Where Did Global Warming Go?

#3
#3
yep, W made the global warming go away so his oil buddies at halliburton could get richer.
 
#6
#6
Global warming only counts on days that it's warm outside. This phenomenon usually occurs between May and August.
 
#7
#7
I will never understand how journalists whose job it is (IMO) to understand the issues they report on so that they can inform the public can make arguments that are so weak and full of misunderstandings. This is just an op-ed, so I won't get too fired up...it implies less journalistic integrity.

I was happy that the author did mention that this year could be a blip (a year that just happens to be colder), but then explain that many feel we are entering a period of cooling. This is a fine argument. It may be true. We should have actually already started cooling, if I understand the solar cycle "people" correctly, so a cooling now while late could be expected.

The problem I have with the reporting is that the author very quickly turns the debate into solar cycles vs. global warming, which is ridiculous. No scientist worth a dang would assert that CO2 or GHGs drive climate - EVERYONE who knows anything will say that the sun drives climate. The author misses a critical point when the discussion is framed this way. Global temperatures can easily cool (in the presence of "global warming") if the sun's output decreases for a period. The issue at hand is that "global warming" is the effect of gases that trap more of the earth's energy in the lower atmospheres...heating the earth more than it normally would be heated. So, the sun drives the changes, and CO2 forces them in an upward direction.

Statements against global warming like this are just ridiculous...

Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change," Sorokhtin writes in an essay for Novosti. "Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind." In a recent paper for the Danish National Space Center, physicists Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen concur: "The sun . . . appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change," they write.
Click to expand...

It angers me because technically nothing that is said is incorrect alone. It is the Richard Lindzen approach to attacking climate change. The central thesis is in his first sentence...and this isn't incorrect depending on what he means by "change." The climate is changed by the sun - and the extent of those changes is altered by GHG concentration. So, this sentence isn't incorrect - but seems remove the possibility that GHGs can affect climate....and why, well, because solar activity produced much much more energy than man. True. The conclusion to be drawn from this? Man must not be able to make an impact. 95% likelihood that this is false. The problem is that it isn't that GHG's heat the earth alone or that humans are heating the earth - the issue is that GHGs trap some of the sun's heat, forcing the effect of the sun in an upward direction. And, he concludes with "the earth seems to be the main forcing in climate change"...no one who knows anything disagrees with this ... but yet...authors will pick up on get the arguments confused.

It makes me extremely angry when truths are put together in a way where incorrect conclusions can be easily drawn. It makes me mad when someone publishes an op-ed in a Boston paper when they could have called down the road to Ron Prinn and asked some of these questions to clear up some issues and present another argument - making a better article on the issue. But, no, just more disinformation. It is just as bad as when journalists print the absolute worst effects imaginable from global warming (those with less than a 5% chance of occurring according to the models) as the future impacts of global warming. They don't mention that these are extremes, or worst case scenarios..they just monger fear through their words...which leads to this stuff being treated more like a religion than science. What these people are doing is drawing lines...taking sides...and preparing for battle....and it is irrational and bad for everyone. It is ridiculous.
 
#10
#10
TennTradition said:
It makes me extremely angry when truths are put together in a way where incorrect conclusions can be easily drawn. It makes me mad when someone publishes an op-ed in a Boston paper when they could have called down the road to Ron Prinn and asked some of these questions to clear up some issues and present another argument - making a better article on the issue. But, no, just more disinformation. It is just as bad as when journalists print the absolute worst effects imaginable from global warming (those with less than a 5% chance of occurring according to the models) as the future impacts of global warming. They don't mention that these are extremes, or worst case scenarios..they just monger fear through their words...which leads to this stuff being treated more like a religion than science. What these people are doing is drawing lines...taking sides...and preparing for battle....and it is irrational and bad for everyone. It is ridiculous.
Click to expand...

What's your opinion about Al Gore's treatment of the subject?
 
#11
#11
If the media ever wanted to tell the truth, they would show where there was a study done NASA that shows the other planets in our solar system, temperatures are rising at the same rate, showing that in fact we are going through a sun cycle that isnt all that new.
 
#14
#14
volinbham said:
What's your opinion about Al Gore's treatment of the subject?
Click to expand...

