Global Warming w/o Tiggy

[Augustine2004]

Sylas, • Edited by a Moderator •

All the rubbish about electric cars that need fossil fuel to generate the electricity!

Wind turbines everywhere that need lots of stuff--which in turn needs lots of energy to obtain, refine, and fabricate--to be built!

The only way to really reduce the carbon footprint would be to go back to the kind of economy 2,000 years ago--which may mean a temporary problem of billions of corpses in the next few years. Is that what you are willing to risk!?

The Algoreans have not yet given up despite news of record cold, including Cancun weather.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...osts-soar.html
I can picture you wagging your finger and saying that we have to expect temporary fluctuations on the way to eventual hell, but that has been going on for a while now when we should be having evidence the warmist position is correct.

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[sylas]

Sylas, what can we do for God's sake!?

I haven't been saying anything about what we should do. My interest here is not as a revolutionary or politician or social reformer. My posts are focused on understanding the world, and understanding the data and the science which helps to reveal it.

I'm not particularly well informed for answering with questions about what "should be done". I'd be fascinated in the subject of climate and changing climates even if it was on a different planet where we had no way to influence things at all.

I will try to give an answer to your questions; but please recognize that this is now a distinct question from what actually is happening (the planet is heating up) and why (because of a stronger atmospheric greenhouse effect).

(1) Electric cars

All the rubbish about electric cars that need fossil fuel to generate the electricity!

Electric cars need a power grid; they don't put any constraints on how power is generated. It can be hydroelectric, nuclear, anything else. There are also efficiencies of scale which can apply, and opportunities for sequestering technologies which may apply at a large power station but not with a million smaller cars.

Electric cars by themselves don't achieve much; but they can certainly be a part of a strategy which includes looking at how grid power is generated; so it is simply incorrect to dismiss their role as "rubbish".

Personally, in my view the most efficient approaches involve identifying ways to use cars less frequently, using them more efficiently, and having vehicles which are more efficient in the use of fuel.

There's a heck of a lot of scope for improving the carbon impact here with little to no secondary costs or detriment associated. Note also that a sensible case for electric vehicles can be founded on the matter of peak oil and declining availability of fuel in the form we are used to, I suspect.

(2) Wind turbines

Wind turbines everywhere that need lots of stuff--which in turn needs lots of energy to obtain, refine, and fabricate--to be built!

A sober evaluation of wind turbines must look at the costs of fabrication and maintenance. If you do that, you still show that wind generation does have a useful contribution to reducing the emissions needed to maintain a grid. Wind generation is also a technology which can scale down easily and allow for better distributed power generation, and reduced transmission losses.

No single technology is a panacea to replace holus bolus all other generation options. Wind turbines are not suitable everywhere. But they are suitable in many places as a perfectly good way of generating power more efficiently and more cheaply, and with less secondary impact, such as the carbon emission.

(3) Return to roman times.

The only way to really reduce the carbon footprint would be to go back to the kind of economy 2,000 years ago--which may mean a temporary problem of billions of corpses in the next few years. Is that what you are willing to risk!?

The premise of this is incorrect. It is obviously false that the only way to really reduce carbon footprint is to go "back" 2000 years.

It's a matter of directions we choose as we go forwards. The choices will have consequences, and we depend on science to illuminate those, so as to sensibly evaluate costs and risks and benefits of various choices.

Even if there was no associated climate issue at all, many of the proposals for reducing carbon footprint carry all kinds of associated benefits, particularly anything which improves efficiency. In many cases, the kinds of options to be considered turn out to be reasonable ways to respond to the peak oil issue, which is another major factor bearing upon our future.

To be frank, in my view there is probably a greater risk of a drastic and unmanaged descent into widespread loss of the benefits of industry and technology if ignore or dismiss the consequences of how technology is being used now.

(4) Record cold and record heat

The Algoreans have not yet given up despite news of record cold, including Cancun weather.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...osts-soar.html
I can picture you wagging your finger and saying that we have to expect temporary fluctuations on the way to eventual hell, but that has been going on for a while now when we should be having evidence the warmist position is correct.

Well, you are right on one thing. We should be having evidence of warming; and this is now a question about the empirical science of climate which is where my main interest lies.

