Arctic ice

[biffvernon]

Would you come to the same conclusion if the conversation went:

"The Earth is flat."

"No, the earth is round."

"This article shows why the Earth is flat."

"Science informs us that the Earth is round."

"But scientists sometimes get it wrong so the Earth could be flat."

"Science is good - the Earth is flat."

"Look, new evidence from Colorado - the Earth really is flat."

Moderator "Always two sides, no right no wrong, grey not black and white, the Earth is kinda bumpy in a flatish roundish sorta way. Now stop squabbling, you naughty children and eat your greens."

[beng]

Nope. But what do you mean by your 'it's'? What has been stable? We don't have thermometers in the deep ocean (well, not many) but the overturning currents transfer heat energy about. We know from the physics that increasing greenhouse gasses traps more heat and if it isn't where we can measure it easily, in the atmosphere or sea surface, then it will have gone below. But all the spare heat sure can't keep going down forever.

Some of the heat may initially be subducted to the deeper ocean, however it cannot remain there and will ultimately make its way back to the surface (warmer water is less dense). As others have said, records to quite a depth show some cooling - so to me the most plausible solution is that much of the energy has been radiated back into space at the poles (presumably mainly the arctic (as the antarctic is so isolated by the strong currents surrounding it) which would be consistent with the warming there as energy has been transported from the tropics). I may be wrong of course as perhaps the massive, oceanic currents are able to lock away the energy for a long time - as you say we can't know for sure.

This doesn't mean AGW is disproved or (has stopped in the longer term), but I do think it's representative of what's been happening for the last 5-10 years.

[johnholmes]

Would you come to the same conclusion if the conversation went:

"The Earth is flat."

"No, the earth is round."

"This article shows why the Earth is flat."

"Science informs us that the Earth is round."

"But scientists sometimes get it wrong so the Earth could be flat."

"Science is good - the Earth is flat."

"Look, new evidence from Colorado - the Earth really is flat."

Moderator "Always two sides, no right no wrong, grey not black and white, the Earth is kinda bumpy in a flatish roundish sorta way. Now stop squabbling, you naughty children and eat your greens."

I'm not a moderator if that last bit is directed at me chum.

to make it a little clearer at what I was trying to say. In my professional capacity through the 70's into the early 90's I had the privilege of being able to see and watch these differing experts in meteorology and climatology give their views of where the earth was in relation to global warming or global cooling(remember in the late 70's into the 80's it was the cooling group that held sway!) and quite often came away with being swayed by each particular viewpoint.

My own attitude, clear to see in many many posts over the past years on here is that the earth is warming, no argument about it, it looks like it will continue to warm, with the odd hiccup, for the foreseeable future, for how long is open to argument. The likely consequences are pretty obvious if people take the blinkers off their eyes and apply some basic physics. meantime while we roll ever onwards towards this point, even if there is a less pronounced warming for WHATEVER REASON the worlds' governments continue to wrangle over is it AGW is it GW is it happening and fund countless efforts to prove one or the other.

I hope biffy that gives my full views on it and shows I am NOT what you seemed to be implying I was - fence sitting and ignoring things.

I rarely post in this type of thread as attempts to give views of moderation seem to provoke this kind of response. I'm happy to discuss even argue sensibly mind you.

Edited May 21, 2008 by johnholmes

[jethro]

Speaking from experience, that grey area, no man's land in the middle is a difficult place to be.

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

Nope. But what do you mean by your 'it's'? What has been stable? We don't have thermometers in the deep ocean (well, not many) but the overturning currents transfer heat energy about. We know from the physics that increasing greenhouse gasses traps more heat and if it isn't where we can measure it easily, in the atmosphere or sea surface, then it will have gone below. But all the spare heat sure can't keep going down forever.

The oceans are cooling...never mind. To check out your view it would need to measure whether this La Nina would have been colder 50 or 100 years ago. Because if all this heat has been sinking into the oceans then the La Ninas should become less cold as the water coming up from the deep would be less cold. Well we won't find that out...but we do know it has been a big and cold La Nina. Now personally I'm going to do nothing about AGW, the planet is/has been warming as it does in interglacial periods...naturally. So do things for yourself if you wish its a free country...just...but the pro AGW brigade are slowly taking that away from us. It is plain to see the warming in the 20th century, it is also plain to see the temps over the last 10 years but what isn't plain to see is what will happen over the next 10, 20, 30 years.