Al Gore, in many respects, falls into the latter category I was complaining about. I am happy that Gore has elevated the discussion to a greater discourse. But, more misinformation is being tossed around. Gore certainly pulled a Richard Lindzen saying things that alone were technically true, but when put into context - were not. A good example is Gore's discussion of historical CO2 and temperature trends. He simplified it .. and people have called him out on this "inaccuracy." But, even their criticisms can be called out on them again to reveal something that I think is closer to the truth.

So, while I am happy that Gore made the movie - I really wish that he had been more clear and had not left invalid conclusions to be drawn.
 
#15
#15
Okay - next question to our resident expert (TennTradition).

We hear comments about GCC being "settled science" and that the impact of greenhouse gases.

What's your opinion on GCC being settled science? I know science is never really settled but how would you rate our current level of understanding on:

1. The impact of carbon emissions on the global climate:
a. is it's role settled?
b. is the magnitude of its role settled?

2. Accuracy of predictive models:
a. magnitude of GCC expected
b. duration/direction of GCC expected
c. impact of GCC

I realize that is a lot to answer but in short, I'm curious as to your view about how much we know about the situation and how much confidence we have in the that knowledge.
 
#16
#16
volinbham said:
Okay - next question to our resident expert (TennTradition).
Click to expand...

Sweet...can I get VN Guru status for that :p

Well, first I think that I should preface my answers with the fact that the foundation of what I know about GW science was taught to me by a climatologist who studies GW and contributes to the IPCC as a lead author. He believes in the science...and uses it / furthers it through his research. It is also worth noting that he didn't fully come on board until the last 5-10 years (can't remember how long), when the uncertainty in basis of the models became small enough that he had confidence in the predictions - until then he was in an "agnostic" camp.

I've tried to advance my understanding of GW science/issue by reading views of both sides, yet my foundation was set by a "believer" - but someone who I firmly view as an honest scientist.

volinbham said:
1. The impact of carbon emissions on the global climate:
a. is it's role settled?
b. is the magnitude of its role settled?
Click to expand...

a)is it's role settled?
By role, I assume that you mean whether or not carbon emissions have an effect. I personally believe this is settled science. The role of a gas in climate forcing is a matter of physics (adsorption of energy, band gaps, etc.) and is very well understood (but not so much by me - engineer here, not a physicist).

An interesting side note here is water as a GHG. People who oppose the idea of GW often point to the fact that water is a much "stronger" or "more prevalent" GHG. But, then some argue that CO2 isn't. Now, the percentage argument aside (because that has already been addressed but can be confusing), this seems like a silly argument to me. We can't easily measure the effect of water vapor on temperature because we're already at saturation. So, unlike CO2, for which we have direct empirical evidence, we have to rely on the physics of water molecules to tell us how strong of a GW gas water vapor is. Just a side note...to explain why the physics are important.

b) is the magnitude of its role settled?
The magnitude of the role is up for more debate. I think that we can get better here, but much of this issue (temperature effect) is settled. The issues are exactly what level of radiative forcing will we see from GHGs at specific concentrations, what will be the climatic sensitivity to that forcing, and the question of how good our current means of answering those questions are.

We currently use a combination of the physics determining global warming potential of gases to determine the radiative forcing of GHGs. This is generally related to part a...and the science is quite solid.

Climate sensitivity bears much more uncertainty. Climate sensitivity answers the question of how much temperature rise we will see given a specific radiative forcing from a GHG (that is, given a specific increase in the amount of the sun's energy that gets trapped in the earth's atmosphere by the GHGs). We can predict climate sensitivity, but we can also measure it. The problem with measurements, though, is in correlated effects of many variables. For example, we know that CO2 has risen from 280 ppm to 380 ppm, and we are pretty confident that during this period global mean temperature have increased 3 C (made up number). So, you could say then that the climatic sensitivity to CO2 is 0.03 C/ppm CO2. But, obviously there are many other factors that could have impacted temperature during this period, such as the largest potential source - solar radiative flux increase from solar output or orbital pattern - or perhaps contributions from other GHGs. Also, some things could have been counteracting the warming during this period, such as volcanic eruptions leading to cooling. Thus, all of these factors lead to uncertainty in ascribing a specific climatic sensitivity to a given radiative forcing. Many respectable people have spent a lot of hours trying to answer these questions. Through their work, the IPCC has been able to conclude that the temperature rise due to anthropogenic emissions of GHGs has been, I think, 1.8 degrees C since the pre-industrial era. They ascribe something like a 95% confidence to this number (the uncertainty generated by all the factors I described above). I would say this number is reasonable.


