Global Warning; the Debate is over

[can't sit still]

Chances are, we don't need to debate global warming anymore.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004 ... ist1101254

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0, ... 84,00.html

"A few years ago such changes seemed signs of possible trouble for our kids or grandkids. Today they seem portents of a cataclysm that may not conveniently wait until we're history.

Accordingly, the spotlight in climate research is shifting from gradual to rapid change. In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report concluding that human activities could trigger abrupt change. Last year the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, included a session at which Robert Gagosian, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, urged policymakers to consider the implications of possible abrupt climate change within two decad

Scientists generally refuse to say much about that, citing a data deficit. But recently, renowned Department of Defense planner Andrew Marshall sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips with the question. A Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the Defense Department's "Yoda"—a balding, bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks have long had an outsized influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has headed a secretive think tank whose role is to envision future threats to national security. The Department of Defense's push on ballistic-missile defense is known as his brainchild. Three years ago Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld picked him to lead a sweeping review on military "transformation," the shift toward nimble forces and smart weapons.

When scientists' work on abrupt climate change popped onto his radar screen, Marshall tapped another eminent visionary, Peter Schwartz, to write a report on the national-security implications of the threat. Schwartz formerly headed planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group and has since consulted with organizations ranging from the CIA to DreamWorks—he helped create futuristic scenarios for Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report. Schwartz and co-author Doug Randall at the Monitor Group's Global Business Network, a scenario-planning think tank in Emeryville, Calif., contacted top climate experts and pushed them to talk about what-ifs that they usually shy away from—at least in public.

The result is an unclassified report, completed late last year, that the Pentagon has agreed to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a forecast. Rather, it sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help planners think about coping strategies. Here is an abridged version:

A total shutdown of the ocean conveyor might lead to a big chill like the Younger Dryas, when icebergs appeared as far south as the coast of Portugal. Or the conveyor might only temporarily slow down, potentially causing an era like the "Little Ice Age," a time of hard winters, violent storms, and droughts between 1300 and 1850. That period's weather extremes caused horrific famines, but it was mild compared with the Younger Dryas.

For planning purposes, it makes sense to focus on a midrange case of abrupt change. A century of cold, dry, windy weather across the Northern Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years ago fits the bill—its severity fell between that of the Younger Dryas and the Little Ice Age. The event is thought to have been triggered by a conveyor collapse after a time of rising temperatures not unlike today's global warming. Suppose it recurred, beginning in 2010. Here are some of the things that might happen by 2020:

At first the changes are easily mistaken for normal weather variation—allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a "blip" of little importance and leaving policymakers and the public paralyzed with uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening. The average temperature has fallen by up to five degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and Asia and up to six degrees in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average temperature over the North Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15 degrees lower than it is today.) Massive droughts have begun in key agricultural regions. The average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30% in northern Europe, and its climate has become more like Siberia's.

Violent storms are increasingly common as the conveyor becomes wobbly on its way to collapse."
Dan

[geekster]

Never has been a debate the the climate is warming. Hell, it is almost as warm now as it was during the Roman Empire. Might even get there in another century or so. The climate is almost always warming or cooling, rarely flat.

[geekster]

Oh, and in another couple of centuries it might get as warm as it was during the Holocene Optimum when places like the Bahamas were under water and sea levels were higher than they are now.

EDIT: In fact, I just read about a paper done in Russia on trees in the northern latitudes. Turns out that during the holocene optimun, the northernmost treeline was about 450km north of where it is now. Also, glacial retreat in the European alps is exposing wood that is roughly 2500 years old. In other words, 2500 years ago, where there are now glaciers in the alps, there were forests. The climate was warmer than it is today. We are just coming out of a period of cooling that was called "The Little Ice Age". The first half of US history happened during that period. We are only now warming back up to what the climate was in before then.

Mukhtar M. Naurzbaev, Malcolm K. Hughes, Eugene A. Vaganov, 2004. Tree-ring growth curves as sources of climatic information, Quaternary Research 62, 126– 133

Oh, and read the paper, not just the abstract.

