to the earth's precessional cycles. But assuming for a second that CO2 is the cause and not a correlation, what is the explanation for the cyclical peaking of atmospheric CO2 coinciding with the precessional cycles? Why is human contribution to blame this time and what gives believers the certainty that cessation of human activity will change anything?

again from the article:

Why do glacial periods end abruptly?
Notice the asymmetric shape of the Dome Fuji temperature record, with abrupt warmings shown in yellow preceding more gradual coolings (Figure 3). Warming at the end of glacial periods tends to happen more abruptly than the increase in solar insolation. There are several positive feedbacks that are responsible for this. One is the ice-albedo feedback. A second feedback involves atmospheric CO2. Direct measurement of past CO2 trapped in ice core bubbles show that the amount of atmospheric CO2 decreased during glacial periods (Figure 3), in part because more CO2 was stored in the deep ocean due to changes in either ocean mixing or biological activity. Lower CO2 levels weakened the atmosphere's greenhouse effect and helped to maintain low temperatures. Warming at the end of the glacial periods liberated CO2 from the ocean, which strengthened the atmosphere's greenhouse effect and contributed to further warming.

i don't think anybody within the research community or the broader lay public is denying the existence of cycles of solar insolation due to the earth's precessional cycles. but as the article discusses, the solar insolation increases alone cannot explain the rapid temperature increases (the first bolded sentence). human contribution is to blame because CO2 levels have never been higher and the global average temperatures have never been higher in recorded history. this is not my field, but my general tendency about such things is to believe the people who spend long years thinking about something and working towards unraveling mysteries rather than people who think anything is open to debate and there is no such thing as settled science. debate can happen between people equally informed and equally well qualified. it cannot happen between yahoos (and i put myself in that category when it comes to specialized fields outside my own) and people who are thinking about something 24/7.

oh and nobody is demanding a cessation of human activity.

by MaxEntropy_Man Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:17 pm

the naysayers come out in droves in the winter. it never fails. while i think it is not right to look at minute to minute and local cooling and warming (global averages say a lot more about heat trapping), it is 56 F here today -- warmer than atlanta. tomorrow it is going to dip into the teens. the one thing that the scientists did predict was wild weather patterns.

by Hellsangel Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:21 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:the naysayers come out in droves in the winter. it never fails. while i think it is not right to look at minute to minute and local cooling and warming (global averages say a lot more about heat trapping), it is 56 F here today -- warmer than atlanta. tomorrow it is going to dip into the teens. the one thing that the scientists did predict was wild weather patterns.

I am curious, Il Professor-ai. Are you a conscientious recycler and energy ~~saver~~ conserver?

by MaxEntropy_Man Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:27 pm

Hellsangel wrote:
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:the naysayers come out in droves in the winter. it never fails. while i think it is not right to look at minute to minute and local cooling and warming (global averages say a lot more about heat trapping), it is 56 F here today -- warmer than atlanta. tomorrow it is going to dip into the teens. the one thing that the scientists did predict was wild weather patterns.

I am curious, Il Professor-ai. Are you a conscientious recycler and energy ~~saver~~ conserver?

energy conserver for sure. i get an energy audit every year and look at my heating bills very carefully month to month. one of the lowest in the neighborhood (my gas company sends me a comparison monthly. it has the best in the neighborhood, the average, and then my usage). i could be doing better with recycling.

the last few year non-profits (funded by utilities) have been offering freebie energy audits and freebie improvements to insulation. we can do this once a year. i get it done religiously. it has really dropped my gas bills and electricity bills in the summer. most people don't seem to know about it.

by MaxEntropy_Man Mon Jan 06, 2014 9:01 pm

merlot here is an article you might be interested in reading at your leisure. a detailed refutation of an earlier article published by a physicist from princeton, william happer, who although not a climatologist has chosen to insert himself into the debate and has become a prominent critic of mainstream climate science and the IPCC, by michael mccracken a climatologist. it covers a lot of ground, including the questions we briefly discussed here.

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/The-Real-Truth-About-Greenhouse-Gases-and-Climate-Change.pdf

by Merlot Daruwala Tue Jan 07, 2014 12:58 am

I'll definitely read it later today, although a title that begins with "The Real Truth..." is offputting.

That said, your statement "global average temperatures have never been higher in recorded history" is meaningless. Our recorded history begins only in the current interglacial period, whereas the correct comparative when trying to isolate the impact of human activity is with prior interglacial periods.

According to the Skeptical Science, average temperatures in the Last Interglacial Period were 4 deg higher in the Northern latitudes, much less glacial cover and sea levels much higher as well. Considering that atmospheric CO2 levels back then were 25-30% lower than today, clearly there are more powerful factors that drive global warming than just CO2 levels.

Why then this hoo-ha over CO2 levels and melting ice-caps?? Of course CO2 is supposed to rise as the warming earth frees up the CO2 trapped in the oceans, and ice is supposed to melt, exactly the same way it has through all the prior interglacials.

by MaxEntropy_Man Tue Jan 07, 2014 7:10 am

Merlot Daruwala wrote:I'll definitely read it later today, although a title that begins with "The Real Truth..." is offputting.

response to the rest of your post later, but would you have preferred the "the truth about..." rather than "the real truth about..."? because that was the title of the original article that was being refuted.

by Merlot Daruwala Tue Jan 07, 2014 7:48 am

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:
Merlot Daruwala wrote:I'll definitely read it later today, although a title that begins with "The Real Truth..." is offputting.

response to the rest of your post later, but would you have preferred the "the truth about..." rather than "the real truth about..."? because that was the title of the original article that was being refuted.

