Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
|
|
As reality diverges more and more from projections more people will become informed and the "science of climate change" will be forced to return to your page 1 Dr.So rather than sweeping the evidence of model failure under the rug wouldn't discussion better be directed to the unknown quantities that separate reality from projection? Inquiring minds want to know.
I don't frequent the "propaganda"of the right wing think tanks any more often than the left wing tanks. Pure unbiased science is hard to come by on this highly charged subject. The Koch brothers i know naught of.
You do a good job of policing the content of your threads of OT conversation Dr., but may i suggest to you you leave it alone and let the "science" of social interaction lead wherever it may on this subject. The case is not closed.
|
|
BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
|
|
We see constant cycles of high and low stand or sea level in the rock record. Over and over, the shoreline comes and goes. Most of the cycles are global, meaning that they were caused by freezing and melting of continental ice sheets due to climate cycles. So, yes, the Earth does have a natural climate rhythm.
There has been a lot of work on what causes these climate cycles, and one of the hypotheses is the Milankovitch cycles mentioned above. There are cycles in the Earth's orbit and precession of it's polar axis.
The problem is that we aren't in a warm period of a cycle right now. You can say that it is naturally warm all that you want, but you have to explain it. You have to state a mechanism.
We know of certain CO2 caused climate events in the past, as I mentioned before. The one that we know the most about is the Mesozoic event. During that event, you see dinosaur bone beds way above the artic circle. The weird thing is that those beds were a little closer to the pole at the time of deposition.
You can't tackle a science question with anything other than science. You can throw out strawman arguments until you are blue in the face, but in reality, most people not only don't understand climate driving forces, they don't even WANT to understand them.
Another funny thing about climate science, which now has a good 20 years of hard work beneath it, can brand you as a political scientist. Science doesn't care about politics.
As for naysayers, I've been dealing with babbling Christians all of my life over the Genesis account. They come up with really stupid arguments. I mean laughable. They can't be swayed, however. They made up their minds around birth.
|
|
BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
|
|
Yeah you guys, it is not a settled scientific fact that the small measured rise in global mean temperatures is above normal variability nor whether it is primarily man made, no matter how much guys like Base arrogantly lecture us as if we are children
Ed! This is the coolest thread ever! I get to post science and then get called arrogant!!
I've found a perfect place to post. I'm getting nowhere with Largo, but at least that thread is polite. This thread is a sh#t throwing contest.
|
|
Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
|
|
One thing the "warming slowdown" declarations (like the Economist's) often glide past is deep ocean heat content, which vastly exceeds the atmosphere's and has kept on rising.
Graphic (from NOAA):
Research paper (Levitus et al. 2012):
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, doi:10.1029/2012GL051106
"World ocean heat content and thermosteric sea level change (0-2000), 1955-2010"
* A strong positive linear trend in exists in world ocean heat content since 1955
* One third of the observed warming occurs in the 700-2000 m layer of the ocean
* The warming can only be explained by the increase in atmospheric GHGs
We provide updated estimates of the change of heat content and the thermosteric component of sea level change of the 0-700 and 0-2000 m layers of the world ocean for 1955-2010. Our estimates are based on historical data not previously available, additional modern data, correcting for instrumental biases of bathythermograph data, and correcting or excluding some Argo float data. The heat content of the world ocean for the 0-2000 m layer increased by 24.0x1022 J corresponding to a rate of 0.39 Wm-2 (per unit area of the world ocean) and a volume mean warming of 0.09ºC. This warming rate corresponds to a rate of 0.27 Wm-2 per unit area of earth's surface. The heat content of the world ocean for the 0-700 m layer increased by 16.7x1022 J corresponding to a rate of 0.27 Wm-2 (per unit area of the world ocean) and a volume mean warming of 0.18ºC. The world ocean accounts for approximately 90% of the warming of the earth system that has occurred since 1955. The thermosteric component of sea level trend is 0.54 mm yr-1 for the 0-2000 m layer and 0.41 mm yr-1 for the 0-700 m layer of the world ocean for 1955-2010.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2012GL051106.shtml
|
|
Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
|
|
Or, for something completely different, "The demographics of true and false volcanic facts"
For example, real CO2 levels are increasing, there is 0 doubt among scientists about that:
But there are segments of the public that doubt this, either because they don't know, or it conflicts with their political beliefs:
http://carseyinstitute.unh.edu/cera/exploring-public-views-science-environment
|
|
Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
|
|
I think it's laughable that climate change deniers propose a conspiracy based on money to support the idea that humans are seriously influencing climate change.