volinbham said:
2. Accuracy of predictive models:
a. magnitude of GCC expected
b. duration/direction of GCC expected
c. impact of GCC
Click to expand...

a)magnitude of GCC expected
This is a very interesting question, particularly coming from someone who understands markets and has studied economics. Because, at the heart of this question are the social sciences - with other sciences thrown in like oceanography, meteorology, atmospheric sciences, physics, etc.


There are detailed economic models that attempt to track what consumption will be, what energy portfolios will look like, what policies may be undertaken, etc. to identify what the level CO2 output will be. This is a tough question...but good people work on it in many countries - and they can (although I admit I don't understand fully how) put error bars on their projections.

If you accept these numbers and error bars, the next question is how the environment will respond to these outputs. What will the rate of uptake of CO2 by the oceans, the land, etc. be? How will it change with increasing CO2 concentrations and increasing temperatures? How fast will the uptake mechanisms remove the new CO2? This is helped out some by data measurements over the last 50 years. So, you can gain some confidence in this.

In general, I believe the projections for CO2 concentration. They don't take into account radical technological changes or world-wide economic collapse (or unexpected advances), but these things can't really be accounted for. I would say the science is pretty good here - although I don't fully understand the social science side.

b) duration/direction of GCC expected

I'm not exactly sure what you meant here, but maybe I addressed this elsewhere?

c) impact of GCC

I'm going to break this into two sections, temperature and impact of this temperature

c1) impact on temperature
I've already talked about the role of GGC on past temperature increase. More questions come in about predicting future temperature increases. Scientists model this...and ascribe uncertainty through monitoring the affect of outcomes such as temperature after altering inputs with specific error bars (known as sensitivity analysis). However, to do this, you must identify and quantify feedback mechanisms...that is, specific factors in our environment that respond to temperature increases in a manner than either increases temperature further (positive feedback) or leads to a decrease in temperature (negative feedback). An example of a positive feedback is the ocean - increased temperature causes more CO2 to be released from the oceans causing further temperature increases. An example of a negative feedback is cloud formation - increased temperature is believed to cause larger cloud formation, and clouds have, in general, the effect of reflecting more radiation back to space than they trap/adsorb, leading to a decrease in temperatures. There are many, many positive and negative feedbacks in the models. But, what if a very important one has been missed? The scientists can do a pretty good job of modeling past temperature responses (obtained through surface measurements over time), which helps them build confidence that they have captured most important feedback mechanisms. But, that is not guaranteed.

So, here, I will say that while the science isn't settled - I believe the error bars are small enough to believe the temperature predictions. I wouldn't argue with you if you wanted to widen the uncertainty in the numbers a bit, though.

c2) impacts of temperature increases on environment

This is the holy grail of climate science, IMO. I say this because I think it is the hardest part to model and if we could overcome these problems, we could prepare for possible GHG concentration effects at local levels and prepare for the effects locally (and more efficiently).

Some effects are easier than others. If we want to understand sea level rise (due to expansion), then this we can do pretty accurately. There is some uncertainty in the width of the thermal boundary layer at the ocean surface and heat transfer rates, but in general, this can be predicted well. A more complicated aspect is ocean rise due to ice sheet melt. However, this is understood fairly well. The slight problem is that we are not beginning to talk about more local effects (polar), so you get more uncertainty. However, it is uncertainty associated with temperature, which is somewhat lower - so you can have a fair amount of certainty in these predictions. This is where a fairly large portion of the sea level rise prediction comes from - so it places larger error bars on sea level rise. I would say that the science could get better here - but it isn't incredibly far off (I would say it is fair here).

Other predictions are much harder....such as what will be the change in precipitation from state to state, or country to country. Predicting precipitation variations is kind of like predicting weather (the difference here is that you are smoothing over some small time-scale local variations to get mean or average values). However, I really don't buy it that much. The scientists are doing as good as they can - but that isn't good enough and probably won't be. I wouldn't attach much certainty to this at all. The models currently predict that the American Southwest will slowly transition into a grassland, but I wouldn't be rushing out to buy dessert land on that basis.
 