Yeah, I realized later that the title was a take off on the original note that he's refuting. I'm midway through the paper and it's good going so far. The only jarring note is when the author keeps citing the remarkable consensus of 190 governments on the issue, as if a bunch of politicians getting on board a highly visible, emotive campaign is some major validation of the cause.

I can't help thinking that with so much visibility, recognition (Nobel Prize etc) and funding behind it, there's an institutional bias created due to groupthink within the very compact climate-science establishment where any data to the contrary is quickly brushed aside or papered over. The original paper's questioning of the peer review process in this area has some merit to it. Take for instance the matter of the global warming pause i.e. the absence of further increases in global temperature over the last 15 years, which was baffling everyone and weakening the case for global warming. Enter two statisticians (not climatologists) with a paper suggesting a new, satellite-based approach to measurement, which produces numbers that support accelerated warming and voila, the establishment jumped on that explanation and that is now the reigning science. This, combined with several known instances of IPCC reports overstating the risks is what makes this a difficult area to navigate.

by MaxEntropy_Man Tue Jan 07, 2014 8:24 am

the actual people who write these reports are technical people not politicians. i don't think there's been a nobel for climate science. they may have overstated the case a long time ago, but for the last several years all i have seen are what if projections, not predictions.

with respect to your CO2 being an effect not a primary cause, i think you'll encounter mccracken's explanation later in the article. the initial warming during the interglacial period is due to increased solar insolation. this as you correctly pointed out increases CO2 levels due to warming oceans, and also bubbles released from ice etc. however, the CO2 acts as an accelerant, i.e. a positive feedback mechanism.

the way this works as i understood it begins with the following plot:

question to the right leaning folks here GHGAbsoprtionSpectrum-690x776

question to the right leaning folks here GHGAbsoprtionSpectrum-690x776

incoming solar insolation is in the wavelength of 0.3 to 1 micron. some of it is reflected back into space and much of it hits the earth's surface. some of it is also reflected back by the ice caps, sea ice etc. as you can see from the fiture most of the gases in the atmosphere do not absorb radiation at this wavelength. but the earth also emits radiation, but its radiation is in the longer wavelength. unfortunately CO2, ozone, and other gases are excellent trappers of electromagnetic radiation at this longer wavelength. thus additions of CO2 are bound to trap longer wavelength terrestrial radiation and upset the heat balance equation thus resulting in a higher equilibrium temperature.

as to why there hasn't been a significant warming (defined as increasing temperatures) in the last 15 years or so is still open to debate. i have seen various explanations, none of which are totally convincing. however, the overall long term trend since 1880 has been up. it's not just the warming temperatures that are of concern, heck i'd appreciate some warmer temps up here in the northeast, but all the other effects.

by Propagandhi711 Tue Jan 07, 2014 8:44 am

I wonder if dinosaurs had similarly destructive industries that fucked up their ozone layer..or they accomplished that just from their dinofarts

by MaxEntropy_Man Tue Jan 07, 2014 8:58 am

one of the key signatures of CO2 being an accelerant i think is the rapid rise at the beginning of interglacial periods, but the much slower cooling off at the end.

by MaxEntropy_Man Mon Jan 13, 2014 7:19 pm

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/science/earth/grappling-with-sea-level-rise-sooner-not-later.html?hpw&rref=science&_r=0

by Merlot Daruwala Tue Jan 14, 2014 12:37 am

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/science/earth/grappling-with-sea-level-rise-sooner-not-later.html?hpw&rref=science&_r=0

The eastern sea coast is sinking in places because (a) the sea coast which had bulged in the last ice age is now normalizing after the continental ice sheet melted over the millenia, (b) compression of softer sediments in some areas and in one specific case, (c) the impact of an ancient meteor hit.

Yes, this has to be assessed so that impacted communities can adapt to this change. But conflating this phenomenon with the "probable" rise of sea levels over a century owing to climate change is mischievous. It's just another misrepresentation designed to sway popular opinion and raise alarm levels. Notice also, that these articles never talk about how the melting of ice and rise of sea-levels is inevitable in an interglacial, and it is only the pace (and whether human effort can influence it) which is currently under debate.

by MaxEntropy_Man Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:43 pm

a cooling consensus:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/climate-change

by truthbetold Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:35 pm

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/09/us-warming-winds-idUSBREA180S820140209

The article has an explanation for the 15 year deviation of the warming trend. It also had a link to the Nature magazine article .

by MaxEntropy_Man Tue Feb 25, 2014 9:48 pm

truthbetold wrote:http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/09/us-warming-winds-idUSBREA180S820140209

The article has an explanation for the 15 year deviation of the warming trend. It also had a link to the Nature magazine article .

yes i've seen that. another explanation that is proffered is the formation of sulphuric acid droplets in the stratosphere from recent volcanic emissions of sulphur dioxide which acts to reflect a good bit of the solar insolation into outer space thereby decreasing the total insolation.

in any case, my reason for posting the economist article is that this and a companion article in the wapo are the first instance of a mainstream publication taking the skeptical view seriously.

as a climate lay person, but as an engineer very familiar with thermofluidics, one thing i can think of where a lot of the trapped heat could be going, but which i have never seen discussed in popular writings about climate change is the phenomenon of phase change. simply stated when you have the existence of a two phase equilibrium, say between water and ice, any heat input into the system goes towards transforming more of the ice into water. while you have this two phase equilibrium, transfer of heat does not result in a temperature change but only results in more melting of ice. thus this acts as a buffer against temperature change until all of the ice is melted. we have had a lot of ice melting in the arctic regions. so why is this not discussed as a heat sink? that the arctic ice is melting is not open to question; it is empirically observed fact.

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