[geekster]

I happened to stumble across this tonite to add to the pile. I was looking for an article I had seen recently concerning arctic ice and the lack thereof. The idea being that it is mainly due to a shift in wind patterns that is acting differently on the surface ice in summer. In that article was the mention that the amount of reduced ice wasn't reflected in ambient temperature change and in fact Greenland had seen a slight reduction in temperature of the past 15 years. But in the course of searching for that article, I found this one which concerns a paper published in Science in 1998.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/19 ... 075513.htm

The new study, published in the October 9 issue of Science, reveals how much warmer and colder these previous climate changes were. Temperatures during the Little Ice Age (1420 to 1890 AD) were found to be 2 F colder than present in central Greenland. In contrast, temperatures were 2 F warmer than present during the Medieval Warm Period, 1,000 years ago when the Vikings established settlements in Greenland, and 5000 years ago were 4.5 F warmer. The last ice age, about 22,000 years ago, was found to be extremely cold with temperatures dipping to 41 F below current values.

So temperatures would have to increase another 4.5 degrees beyond what they are today, which even at the current warming rate would take centuries, in order to equal what they were during the times of the first civilizations and the development of agriculture in Mesopotamia.

In order to get an accurate picture of climate over the long term, one would really need accurate temperature records going back a thousand years or so. Trouble is that there was no reliable way of measuring temperature back then. The first thermometer wasn't created until the very late 1500's when we were already well into the little ice age. The Fahrenheit scale wasn't invented until the early 1700's. The only other measurements we have are of ice cores and tree rings which can have biases based on local and regional climate.

I would take with several huge boulders of salt any scare talk from "global warming activists" that have any kind of political agenda that goes along with their "environmentalism". Yes, the climate is warming. It might very well be returning to it's "normal" interglacial state. The medieval warming apparently lasted for about 500 years and was much warmer than now and there was no fossil fuel being burned aside from possible a tiny amount of coal. But there is one thing to do NOT want is dramatic climactic cooling. That is pretty much the scenario for disaster. I couldn't imagine the political and social fallout of say two consecutive years of US grain crop failures. Global warming will likely result in increased food production as growing seasons increase over wider areas.

Some other things to throw on the pile ...

http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-ca ... ntime.html

Timeline of Greenland settlement:

About 984

Eirik [The Red] returns to Iceland and convinces others to join him in Greenland [Graenlendinga Saga] (This is towards the end of one of the longest warm periods in Greenland's history)

...

1001 (Peak years for sea salt sodium in Greenland Ice (.125) This indicates a lot of storms.)

...

1100-1300

(Very Warm in England)

...

1308-19

(Lowest winter temperatures in Greenland until the 1500s)

...

1343-1362

(Longest period of colder than average years in Greenland)

...

1402-4

The Black Plague reaches Iceland.

...

1430

Last Icelandic medieval annals end.
1430 +/-15

Most current dating for some of the Herjofsnes finds [Arenborg, et.al. "C-14 dating and the disappearance of Norsemen from Greenland" Europhysics News 33:3 (2002)]

[can't sit still]

Geekster, since you're so good at digging these things up, I have a request.
What is the effect of the huge ammounts of gas given off by volcanoes?
What is the net effect of CO2 compared to water vapor in the heat trap model?
Do the ocean algae convert more CO2 than land based plants.
How much CO2 do ALL the fauna give off?
How does that figure compare to industrial released CO2

What is the mechanism that brings the earth OUT of an ice age? The albedo would be very high and CO2 production would be very low. It would seem that once you raised the albedo, you would be stuck in Ice forever. I've heard it postulated that there are extraterrestrial influences [besides the sun] that affect climate changes. Any references?
Dan

[Isotopia]

Chances are, we don't need to debate global warming anymore.

There is SO much wrong with that statement.

[can't sit still]

[quote="Isotopia"][quote]Chances are, we don't need to debate global warming anymore.
[/quote]

There is SO much wrong with that statement.[/quote]

What better way to initiate a debate?