The thing is that we DO have evidence -- strong evidence -- when you look at ALL the new records rather than just the records of cold.

You mention news of "record cold". This is not "temporary fluctuation" so much as "LOCAL fluctuation". It's also cherry picking, unless put in a larger context of evaluating all records. In a big planet with a strong global warming trend, you will continue to get localized records set for cold, simply because LOCAL variation is so much more than the global trend; and you'll get localized records also set for new highs.

The way to look for evidence of global trends is to look at all records, both highs and lows, over a larger region. This has been done, and it turns out to be more evidence for the basic fact of life that our planet really is heating up.

Reference: Record high temperatures far outpace record lows across U.S., (UCAR, Nov 12 2009); and associated journal reference:

• Meehl, G. A., C. Tebaldi, G. Walton, D. Easterling, and L. McDaniel (2009), Relative increase of record high maximum temperatures compared to record low minimum temperatures in the U.S., Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L23701, doi:10.1029/2009GL040736. (journal link, preprint link)

From the article:

UCAR, record lows and highs across the US

Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb.
…
The study also found that the two-to-one ratio across the country as a whole could be attributed more to a comparatively small number of record lows than to a large number of record highs. This indicates that much of the nation's warming is occurring at night, when temperatures are dipping less often to record lows. This finding is consistent with years of climate model research showing that higher overnight lows should be expected with climate change.

(The article gives permission for non-profit use of this image.)

© source where applicable

Some people prefer the term "climate change" to "global warming". The latter accurately identifies the major drive in large scale changes at present. The planet really is heating up, as can be shown from many different lines of evidence. The former term emphasizes that the issue is not only an increase in temperature; it is all the other knock on effects as climate shifts in response to the additional energy at Earth's surface. Changes in circulation patterns and currents and jet streams and so on in response to additional energy can indeed bring extreme cold to large but still localized regions.

This, by the way, is where "chaos" in atmospheric modeling really becomes significant. It's very hard to predict the regional responses as the planet heats up, far harder than predicting general ranges for the magnitude of heating globally

Cheers -- sylas

[Augustine2004]

I haven't been saying anything about what we should do. My interest here is not as a revolutionary or politician or social reformer.

After reading that, one may be pardoned for wondering why you scolded FLovell for not focusing on the next 50 or so years (average remaining lifespan). Why that particular time-span?

IMy posts are focused on understanding the world, and understanding the data and the science which helps to reveal it.

You appear to think that knowing the distant past would not help.


Regarding the ratio of record heat events to record cold events, that is evidence, all right. We should be cautious, though, because we may not understand everything we need to know. What we do know is that the atmosphere is nonlinear. The possibility that it may behave in unexpected ways has to be eliminated first beyond reasonable doubt.

[sylas]

After reading that, one may be pardoned for wondering why you scolded FLovell for not focusing on the next 50 or so years (average remaining lifespan). Why that particular time-span? You appear to think that knowing the distant past would not help.

Because that was the topic of the thread and of the post. I have no problem with threads focusing on other time frames, and would probably contribute to them. This thread is about global warming, which is (geologically speaking) a short time frame, and the specific question I was addressing was comments about trends from 1995 to now. So the salient points for this discussion are short term.

And by the way; I am not "scolding" anyone. I ask and answer questions, and indicate where I think there is a gap in a certain chain of reasoning; but it is all mutually respectful and robust engagement. Especially with FLovell, whose input I appreciate even when I don't share his perspective.

Regarding the ratio of record heat events to record cold events, that is evidence, all right. We should be cautious, though, because we may not understand everything we need to know. What we do know is that the atmosphere is nonlinear. The possibility that it may behave in unexpected ways has to be eliminated first beyond reasonable doubt.

We know that chaotic systems will behave in unexpected and unpredictable ways. It is a discovery that we cannot predict details of where and when the records will be set. But we can predict trends, and the paper I cited on record highs and lows does exactly that -- along with consideration of the limits of their predictions. Scientists are cautious in stating what can and cannot be known, and how well it can be known. Here's another sample extract from the article I cited previously

UCAR, record lows and highs across the US

The modeling results indicate that if nations continue to increase their emissions of greenhouse gases in a "business as usual" scenario, the U.S. ratio of daily record high to record low temperatures would increase to about 20-to-1 by mid-century and 50-to-1 by 2100. The mid-century ratio could be much higher if emissions rose at an even greater pace, or it could be about 8-to-1 if emissions were reduced significantly, the model showed.