It's quite obvious that the real money is interested in Climate Change denial and not support. Accepting the real danger of climate change would be profoundly expensive and threatening to 800 lb gorilla industries.
Which is the reason why that little of significance is done about climate change even though everybody pretty much knows we may already be beyond the tipping point. It just takes a little doubt to keep the gas/coal party burning
peace
karl
|
|
rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
|
|
The problem is that we don't understand all the mechanisms involved in the natural variations of Earth's climate, in fact were still far from it. Has science adequately explained the cause of the younger dryas or medieval warm period or the little ice age (well maybe with the little ice age), to name just a few anomalies?
The only credible consensus is that man is causing increased CO2 emissions.What happens from here is the great unknown and the observed effects have stubbornly refused to fall in line with the projections.
|
|
Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
|
|
The problem is that we don't understand all the mechanisms involved in the natural variations of Earth's climate, in fact were still far from it. Has science adequately explained the cause of the younger dryas or medieval warm period or the little ice age (well maybe with the little ice age), to name just a few anomalies?
well Rick, I don't know how anyone could adequately assure you that Climate Science has been around for many decades now and many of our best scientists, yes, do have a pretty damn good understanding of it. Perhaps you just are not aware of all the research and advancements.
And yes, if you do just a little reading out of the mountain out there, you will find that yes, science has indeed "explained" the cause of the dryas etc.......go ahead, start with a search engine or just quickly get briefed on wiki or some post graduate level work readily avaiable
|
|
BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
|
|
Karl,
To blame this on industry is very short sighted.
Americans are the biggest energy guzzlers on the planet. They want that big truck and they want their gas cheap. Sure, a lot of people talk, but basically they want gas to cost less than 3 bucks and they don't care how or where you are going to get it.
That is a good summary of the energy policy of the United States since the Reagan Administration. Carter was the only president who foresaw the strategic danger of importing too much oil. He made basic changes and cut U.S. consumption by 25%, which is huge.
All energy statistics are at your fingertips. All of the geologists and industry people use the EIA. They are like the CIA of energy statistics:
http://www.eia.gov/
Poke around that website. There are basic articles that explain oil markets in plain language. What's more is that it isn't political. It is just statistics, and powerful ones at that.
Hmmm. Why is the summer ice pack in the N Polar regions receding so rapidly? Does anyone have an answer for that one? You won't find a single eskimo, and damn few Alaskans, that DON'T believe in global warming.
Climate science has led to a lot of discoveries about the way the energy budgets of the ocean operate. NASA devoted much of its launch schedule for the past couple of years on newer satellites which can measure all sorts of nifty stuff. You can use that data or put on a blindfold and start yelling Nahhhh!!!! Nahhhhh!!!!! Nahhhhh!!!!!
Nova ran a tremendous 2 hour episode on the discoveries that have been made with the new satellite data. A friend of mine is doing hurricanes with NASA and NCAR. He said that some of the satellites are bitchin.
|
|
wilbeer
Mountain climber
honeoye falls,ny.greeneck alleghenys
|
|
Base,you are correct sir,but have you ever talked to folks from greenland,iceland,they share those opinions in spades.
|
|
BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
|
|
I would guess that all of the high latitude peoples agree with global warming. Alaskans are downright "libertarian out there" folks, but the ice has been going out sooner and staying out longer. It has really gotten bad in the last twenty years. The ice is out for a longer time and many villages are being eroded by storms. The storm season used to be short. The ice came in and waves stopped. Now a lot of those villages are seeing erosion.
I used to hang out in Kaktovik, AK regularly. Whaling is huge in those eskimo communities. Kaktovik is on the north edge of ANWR, the most eastern village in Alaska on the Beaufort Sea.
They whale around the end of the summer, and by August or early Sept, the ice might have been ten miles offshore. So they could go get one without having to search a thousand square miles. I have been watching the summer ice go fifty or more miles from the coast in recent summers and I wonder how they are getting their whales. They would complain about it getting tougher. They are tuned in with every inch of sea level and it affects them in ways that are easy to see.
It is forecast that the north polar regions will have ice free summers in my son's lifetime.
Most people don't understand or even know about the importance of the ice shelves in the Antarctic. They are the main drivers in deep ocean currents and world circulation.
Read up on it. Don't go to Drudge for your information. Google it, and start with Wiki. For non-scientists, Wiki will usually suffice.