[geekster]

Geekster, since you're so good at digging these things up, I have a request.
What is the effect of the huge ammounts of gas given off by volcanoes?
What is the net effect of CO2 compared to water vapor in the heat trap model?
Do the ocean algae convert more CO2 than land based plants.
How much CO2 do ALL the fauna give off?
How does that figure compare to industrial released CO2

What is the mechanism that brings the earth OUT of an ice age? The albedo would be very high and CO2 production would be very low. It would seem that once you raised the albedo, you would be stuck in Ice forever. I've heard it postulated that there are extraterrestrial influences [besides the sun] that affect climate changes. Any references?
Dan

There are plenty of such references. As the sun rotates around the galaxy, it passes through areas of varying amounts of cosmic rays and particles. There have been any number of articles about how these might affect climate. Basically they all work by modifying cloud cover which changes the overall albedo and causes varying amounts of solar radiation to be reflected. When there is increased cloud cover, there is increased reflection of radiation during the daytime but also there is a reduction in cooling at night. What you end up with is a net cooling but with a warming of nighttime low temperatures.

Volcanic CO2 emissions are hard to quantify because 70% of them are under the ocean. I saw video last year of pure liquid CO2 being emitted at great depth by a vent near Guam.

Volcanic CO2 emissions are subject to vary widely from one month to the next and as I mentioned earlier, they are currently nearly impossible to quantify since most CO2 seeps will happen far from shore where nobody is looking. We are still in a phase where we discover new vents practically every time we go looking for them.

As for conversion rates of CO2, a cell on land will probably convert as much as a cell in the water. The difference is that 70% of the environment for photosynthesis is in the ocean so overall one would expect most of the conversion of CO2 to happen at sea. There are other factors involved too. CO2 is absorbed by more than just plants. One of, and possible the most important method of scrubbing of CO2 comes from erosion of rock to form insoluble carbonates.

Industrial CO2 release may or may not be more than natual CO2 releases but that may or may not even matter. The idea that industrial CO2 is causing global warming is basically speculation. CO2 is a greenhouse gass (but much less so than methane or water vapor by an order of magnitude or more). The earth is in a period of climactic recovery from a period of cooling that started in the 1400's. The climate is indeed warming and has been since the 1800's. At the same time there is also an increase in CO2 content as we burn fossil fuel. The speculation comes in when some try to say that the CO2 increase is the cause of the warming. In my opinion they are seeing two different things and trying to say that one is causing the other. In my opinion, the earth would currently be in a warming phase even if we eliminated all CO2 emissions. The climate varies. We had ice ages and warming periods before man was even on this planet.

The problem I have is that people of a certain political bent have decided to use this issue (or non-issue depending on how you look at it) to further their political agenda. It is a lever to use for more stringent regulation of industry. So far, Kyoto has cost billions and has delivered nothing. My point is in trying to show people that yes, the climate is warming, but since the time when temperature records were started we were in an "abnormally" cold period and have been recovering from that since. I also want to point out that we are still not as warm as we have been in historical times. The whole bit about the alps being basically glacier free during the time of the Roman Empire, etc. That is probably what A: helped the empire expand northward and B: resulted in the abandoning of the northern areas, decline of the empire, and probably the invasion from northern tribes who had migrated south looking for better living conditions as the climate cooled around the time of the dark ages.

My opinion? Yes, the climate is warming. Yes, CO2 is increasing. Are the two related? Probably not, or at least not enough to make a significant difference. CO2 is not additive to the atmosphere. You can't say that if I added 100 tons a year over 5 years, the atmosphere has 500 tons of CO2. It is also constantly being removed. Every time you bury paper in a landfill, you are locking up atmospheric CO2 that was taken out of the air by a tree and is now buried. Every time a tree is buried by a landslide, an animal shell or skeleton falls to the bottom of the sea, every time rock erodes a little, CO2 is removed from the atmosphere or the sea. Yes, the sea absorbs a lot of CO2, but it ends up shedding it in insoluble forms too.