The authors caution that such predictions are, by their nature, inexact. Climate models are not designed to capture record daily highs and lows with precision, and it remains impossible to know future human actions that will determine the level of future greenhouse gas emissions. The model used for the study, the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model, correctly captured the trend toward warmer average temperatures and the greater warming in the West, but overstated the ratio of record highs to record lows in recent years.

© source where applicable

Scientists are very good at applying appropriate caution.

Planners would like perfect information from science; science tells them they can't have it. Planners proceed then with what is available, and use available data to infer risks and potential costs and benefits of their choices.

The idea that you first have to resolve all uncertainties before making decisions is unrealistic and basically means not planning at all. In times of flux and change, this is a very costly choice. In business, in the military, in foreign affairs, in health management, in every field where we make rational decisions, we proceed in recognition of incomplete knowledge.

The biggest problem associated with planning for climate change is not so much the areas of real uncertainty, but the areas where we DO have very good information indeed, and lots of people who are actively ignoring or denying it. The denial of global warming altogether is an example of this. So is the denial of the role of greenhouse warming, or the potential for negative consequences as conditions move further and further from what we used to.

That is, the biggest obstacle to rational planning is not the lack of information, so much as irrational denial of the information we do have already.

Cheers -- sylas

[FLovell]

I don't follow the reasoning here ([referring to Frank Lovell's post #492 here] ...

You went on to confirm what I said about folks missing my salient point by you, too, missing my salient point.

But let that not that trouble you, Silas, for in that you are in abundant good company!

You also missed where I announced that I am withdrawing from the dialogue here when in my last paragraph I wrote:

"Been at it for several years here now, and won over not a single "convert" to Global Climate Change "Inevitablism." So I give up. Thanks for putting up with me this long."

I am out of it now. You may continue to advocate for human tweeking to accomplish the historically rare (or whatever the heck you are advocating for) if it really makes the most genuine good sense to you without any (more) noise from me (for one at lest) about it.

-- Frank

[sylas]

I think I did get your point Frank; it just that I think it isn't the only point, nor the point we are looking at here. I challenged one specific chain of reasoning, and that challenge remains unanswered... but I'm happy to leave the exchange as finished for now.

I did ask (indirectly) one specific question of you in relation to your preferred point: I really have no idea at all how you think we should address the implications of climate change over the next hundred million years. I have no problem recognizing and acknowledging it, but I really can't see what you could possibly mean by "address" it. I still don't know; but perhaps it ought to be another thread, where you can identify the points of the discussion.

I did not miss your announcement of withdrawal either: it was specifically in response to that that I said I would personally welcome your input on the specific points we are looking at here in the shorter terms of human societies, if you were willing to reconsider. But if you prefer not to engage the subject of shorter terms, no problem. See you in other threads.

For anyone else wondering, let me emphasize again.

I'm not about "advocacy" here at all, but about education, on the science relating to the climate of the coming century and millennium. I have very little to say on "tweaking", though I have answered some direct questions asked of me relating to human choices. My preferred focus continues to be the science and especially the physics of current global warming.

Adios -- sylas

[Challenger Grim]

I'm... actually kind of surprised this is in slate.
http://www.slate.com/id/2277104?wpisrc=xs_wp_0001

But it is a good point.

[sylas]

I'm... actually kind of surprised this is in slate.
http://www.slate.com/id/2277104?wpisrc=xs_wp_0001

But it is a good point.

Wow... Challenger, you have a great habit of posting some really interesting points that well deserve their own thread! Thanks for this.

I have taken the liberty of starting a new thread in Civics 101: Most scientists in the USA are Democrats. That's a problem, where this can be a focus of attention. We are likely to get a rather fascinating range of responses, I suspect!

Cheers -- sylas

[grmorton]

While I was waiting for the computer to spit out some results on the jobs I am doing, I was reading the latest Science. I ran into this on a fort in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, 2200 BC. We are constantly told that we need to fear the rise in sea level, yet, everyone who has an ounce of knowledge about geology 5000 years ago, knows that the seas were higher by 2-3 m. The earth has been there before, in historical times. This was verified by an archaeological article.