Another thing. There is a scramble going on over arctic offshore and near shore drilling rights as the summers open up more and more areas.
Canada is also positioning itself as a transportation route through the summer NW Passage. Hell, a guy just sailed the NW passage in a few months in a 27 foot sailboat exactly like mine (Albin Vega 27) last summer. In the old days, ships would get stuck for a year or more trying to get through all of that ice.
Even China is trying to get in on it.
I know that Shell is beginning their Chukchi Sea projects, and the Russians and Norwegians are starting drilling in the Barents Sea. Most of you should realize that the Russians have never had a huge navy such as us because 90% of their coastline is in the arctic.
I have a buddy who used to work at NCAR in Boulder. About 15 years or so I was yacking with him. This was when climate science was pretty young and just being modeled. I asked him where would be some good property to buy.
He said, Manitoba.
Seriously, though. In the Cretaceous, it was a temperate climate in the far north.
|
|
rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
|
|
Well Dr. you dismissed all my questions and conjectures in your typical way, along party lines. So i largely dismiss, as not serious, your answer.
Norton i'm well aware that climate science,or attempts at such, have been around for many decades. And no, there is not an explanation of the Younger Dryas that fits the rapidity of all the proven global effects.Base says that we are at the point in the Milankovitch cycles where the trend should be towards cooling and correct he is. This in itself does seem to lend support to the theory (and i stress theory) of disastrous human caused global warming if pesky little anomalies like the aforementioned Younger Dryas, Medieval Warm Period, and Little Ice Age are trivialized, explained away, and swept under the rug.I concentrate on these anomalies only because they are very prominent in discussion of this topic. There has been many other anomalies, some of which are equally unexplainable given the current state of climate science. The Younger Dryas occurred after the end of the last great ice age, had a very rapid onset (within a decade by some estimates),was global in extent within 30-40 years and occurred during a period that should have been a warming trend and lasted 1300 years. Despite what the new consensus says there is quite of bit of science being done and papers published that indicate both the Medieval Warm period and Little Ice Age were likewise global in extent,rapidly beginning and ending, and are proof of natural variability above the range of the current "climate change".
I don't know what to tell you guys other than as an Alaskan i saw the effects firsthand of a rapidly warming climate in the 90's and accepted ,just like most of you ,that man made global warming was real. My turning point was a product of more time in semi-retirement and a good deal of avocational archaeology study.My eyes opened, i questioned, i observed,i changed my mind.
As far as naysayers go; I know what you mean Base as i've likewise seen it in the babblings of the quasi-religion of modern science. Remember Peak Oil,the return of the Ice Age scare in the early 70's, the inevitability of nuclear war and winter,the reception visited upon the originator of the theory of Plate Techtonics,the Clovis first dominance of N. American archaeology, and on and on.
|
|
rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
|
|
I didn't deny an increase in manmade CO2. I'll even grant you that, yes it is one of the components in recent global temp increases.My main point however is that it is not the "Disastrous Warming" predicted by many of the models. The actual measurements have consistently fallen at or below the predicted low range and below the natural variations of anomalous climate events of the recent past.There are moderating processes that are not adequately understood.And yes Ed, dissent is being ridiculed and marginalized by those that advocate severe limitation of fossil fuel use with the help of a largely compliant media, that you cannot seriously deny.
I guess the reason this whole issue upsets me to the point of argument is that it seems to be part of a manipulation of the masses that is fostering a turn inwards towards the false premise that we can and should have an all enveloping safety net that shields us from birth to a long deferred death.This is not possible, our destiny is outwards towards new frontiers not inwards. Explore, create, take risks ,or stagnate and perish like all other species before us.
Yes Dr. you do know what you are talking about in your field of localized air pollution control/mitigation and if you had a hand in clearing the southern California skies you are to be commended as the local air there is vastly improved over the choking grey of the sixties. Congratulations.
|
|
Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
|
|
rick sumner:
There are moderating processes that are not adequately understood.
Rick, you'd sound better in these arguments if you backed off from your talking points, but tried to learn about the science. This is a huge and active field of research across scores of disciplines and many thousands of scientists.
For example: some moderating processes (notably, short-term variations associated with El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO)) are in fact well known, and being incorporated in statistical models. So are solar variations, and volcanoes. When you subtract out the known effects from these, net temperatures are still rising. Global climate models don't try to predict ENSO, or volcanoes, or the sun, so they can't forecast short-term variations.
