Global cooling.

[luke warm]

Almost all important decisions have to be made while there is still uncertainty. If the question is phrased: Is global warming an established fact then you can get an argument from people who point out that well maybe the scientists are wrong. Evolution is just a theory, global warming is just a theory, quarks are just a theory, etc. It seems that the better question is: Given that a very large number of very respected scientists think that some very bad things are in store for the planet, what should be our course of action? Of course there can be counter arguments explaining away whatever evidence is supplied. Me, I'll go with what clearly seems to be the highly preponderant view of the best scientific minds. Call me a follower rather than a leader, but I don't plan on doing my own position paper on this anymore than I plan on doing an independent study of Evolutionary Theory.

If there is scientific fact, there is no need for consensus opinion.

now *that's* an inconvenient truth

[kenrexford]

Almost all important decisions have to be made while there is still uncertainty. If the question is phrased: Is global warming an established fact then you can get an argument from people who point out that well maybe the scientists are wrong. Evolution is just a theory, global warming is just a theory, quarks are just a theory, etc. It seems that the better question is: Given that a very large number of very respected scientists think that some very bad things are in store for the planet, what should be our course of action? Of course there can be counter arguments explaining away whatever evidence is supplied. Me, I'll go with what clearly seems to be the highly preponderant view of the best scientific minds. Call me a follower rather than a leader, but I don't plan on doing my own position paper on this anymore than I plan on doing an independent study of Evolutionary Theory.

I think we should spend a quadrillion dollars to make sure that we don't evolve into people from West Virginia.

[finally17]

Unrelated to the particulars of the discussion, here's an interesting news story. It sounds like something straight out of ABC's The Practice, and I can't imagine how the plaintiff's lawyers expect to have a shot at even a token settlement (but then, I am not a lawyer):

 

Alaskan town sues big oil, coal and power companies, etc for $400 million over effects of global warming on town.

[pclayton]

Unrelated to the particulars of the discussion, here's an interesting news story. It sounds like something straight out of ABC's The Practice, and I can't imagine how the plaintiff's lawyers expect to have a shot at even a token settlement (but then, I am not a lawyer):

 

Alaskan town sues big oil, coal and power companies, etc for $400 million over effects of global warming on town.

Public Agencies are requiring that effects on Global Warming are considered project-based effects and that builders and developers are required to mitigate them.

 

A whole new industry known as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) has been spawned as a result. I have heard stories about builders having to install white roofs instead of normal BUR at about 3x the cost.

 

Like Clinton says (I'm paraphrasing here), "the economy may have to slow down a bit so that we can make these structural changes to combat global warming".

[kenrexford]

I find something to be wildly idiotic, on a somewhat related note.

 

There seems to be this notion that we can all benefit from the hundreds of thousands of "green collar workers" that will result from good environmental practices.

 

I like that idea. Heck -- let's create all kinds of new jobs for people. How about yellow-collar jobs, where people walk around writing sticky notes to other people telling them to have a nice day. We could tax the rich and create 5 million new jobs for Happy Note Writers.

 

Heck, the economy will be booming because of all these new yellow-collar jobs. So, we might need it to calm down a bit. Black-collar jobs could be created for another 5 million folks, taxing of course the rich who are benefiting from the booming happy notes industry. These black collar jobs would offer a service to the recipients of happy notes workers, one that reigns in all of the consumer confidence built thereby, noting how difficult it should really be to have a nice day, considering the state of affairs in East Timor. I would suggest keeping the focus on East Timor, because that seems to be extremely critical for some reason.

 

Now, we might need to accept some bad things out of this beautiful stimulus package. People will undoubtedly try to get more nice-day sticky notes than they deserve, requiring more enforcement officers to audit nice note receipts. I would also see those damned lawyers bringing suits against black collar workers for NIED. We might need caps there.

[whereagles]

Human production of CO2 is dwarfed by natural production of CO2.  Again, I don't remember the exact numbers but I'll be generous and say that humans are responsible for 10% of all CO2 (I think the actual number is even less).

 

(...)

 

Whereagles, the data says that temperature changes precede changes in CO2.  Historically that is what the data says.

Allright, coming back to this, I checked my textbook. The book is

 

"Renewable Energy", Bent Sorensen

 

Data about carbon cycle is based on papers from multiple authors. Let me see if I can reproduce the figures out of my head. Units below are 10^12 kg (billion tons) of carbon and the time scale is 1 year.