[cite=Andrew Lawler, “Keeping Watch as the Old Kingdom Crumbled,” Science, 330(2010), p. 1473[
“Today, the Ras Budran fort is more than two football fields from the Red Sea. But back then sea levels were higher, and the fort likely stood at the water’s edge and included a lengthy wharf for access by seagoing ships.”
[/cite]

I can't for the life of me figure out why we should fear sea level rise, and blame it on mankind, when it has happened so many times in the past without a single auto or coal fired electrical generation plant in existence.

Now back to work.

[sylas]

I can't for the life of me figure out why we should fear sea level rise, and blame it on mankind, when it has happened so many times in the past without a single auto or coal fired electrical generation plant in existence.

It is irrational to go from the fact natural processes can cause a certain effect to the inference that humans cannot cause it. The truth is completely the opposite.

The fact that something CAN occur naturally is a good indication of what is possible; and suggests that humans may be able to do the same thing for themselves. Humans are perfectly capable of doing things -- both deliberately and as unintended side effects -- that nature itself has done also.

For the specific case of sea level rise, the conclusion that humans are the major cause of the current sea level rise stands as a strongly supported inference from physics and empirical measurements in the present.

The major contributions to sea level rise are two fold. Melting water from the land, and thermal expansion as the ocean heats up. Both are consequence of global warming. And the major contributing cause to increased warming is a stronger greenhouse effect. That's occurred naturally in the past also. In the present, evidence indicates that the major contributing cause is increased CO2, and with a second important contribution by increasing levels of other greenhouse gases.

Natural processes have changed concentrations of trace gases in the atmosphere in the past, and they contribute in the present as well. But in the present, the major impact by far is an obvious human driven change. Even if you don't accept the science related to climate, the details of changes to the composition of the atmosphere is more than enough to show that the structure of the reasoning in the post by Glenn here is flatly wrong.

Cheers -- sylas

[Augustine2004]

It is irrational to go from the fact natural processes can cause a certain effect to the inference that humans cannot cause it. The truth is completely the opposite.

Nonsense. In the first place, Glenn knows that humans may be a cause, if not the leading cause. In the second place, he is pointing out evidence that could be taken to support the hypothesis that natural processes are the leading causes.

The fact that something CAN occur naturally is a good indication of what is possible; and suggests that humans may be able to do the same thing for themselves. Humans are perfectly capable of doing things -- both deliberately and as unintended side effects -- that nature itself has done also.

Wow, one could be pardoned for thinking that you think that humans can do everything that Nature can.

For the specific case of sea level rise, the conclusion that humans are the major cause of the current sea level rise stands as a strongly supported inference from physics and empirical measurements in the present.

Strongly? You mean, odds like 30 to 70?

Natural processes have changed concentrations of trace gases in the atmosphere in the past, and they contribute in the present as well. But in the present, the major impact by far is an obvious human driven change. Even if you don't accept the science related to climate, the details of changes to the composition of the atmosphere is more than enough to show that the structure of the reasoning in the post by Glenn here is flatly wrong.

'By far' = super strong. You're quite an assertive guy, aren't you!

[sylas]

Nonsense. In the first place, Glenn knows that humans may be a cause, if not the leading cause. In the second place, he is pointing out evidence that could be taken to support the hypothesis that natural processes are the leading causes.

We'd better let Glenn speak for himself on that. I don't want to presume what Glenn knows or not. But there was no evidence whatsoever given in his post as to what might be a cause or not for the present sea level rise.

Wow, one could be pardoned for thinking that you think that humans can do everything that Nature can.

I would not be inclined to pardon that. I'd call it out as a complete distortion of what I said. If you stick to what I say for myself in my own words, the discussion will go much better.

Of course humans cannot do everything that nature can. My point is that it is no kind of evidence at all that humans CANNOT do something or ARE not doing something to observe that nature has done the same thing previously. It is by observing things happening naturally that inventive humans are often able to learn how to do it for themselves. We don't do all the same things; but the fact that something happens is a reason to consider it might be possible for humans to repeat it.