ENSO can warm or cool the atmosphere (short term) by exchanging more or less heat with the ocean. So if the atmosphere is warming less than we'd expect for some years, is the ocean warming more? Yes, turns out that it is. That's shown by the graph I posted upthread, for example.
What ENSO does not do is drive longer-term trends. And the longer-term trends we've seen over that past century cannot be explained without greenhouse gases. That's a finding confirmed repeatedly by many different teams of scientists, with varied tools and data. The consensus on this point keeps getting stronger, involving every major science organization in the US (for example) -- which represent hundreds of thousands of working scientists. At the same time an ideological segment of the public chooses to believe it's down to a small conspiracy of hoaxers. If they're interested enough, they know where to find sciency-sounding arguments for why their ideology-based beliefs are correct.
|
|
Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
|
|
Simple demonstration: temperature variations have more than one cause.
The blue line below shows observed global temp anomaly; the red lines are predictions from simple statistical models that try estimate temperature based on volcanoes, volcanoes+solar, volcanoes+solar+ENSO, and finally at lower right, volcanoes+solar+ENSO+CO2.
|
|
wilbeer
Mountain climber
honeoye falls,ny.greeneck alleghenys
|
|
Chiloe,you are exact,the talking points Rick uses are as old as the argument itself.
Sound science and data have withstood the test of time,even if relatively recent.
Naysayers and doubters,let alone ,have prevented any real "solutions" and or prevention.[carbon sequestration]
The true solution,divest from fossil fuels,invest in alternatives.
Big oil subsidizing has become corporate entitlement.
|
|
rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
|
|
I sense a small between the line concession on Ed's part that climate modeling still has considerable ways to go before it's predictions accurately reflect current conditions.
To add to Ed's list of Younger Dryas causes is evidence of a comet impact or explosion over the Laurentide ice sheet and an accompanying continent wide conflagration initiating both ice sheet collapse and NAO collapse along with a prolonged nuclear winter effect from atmospheric particulates.By topographical forcing do you refer to northern hemisphere ice sheet ablation, isostatic rebound and rapid sea level rise?
On my way out the door, will check in this evening.
|
|
Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
|
|
That Younger Dryas impact hypothesis has not stood up well (emphasis added).
The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: A requiem
Pintera et al., Earth-Science Reviews (2011)
The Younger Dryas (YD) impact hypothesis is a recent theory that suggests that a cometary or meteoritic body or bodies hit and/or exploded over North America 12,900 years ago, causing the YD climate episode, extinction of Pleistocene megafauna, demise of the Clovis archeological culture, and a range of other effects. Since gaining widespread attention in 2007, substantial research has focused on testing the 12 main signatures presented as evidence of a catastrophic extraterrestrial event 12,900 years ago. Here we present a review of the impact hypothesis, including its evolution and current variants, and of efforts to test and corroborate the hypothesis.
The physical evidence interpreted as signatures of an impact event can be separated into two groups. The first group consists of evidence that has been largely rejected by the scientific community and is no longer in widespread discussion, including: particle tracks in archeological chert; magnetic nodules in Pleistocene bones; impact origin of the Carolina Bays; and elevated concentrations of radioactivity, iridium, and fullerenes enriched in 3He. The second group consists of evidence that has been active in recent research and discussions: carbon spheres and elongates, magnetic grains and magnetic spherules, byproducts of catastrophic wildfire, and nanodiamonds. Over time, however, these signatures have also seen contrary evidence rather than support. Recent studies have shown that carbon spheres and elongates do not represent extraterrestrial carbon nor impact-induced megafires, but are indistinguishable from fungal sclerotia and arthropod fecal material that are a small but common component of many terrestrial deposits. Magnetic grains and spherules are heterogeneously distributed in sediments, but reported measurements of unique peaks in concentrations at the YD onset have yet to be reproduced. The magnetic grains are certainly just iron-rich detrital grains, whereas reported YD magnetic spherules are consistent with the diffuse, non-catastrophic input of micrometeorite ablation fallout, probably augmented by anthropogenic and other terrestrial spherular grains. Results here also show considerable subjectivity in the reported sampling methods that may explain the purported YD spherule concentration peaks. Fire is a pervasive earth-surface process, and reanalyses of the original YD sites and of coeval records show episodic fire on the landscape through the latest Pleistocene, with no unique fire event at the onset of the YD. Lastly, with YD impact proponents increasingly retreating to nanodiamonds (cubic, hexagonal [lonsdaleite], and the proposed n-diamond) as evidence of impact, those data have been called into question. The presence of lonsdaleite was reported as proof of impact-related shock processes, but the evidence presented was inconsistent with lonsdaleite and consistent instead with polycrystalline aggregates of graphene and graphane mixtures that are ubiquitous in carbon forms isolated from sediments ranging from modern to pre-YD age. Important questions remain regarding the origins and distribution of other diamond forms (e.g., cubic nanodiamonds).