 

There are 4 types of flow of CO2 between ground and atmosphere:

 

1. oceanic exchange

2. breathing/photosyntesis of living beings

3. human activity

4. volcanism

 

Volcanism is apparently too small as compared to the other, so we skip that one.

 

Oceanic exchange is dissolution of CO2 in the water and its bubbling out. Dissolution traps 100 units per year and bubbling releases 97, so oceans do trap more CO2 than they release.

 

Breathing releases 57 units, while photosyntesis absorbs those 57 back. No swing.

 

Human activity releases 5.5 units via fossil fuel burning and 1.5 from agriculture (deforestation, deep ploughing - apparently, ploughing unearths CO2 trapped in the earth).

 

Conclusions seems to be:

 

1. It is indeed true that natural CO2 release accounts for the vast majority of CO2 put into the atmosphere.

 

2. However, the trade-off without human activity would be oceans removing 3 billion tons of CO2 per year. With human activity, the atmosphere is filling with CO2 at a rate of 4 billion tons of carbon per year.

 

3. The ocean-atmosphere CO2 exchange system is probably not very well accounted for. Removing CO2 at the rate of 3 billion tons seems to must have had a bigger impact than what we see in CO2 charts before industrial age. Strange. However, to the question whether this system can absorb all the excess human CO2 from the atmosphere, the answer seems to be "NO" because turnover times for depositing of CO2 in the deep layers of the ocean (so that it doesn't bubble out due to high pressure at deep ocean) are typically way, way bigger than 1 year, so the ocean is not gonna save us. This is confirmed by measurements of atmospheric CO2 in the past decades, that show a definite CO2 increase.

 

By the way, the ocean-atmosphere system explains the fact that CO2 may increase AFTER a temperature increase. Temperature increases the speed at which a gas dissolved in a liquid bubbles out. In this case, CO2 bubbles out of sea water faster when temperature increases, so there you have your explanation for past events.

 

Finally, note that models cannot explain the temperature increase of the last decade without extra CO2, so this is probably the case of CO2 inducing higher temperature, not the other way around. Even if you consider that 30% of the models have fundamental mistakes, there's still 70% of them that should be working properly! :P

[whereagles]

Without global warming we'd be freezing. A simple calculation shows (...)

It's more complicated than that. There's heat radiating from the inside of the Eart too, and then there's the albedo. Anyway, the bottom line is, if I recall correctly, something like -20 ºC without greenhouse effect. Even more cold than your calculation :P

[whereagles]

1. My understand is that water vapor contributes about 97% of the greenhouse effect.  CO2 is maybe 2% or so.  Methane and others are even less.

 

2. What are humans doing to water vapor?  I don't know but I suspect that directly they aren't doing much.  We certainly don't hear about calls to restrict human influence on water vapor.  Temperature has a big effect on water vapor concentrations but that interaction is fraught with feedback loops that I don't think the scientists have a complete grasp on.

1. Water vapor contributes about 4 times as much to the greenhouse effect as CO2. Check this wiki-link

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_ef...reenhouse_gases

 

Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas, but its concentration on the atmosphere is negligible. Not so if large amounts of it bubble out of the seabed due to temperature rise; the so-called clathrate gun mechanism. You can check it here:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

 

 

2. Probably not much will go on with water vapor. It merely condensates when the atmosphere saturates. Higher temperatures allow the atmosphere to sustain more of it, hinting at a positive feedback of

 

higher temp --> more vapor --> more greenhouse effect --> more temperature

 

However, as hot air is driven towards the poles by convection effects, it will condensate anyway. So the most that can happen is (I believe) higher amounts of rainfall in higer latitudes. This seems to be the experimental weather trend too.

 

I'm not too worried of water vapor. CO2 is worse because it won't condensate until -70 ºC or so...

[PassedOut]

However, the trade-off without human activity would be oceans removing 3 billion tons of CO2 per year. With human activity, the atmosphere is filling with CO2 at a rate of 4 billion tons of carbon per year.

A plain fact. But some, like Dr. Todd, appear to believe in a magic process that will counteract the effect.

[Al_U_Card]

Well, if insolation rises 1% we are cooked and if it drops 1% we freeze....but we can't do much about that.......CO2 production by man-made sources on the other hand....

[DrTodd13]

It is my understanding that the oceans are continually near saturation with CO2. If the oceans get warmer they can hold less CO2 and so there is a net outflow. If the oceans get cooler they absorb more CO2. So, I don't know how your author came to those conclusions but they are not what I have heard.