For the specific case of sea level rise, the conclusion that humans are the major cause of the current sea level rise stands as a strongly supported inference from physics and empirical measurements in the present.

Strongly? You mean, odds like 30 to 70?

No. More like 99 to 1. There are all kinds of uncertainties involved, but the human role in current sea level rise stands as pretty solid. Not completely certain, but there's pretty much nothing else on the cards for a comparable impact to the anthropogenic greenhouse contribution, and the physics of our own contribution is definite. If something else is having a comparable impact, it's hiding very effectively!

That doesn't mean it is beyond question, but the difficult questions where we have serious gaps in our understanding are more to do with measurements of details.

'By far' = super strong. You're quite an assertive guy, aren't you!

Shrug. Let's not worry about "me" but about the actual topic. Keep it on the substance. But if it matters, I am very comfortable indeed with the assertions I made in the the last two posts, and they are shared by all but a handful of scientists working in this area.

Cheers -- sylas

[Augustine2004]

I just can't believe it. The hypothesis that increased levels of CO2 cause only at most a small fraction of whatever global warming has occurred since the Industrial Age got going fast in the USA is still tenable, imo. For you to say that the odds are 99-1 flies in the face of that opinion. You still don't have a model that generates predictions that look like they might be good. Indeed, we probably have to wait a decade or more, before opinions like yours begin to look justifiable--if we can get the data problems fixed SOON.

[sylas]

That's fine, Augustine. I appreciate we disagree and am happy to have different views on the table.

I don't mind flying in the face of contrasting "opinions". I am going where the evidence and the physics leads, as best I can and in all seriousness. If I could be persuaded that I was flying in the face of the empirical evidence then I'd reconsider. That's what it would take; not merely contrasting opinion.

The relevant evidence and physics is as follows.

• Sea level is in fact rising. (This hasn't been questioned here, but some folks will question it, so let's put this on the table as well.) The current measured rate of increase is 3.1 ± 0.4 mm/yr. (Ref: Sea Level Change at the University of Colorado.)
• Melting ice is contributing to sea level rise. (Ref: The Contribution of the Cryosphere to Changes in Sea Level at National Snow and Ice Data Center.)
• Thermal expansion is contributing to sea level rise. (Ref: Scientists Find 20 Years of Deep Water Warming Leading to Sea Level Rise, at NOAA.)
• Both these effects come from rising temperatures.
• The source of energy for maintaining Earth's temperature is the Sun. Other energy sources are minuscule by comparison. (High school level geography. Is anyone really dubious on this?) What matters for temperature is how energy from the Sun is absorbed by the Earth.
• The atmospheric greenhouse on climate is basic physics. The forcing, which means the additional available energy to the surface, due to rapidly rising carbon dioxide levels is known; at 5.35 W/m² per natural log CO₂. There are some additional smaller forcings from anthropogenic greenhouse gases as well, but smaller. The other possible forcings smaller or else negative. For example, the solar input has been flat or reducing.

... You still don't have a model that generates predictions that look like they might be good.

I don't need models for this. The models ARE important for predictions, and the predictions are uncertain.

But what WE are talking about here is the cause of sea level rise. That's from much more basic science.

As I already said, the actual uncertainties are in details... which have to do with sorting out the total forcing (uncertainties here due mainly to the magnitude of negative forcings, and not to other potential positive forcings) or the ocean response (sorting out the magnitude of contribution from added water and thermal expansion, and how much and how quickly energy will flow into the heating oceans, and how much and how quickly glaciers and especially ice sheets will response as the planet is heating up).

All these things impact sea level predictions, and they are all uncertain. But the science relating to simply identifying the causes of sea level change do not depend or rely upon models or predictions to quantify the details for future sea level changes. People with a legitimate concern about the costs of sea level rise are hoping that the ice sheets remain comparatively stable over the coming century. There are disturbing indications that they are not.

Be that as it may, it is at this point very solidly supported by evidence and by physics that the sea level rise we see now is primarily a consequence of human contributions to an enhanced atmospheric greenhouse effect.

Cheers -- sylas

[Augustine2004]

You still think that changes in the solar magnetic field and wind are negilible climate factors. Why?