In summary, none of the original YD impact signatures have been subsequently corroborated by independent tests. Of the 12 original lines of evidence, seven have so far proven to be non-reproducible. The remaining signatures instead seem to represent either (1) non-catastrophic mechanisms, and/or (2) terrestrial rather than extraterrestrial or impact-related sources. In all of these cases, sparse but ubiquitous materials seem to have been misreported and misinterpreted as singular peaks at the onset of the YD. Throughout the arc of this hypothesis, recognized and expected impact markers were not found, leading to proposed YD impactors and impact processes that were novel, self-contradictory, rapidly changing, and sometimes defying the laws of physics. The YD impact hypothesis provides a cautionary tale for researchers, the scientific community, the press, and the broader public.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825211000262
|
|
Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
|
|
The paper quoted above calls the rise and fall of the YD impact hypothesis a "cautionary tale." NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt notes some lessons that can be drawn from this tale:
* ‘Bold’ ideas can get published and get serious people to pay attention. The claims about the YD impact were entirely at odds with mainstream views, yet taken seriously and looked at by a wide variety of other researchers.
* Like most bold ideas that initially raise skeptical eyebrows, the evidence for this one decreased with time. This is not inevitable, but it is not unusual.
* Science is self-correcting because other scientists take the time to look for new evidence backing up or refuting initial ideas, and go back and re-interpret what was previously done.
* Even eventually discarded ideas can provide abundant directions for good science to get done. For instance, a fair amount of research into nanodiamonds has occurred because of the interest in this idea.
* The media loves the ‘radical new idea’ presented by ‘outsider’ scientists (3 documentaries on this so far, a big NYT piece). It fits a lot of the romantic archetype of what science is supposed to be about. It has controversy, narrative and outsize personalities. Whether the ideas are good or not is barely relevant.
* The Feynmanian ideal of a single scientist both proposing and refuting their own new idea is very rare. In practice, the roles of proposing and refuting are far more often done by the scientific community as a whole, not an individual.
* Scientists gain credibility for doing careful work and not going beyond the evidence in interpreting it. This is opposite to what gains readership on blogs. :-)
The Younger Dryas, an extremely abrupt, and still mysterious, interval of climate change, will no doubt continue to excite people across the field of paleo-climate, but we hypothesize that the impact hypothesis has had all the impact it’s going to.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/03/requiem-for-the-younger-dryas-impact-hypothesis/
|
|
BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
|
|
Plate tectonics is a great example of a fundamental scientific revolution.
It actually caught on rather quickly. It was only attacked by old farts who didn't keep up with the literature.
Plate tectonic theory explains everything very well, and totally disconnected theories all agree with it. In short, it is very useful and still holds water well.
These days, with what we know, it is amazing that a pre-plate tectonics world even existed. The previous theory, geosynclinal theory, was convoluted, complicated, and had to be constantly tweaked.
It is just like the idea that the Earth was the center of the Universe. The proper motions of planets through the sky made no sense and there were all sorts of adjustments needed to keep that theory afloat until it just became bluntly obvious that we orbited the sun.
Both of those theories, specifically the earth as the center of the Universe theory, didn't have a chance. When they were finally challenged, they were shot in the noggin and haven't been heard from since.
Sure, there is a transition period where you get grumbling from old guys who just tossed their life's work into the trash, but all observations are still valid if taken in the correct context. They weren't total losses.
Geosynclinal Theory. If you can find much written about it, enjoy. About the only hold outs were old men who had stopped reading journal articles ten years prior. Plate tectonics has fit every new finding, even from disciplines that weren't even known about at the time. It just keeps on ticking.
That is what a good scientific theory does. It makes predictions and survives an onslaught of new work without a scratch.
I have to mention that I did catch an interview with a "scientist" over on the creationist websites who claimed that it all happened in a week or so and the result was the great flood.
Unfortunately, rocks don't lie. Neither do Earthquakes or volcanoes or mountain ranges.
Plate tectonics is a great theory.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!