 

I love this selective quoting of the wikipedia page re that H20 is only 4x greater greenhouse effect than CO2. The page clearly states that this is only true if cloud cover remains constant and the page says this is an unrealistic assumption if what you are testing is a decrease in water vapor.

[Al_U_Card]

That might explain why the CO2 concentration trails the temperature rise......

[hotShot]

The blind discussing "sight" getting their information from some colorblind, shortsighted friends........

Oh Lord have mercy!

[Al_U_Card]

While being observed by the obnoxious?

 

(Contributing rather than criticizing is the best way to straighten things out, no?)

[Winstonm]

Han, I don't mean to pick on you but this:

 

DrTodd, do you get money (directly or indirectly) from the oil companies?

\

 

is an ad hominem attack no?

 

 

The question of global warming versus cooling seems less important to me than determination of either cause, how significant a threat, and whether or not anything can be done.

 

There were a lot of brilliant minds conjuring up the quant models that led to the U.S. housing collapse. I would hope that scientific models would be more accurate. The models will be data dependent - so guessword in/guesswork out.

[whereagles]

1. It is my understanding that the oceans are continually near saturation with CO2. If the oceans get warmer they can hold less CO2 and so there is a net outflow. If the oceans get cooler they absorb more CO2. So, I don't know how your author came to those conclusions but they are not what I have heard.

 

2. I love this selective quoting of the wikipedia page re that H20 is only 4x greater greenhouse effect than CO2. The page clearly states that this is only true if cloud cover remains constant and the page says this is an unrealistic assumption if what you are testing is a decrease in water vapor.

1. Your understanding of the matter is correct. More temp = more bubbling = more CO2 released. I'm also not totally sure what's going on, but presumably what this means is current temperature still isn't hot enough to reverse oceanic exchange into net outflow. Hence, the extra CO2 into the atmosphere must be of anthropogenic origin.

 

Actually the numbers on the book are a bit old. Maybe someone can try and find some revised version it.

 

2. Well, I dunno if the assumption totally invalidades conclusions or if it's a good 1st round approximation.

[han]

Han, I don't mean to pick on you but this:

 

DrTodd, do you get money (directly or indirectly) from the oil companies?

\

 

is an ad hominem attack no?

Definitely an ad hominem attack, maybe also an interesting question. When somebody who claims to have had a higher education comes up with arguments as in the link presented in the initial post I get very suspicious.

 

I promised myself I would stop posting in this thread but I really dislike the rest of your post. Data means guesswork? Does that mean that basically all of physics is nothing more than guesswork? So many personal attacks come to mind, all appropriate and justified...

[DrTodd13]

If you're so damned sure that human-caused GW is true then what odds will you give me that 20 years from now that premise will still be accepted? Someone with your level of conviction I'd think would be willing to go at least 1000:1. Put your money where your mouth is.

[Winstonm]

I really dislike the rest of your post. Data means guesswork? Does that mean that basically all of physics is nothing more than guesswork? So many personal attacks come to mind, all appropriate and justified...

 

Chill, dude. I appreciate the way you responded. You are more than welcome as is anyone else to dislike what I or anyone else posts. That is as it should be.

 

However, I don't know where you got the idea that I suggested physics is mere guesswork - I believe what I said is that in models if guesswork goes in guesswork will come out. I brought up the point of the economic quantitative models used for housing - created by brilliant minds, PhDs in economics and mathematics - who looked at (X) number of years and concluded that home prices would continue to rise for the foreseeable future. Guess what? The data was right - what they measured showed home increases - but it wasn't enough data to see the big picture. The models proved to be wrong even with valid data going in.

 

Now here we are in a housing collapse and on the brink of recession. I'd prefer not to repeat that modeling error in global warming on a global scale with trillions and trillions of dollars of economic activity at stake.

 

All I'm saying is I'm unclear whether enough data is available to make an accurate assessment of the causes and cures of global warming. I know there has been global cooling before due to the ice age; I also know there has been global warming before because the ice age melted. What I don't know is whether or not what is occuring now is natural or manmade. I am not sure in my own mind that global ecosystems and other phenomenon are well enough understood not to have guesswork go into a model, whether a global warming model or global cooling model. And I'm certainly not convinced that the global warming is manmade and not the result of other causes.

 

That does not mean I wouldn't support better emissions controls - but it also means I am not ready to accept "the sky falling" without better input.

 

And even if the sky is falling - is there anything we can do about it?