Global warming is basically a political issue designed to scare people into supporting an agenda. It sounds really scary, until you really start doing research and then it begins to fall apart.

What would be expected to happen:

CO2 increases. This causes plant life to increase. Acid rain causes more rock erosion removing CO2 Carbonates are not very soluble in water. Warming causes more water vapor in the air. Water vapor is 10x more of a greenhouse gas than CO2 and operates over a much wider part of the spectrum of solar radiation (CO2 operates only on a very small part of the spectrum) More water vapor means more clouds increasing albedo reflecting more radiation into space and moderating the temperature.

If you are REALLY worried about global warming, paint your roof white. You will at the end of the year reflect more radiation back into space than you will trap from all the CO2 you emit in your lifetime. If enough people do this at lower lattitudes, the increased albedo cound actually put us into an ice age. If cities looked white rather than dark gray on satellite photographs, there would be no "urban heat island" effect, it would be an urban cooling effect where cities would be cooler than their surroundings.

As for bringing earth out of ice age, one theory is very interesting. See next post.

[geekster]

Earth has billions of tons of hydrocarbon called methane hydrates on the sea floor. These are basically a mixture of methane and water ice. The problem is that they are somewhat unstable. They live in a perfect condition of great pressure and very low temperature at the bottom of the sea. When disturbed, they release their methane. Methane is about 100x more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO2.

During an ice age, more and more water is deposited at the poles in the form of snow and ice. This results in a reduction of sea levels. Reduction in sea levels means a reduction in pressure at the bottom of the sea. When sea levels drop to a certain point, the pressure might be low enough to cause some of these deposits to release as methane. There is evidence this happened in the past at the end of a major glaciation before dinosaurs evolved. It resulted in a major warming over a period of possibly only 5 to 50 years. This warming was so drastic that nearly the entire earth went tropical and then gradually cooled as the methane was scrubbed out of the atmosphere.

There are other ideas too. One is that as more of the earth is covered by ice, there is less expose rock to remove CO2 by weathering and less sunlight reaching sea life so less CO2 is removed from the atmosphere. At the same time, volcanism is steadily adding CO2. This CO2 has little affect since the albedo is so high from the ice. In other words, CO2 traps the infrared that is caused by things being struck by sunlight and generating heat. It acts as a blanket. If the light is reflected back by the white ice, the CO2 has nothing to act on. There is little infrared to trap. CO2 is transparent to visible light. Also, CO2 works in the opposite way as well, it increases the shielding of infrared radiation from the sun. It prevents longwave radiation from the sun just as it prevents the longwave radiation from earth to be radiated into space (what causes deserts to cool at night).

So over time the CO2 in the atmosphere bulds up and builds up and builds up in the atmosphere while the ice age is underway until something happens that causes a significant change in albedo. This is most likely a large deposition of volcanic ash. Note that when the earth freezes to a significantly low lattitude, precipitation practically ceases at high lattitude because there is little/no way for moisture to get into the atmosphere. There is no open water to evaporate and the only process available is much slower sublimation. This also results in a much lower concentration of water vapor in the air. Water vapor is about 10x more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. As water leaves the atmosphere, it takes billions and billions and billions of tons of CO2 to make up the difference in greenhouse effect.

Now we have a situation where there is little water, much snow. Most of the radiation reaching the earth is being reflected back into space. There is no longwave radiation save what the earth emits as it cools for the CO2 to trap. At the same time we have reduced CO2 scrubbing because we have most of the land covered in ice, much of the sea covered in ice. Volcanism continues as usual adding CO2 to the atmosphere. CO2 levels build and build. At the poing of the "breaking" of that particular ice age which some think may have caused earth to freeze nearly to the equator, CO2 levels were about 500 times what they are now. Once the methane hydrates outgassed, temperature change was rapid and extreme. We went from frozen from pole to nearly equator to polar tropical in the span of the lifetime of one person, or in geological terms, instantly.