#17
#17
Wow...that was long...sorry

...hopefully this made sense..I typed it all at once, so it may have ended up confusing. If I need to clarify what I was trying to say, just let me know.
 
#18
#18
I heard on the news today that a study is currently being conducted on cows. How much methane gas are they responsible for? Would a change of diet help? Do we need to reduce the number of cows?
 
#19
#19
KentheOrange said:
I heard on the news today that a study is currently being conducted on cows. How much methane gas are they responsible for? Would a change of diet help? Do we need to reduce the number of cows?
Click to expand...

I think that rudiment animals like cows are responsible for a lot of the anthropogenic (because they are around to support man) methane emissions. If you want a specific number, I can probably find that.

A change in diet would actually help a lot. Changes to feed have been identified that would reduce emissions - but the key is getting the price right. I believe that there is a fair amount of work going on with regard to that. I don't think that any serious GW policies have suggested actually reducing the number of cattle. I think that this can be addressed through science in the feed, not reduction of the animals.
 
#20
#20
TennTradition said:
Wow...that was long...sorry

...hopefully this made sense..I typed it all at once, so it may have ended up confusing. If I need to clarify what I was trying to say, just let me know.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detailed response.

Part B of #2 was really a warming vs. cooling question. If I understand correctly, the GHG makes the warming worse but doesn't have the same effect cooling (mitigates the cooling trend).

So, what I was asking was if warming is thought to continue (continuing rise in temperatures) or if we could see global cooling in the future (albeit not as much cooling as we would see with less GHGs).

I see GCC presented as GW - I guess I'm asking if that's considered to be settled that we will continue to see warming (assuming no reduction in GHG emissions).
 
#21
#21
volinbham said:
Thanks for the detailed response.

Part B of #2 was really a warming vs. cooling question. If I understand correctly, the GHG makes the warming worse but doesn't have the same effect cooling (mitigates the cooling trend).

So, what I was asking was if warming is thought to continue (continuing rise in temperatures) or if we could see global cooling in the future (albeit not as much cooling as we would see with less GHGs).

I see GCC presented as GW - I guess I'm asking if that's considered to be settled that we will continue to see warming (assuming no reduction in GHG emissions).
Click to expand...

Oh shoot..now I see. I thought that when you were typing GCC, you were meaning GGC (or greenhouse gas concentration). I would've probably answered part 2 differently, then - but in the end, I think that the same basic points would have come across. But, it makes sense now...and I think the appropriate way to refer to this is Global Climate Change science, not global warming science - as you point out. The basic points still stand though..you have to predict temperature (we can do that fairly well) and temperature effects (we are not as good as that) to understand the effects of GCC. My mistake....

I think that your understanding of GCC is correct. But, in my usually verbose way - I will discuss it a bit (and maybe others are interested). The GHGs trap in more of the suns radiation than would normally be present on the earth without them. Water does this to keep us warm and we can't really impact that. Anthropogenic GHGs add extra forcing to water's effect.

So, if solar flux goes up (for example, through solar cycles) then the radiation reaching the earth would go up. This would result in temperature increase. However, GHGs trap even more of this radiation in the earth's atmosphere, causing the temperature to increase further than if they weren't there. GHGs do not alone warm the earth...there must be solar influx.

And, like you said, if the solar cycle trends down, the radiation reaching the earth's atmosphere would go down. This would lead to a temperature decrease. However, the GHGs trap some of the radiation in the earth's inner atmosphere, causing temperature decrease to be mitigated.

Along these lines, you could also imagine a scenario where the solar flux goes down slightly, but temperatures remain constant because GHG concentration is increasing.

Also, as perhaps you were getting at, global climate change isn't all about CO2 or positive forcing gases. The work also involves aerosols, which have a cooling effect. So, when we pump aerosols or sulfur-containing species into the atmosphere, we actually reflect more radiation back into space. It is actually pretty interesting and raises serious social/ethical questions as well as interesting scientific questions.
 
New posts
You must log in or register to reply here.

VN Store



Back
Top