 

You obviously have a lot of passion for your beliefs - keep in mind that others may not be as wise or intelligent or as knowledgeable on the subject as you and thus any personal attacks you make only belittle you - not your target.

 

That's my 2 cents - you can keep the change. :)

[helene_t]

I don't think anyone is denying that there is a lot of uncertainty at play here. Han said in his first post (edit it was not his first post) (referring to the possibility that the theory of manmade global warming would be disproved) that "weirder things have happened".

 

Still, "guesswork" may be an exaggeration. Does that term suggest a probability of 50%? 70%? 90%? 98%? (Of course it is too complex to be summarized in a single percentage but you get my point I suppose).

[Winstonm]

I don't think anyone is denying that there is a lot of uncertainty at play here. Han said in his first post (refering to the possibility that the theory of manmade global warming would be disproved) that "weirder things have happened".

 

Still, "guesswork" may be an exaggeration. Does that term suggest a probability of 50%? 70%? 90%? 98%? (Of course it is too complex to be summarized in a single percentage but you get my point I suppose).

That's a good point, Helene, and up for debate. I'm not sure if there is enough knowledge to even know if we can determine the proper percentage. Do we have millions of years of climate records, millions of years of sun activity records, millions of years of oceanic records - and even if we had all the necessary information, do we know enough to put all the pieces together in the correct sequence to determine cause and effect?

 

Maybe guesswork is a poor word choice - and I am not attempting to belittle the science or scientists involved - but I am wondering if the complexity of this occurence isn't more than any model can replicate - hence, my term of guesswork.

[helene_t]

What are you suggesting, Winston? Most (if not all) decisions, whether individual or collective, are made facing uncertainty. For example, developed countries spend something like 15% of GNP on health care, although "evidence-based medicine" is almost an oxymoron.

[Winstonm]

What are you suggesting, Winston? Most (if not all) decisions, whether individual or collective, are made facing uncertainty. For example, developed countries spend something like 15% of GNP on health care, although "evidence-based medicine" is almost an oxymoron.

It seems to me, Helene, that there are only four considerations that need to be addressed: 1) global warming is manmade or 2) global warming is a natural phenomenon (and man may be contributing somewhat) or 3) global warming is a natural phenomenon and man's impact is minimal, and 4) regardless of cause, what are the consequences going to be?

 

If #1 is the correct answer, then the repercussions are obviously global and may be horrendous therefore all available resources should be galvanized into action to stop the process - this sounds like a made-for-tv movie. So even if this is correct, I'd want an 80% chance of horrific repercussions before I would support so much disruption.

 

If #2 is correct, then a slower and more prudent approach to inhibit to a degree any manmade causes and continue climate change studies.

 

If #3 is correct then why all the bother other than to realign populations out of harm's way.

 

Note that for me, if answer #1 is a global calamity that must take priority over all other of man's economic and social activities - that is something more than voting for what a certain country wants for a government - so to galvanize a worldwide response should have an extremely low error factor - virtually none. (Note: this means virtually 100% proof of being manmade then with another 80% proof of catastrophic affects before I would support a global, all-out attempt to change the course.)

 

What appears to me to be happening to me is the likelihood of #2 being correct with a call for a #1 response. If so, a more gradual change is less disruptive to the world's economies and citizens.

[kenrexford]

Kind of an interestng debate to extrapolate out into other issues.

 

If we have a source of information, conclusions from which are perhaps tainted by ideology, we have a tough issue to resolve. We might simply decide to follow ideology or we might try to gather more facts. In the end, though, it does seem that a decision must be made, and time for reflection may be an asset we lack or that we may lack. Once we make that decision, we may later determine that this decision was questionable, or premature, although we may still not know. For, the mere act of responding to assumed problems changes the variables wildly. Our initial assumptions may have proven incomplete and/or in part inaccurate, but we deal with the existing, changing circumstances as we best know how. It may be that the course turned out to have benefits we did not expect and costs that we did not expect, but a course had to be chosen with the information we had at that point.

 

I wonder if there are any other issues of the day where this analysis might also apply...

[Winstonm]

Helene,

 

Somewhat off topic but somewhat on topic. For many who are not experts in a particular field of studies, trust becomes an important issue.

 

I am not a scientists and have no strong feelings either way about global warming; I've read somewhat but much of that information is contradictory. So if I needed to make a decision - if it were important - I'd ask someone who I trusted to be honest and non-biased about their response and knew what they were talking about.

 

I wouldn't ask for explanations or reasoning or arguments.

 

In truth, I'd probably ask you.