[can't sit still]

Geekster I commend you on your scholarship. Marvelous analysis.
Here's something else for you to consider. Here's scenarios I never considered.
http://www.exitmundi.nl/

[geekster]

Now having said all that, what in my opinion is a greater threat to humanity isn't the CO2 generated by fossil fuels so much as it is the destruction of enviorment that is happening. We are polluting the oceans. Saving whales makes no sense at all if we destroy all the things lower on the food chain that they eat. Salmon have no chance if herring aren't there and they can't reach spawning grounds blocked by hydroelectric projects. I favor complete elimination of fossil and hydro power projects and complete conversion to nuclear power. Yes, nuclear has it's own problems including waste disposal but it is my opinion that per capita, the amount of nuclear waste produced can be managed a lot better than the amount of emissions from fossil fuel energy.

We need to reduce the number of people on this planet through birth control and education. I am in favor of creating large expanses of undeveloped areas. If I had the money, I would buy up land and allow it to go wild. I would first look for parcels of cleared land that would connect natural areas, buy them up, take them out of production and allow larger areas of habitat to interconnect. In my opinion, a few select parcels of land can greatly increase the overall wildlife habitat available.

I am in favor of eradication of non-native species where practical and replanting of native plants and grasses. I hate eucalyptus trees in California, for example. If it were in my power to do so, I would make it illegal to have one. I would have everyone in my neighborhood plant at least two redwood or native oak trees in their yard. I would pay extra tax money to have porous and "cool" pavements installed to recharge ground aquifers and reduce heat island effects.

I am NOT going to panic about the fact that we are warming from an unusually cold period. Warmer climate will be a good thing. It means increased food production, for example. Yes, it also means more storms. So don't live near the coast, don't live near flood plains, return tornado alley to the buffalo. There is no reason for people to be living in North Dakota, we should evacuate the entire state (and I am only half kidding) and make it a park. Montana could be next.

[geekster]

Just found a reference to this book ... think I will check it out:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... 74-9044823

Was referenced here:

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/03/06/155431.php

Hey, there is a way each and every one of us can strike a blow against global warming for probably around $20 or so. Maybe cheaper if you can get together and make a coop:

Get a standard 4x8 sheet of plywood. Paint it white, the more reflective white the better but only visible spectrum matters, don't worry about "infrared reflective" since infrared will be trapped by the greenhouse anyway. Set it up in your backyard at the same orientation you would use for a solar panel. That's 32 square feet of visible light reflective panel. (Don't use a mirror, they heat up on exposure to the sun, use white, it is actually more reflective). This is a little less than 2 square meters. This should allow you to reflect around 1 kW of solar power back out into space per day.

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in to home depot buying a sheet of plywood and some paint and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in, buying a sheet of plywood and some paint and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

Get 1000 friends and you are shipping a megawatt of power back into space before it has had a chance to convert to heat and be trapped by the greenhouse. Get a million people worldwide and you have a gigawatt, the entire output of a power plant ... shipped back to outer space. All with only a sheet of plywood and a can of spraypaint.

Just wait for it to come around again ... on the BBS ...

[geekster]

Another little statistic to add to the pile ...

1900 to 1964 there were 23 Category 3 or better storms that made landfall in the continental US.

From 1965 to 2004 there were 4 so there is no evidence that global warming is causing any increase in either the number or strength of storms no matter what conclusion "conventional wisdom" might want you to jump to.

One of the worst storms, or what would be the worst today was a Category 4 storm at landfall that came ashore at Cape May New Jersey and travelled the entire length of roughly what is now the Garden State Parkway. It hammered what is now Atlantic City with winds near 200 MPH. Luckily, in September 1821, there were like 3 houses in the area of what is now Atlantic City so we don't hear in the history books of the storm. Same thing with many storms of the same era. In fact, there was one the same year, I believe, that hit almost exactly where Katrina hit. In fact, 1821 was a pretty nasty year for tropical weather.