BFTP

Edited May 21, 2008 by BLAST FROM THE PAST

[SnowBear]

Thought we had been over the "flat earth" crap elsewhere in the threads.

Lets dig a little further into that comparison shall we Biff?

Lord Kelvin...?

Heavier than air machines..

Radio..

X-rays will be proved to be a hoax?

And those who thought the earth was the centre of the universe and any that suggested otherwise?

Funny really, in my research into Maya and other Mesoamerican cosmologies, they knew that it wasnt the centre, they knew there was millions of other "suns" out there, that there was a galactic centre, that Venus went round the sun, and yet it took thousands of years for the scientific realm to catch up. Closed mindedness essentially set back progress.

So dont use the "flat earth" crap where science was proved right without showing where science was equally wrong.

Edited May 21, 2008 by SnowBear

[SnowBear]

Back on topic, I have mulled this over in mind for a couple of days now, many seem to wonder where the heat has gone, surely in the process of the ice melting we have seen there is going to be a large proportion of heat used in the conversion of ice into water?

Also, still wondering if anyone has any link to the global cloud cover anomalies for the past couple of decades or so?

Edited May 21, 2008 by SnowBear

[biffvernon]

Don't worry, John, it wasn't directed at you personally, just using some of your words. You might like to check the views of climate scientists in the 70s and 80s. Cooling certainly hit the media headlines, as I recall, but I think if you search through the published scientific literature of those decades you will find that the 'coolers' were a minority.

I know some folk hate any recourse to the flat Earth analogy, but it can be illustrative.

What we really have now is a debate on government and inter-government policy. Do we accept that science has presented a strong enough case for intervention in the way the global economy works or not?

If we take the extreme endpoints:

(1) business as usual will lead to runaway global warming and the end of life as we know it

(2) business as usual will lead to no significant change in global climate

what probability value should we ascribe to (1) being true before we support government intervention? 1%, 10%, 40%, 60%, 90%, 99%?

I'd vote for 1%, after all, I wouldn't get into a plane that I thought had a 1% probability of crashing on the next trip.

Which means that I'd vote for a programme of fossil fuel use reduction and carbon sequestration to get CO2 levels below 350 ppm, as Jim Hansen et al called for a few weeks ago. Of course that rules out business as usual, but that's the price we have to pay.

Edited May 21, 2008 by biffvernon

[johnholmes]

tks biffy

to return to your argument re %'s

I would say we need to do two things(by we I mean the world governments, all of 'em, not just some)

1. certainly attempt to reduce fossil use, although trying to convince the chief users is proving naturally extremely difficult. Why should the Indians and Chinese, to take their argument, stop an improving standard of living for their people because of fossil use? We(the developed nations) made enough use of it without worrying too much until recently.

2. Create a planned approach to what MAY happen as a result of the earth continuing to warm overall during the next 50-100 years. That means planning for food shortages, droughts in some areas becoming worse, many thousands of miles of coast becoming part of the ocean in a a fairly widely spread area around the world. Where are the people so affected going to be moved to? Do we wait until enough of them decide by force of arms to go to any particular place, do we want a third world war or near to it as the have nots try to get what the haves refuse to share?

I continue to 'sit on the fence' as regards AGW and GW, like I've posted many times there are convincing arguments from both camps BUT IF it happens then we need the 2nd of my suggestions in place BEFORE then.

ps

as to what % of climatologists were on one side or the other in the 70's into the 80's, I tend to agree more were on the side of it getting warmer. However, those on the cooling side, rather like those on the warming side today, did have the major coverage and most governments were not unhappy to follow that.

The ability of the then Met O Chief Executive to persuade Margaret Thatcher that UK meteorologists view(that global warming was more likely than northern European cooling) was an enormous coup. He only managed it because she saw the 'lead' it would give her on the world political stage to say we in the UK were the world leaders in trying to explain the GW idea.

Many of his staff, me included, were gobsmacked when he succeeded, whatever our individual views were on the developing GW/AGW debate.

Edited May 21, 2008 by johnholmes

[BrickFielder]

A couple of technical points to note are.

1) Due to reduced output of the sun during the recent solar sunspot cycle we should have expected some reductions in temperature. Any leveling of global temperatures could be argued as showing other factors are warming climate.

2) The earth has its own energy budget or albedo which consists of absorbed and radiated energy. This is a complicated budget of which CO2 plays a part, but it is not the only player. Ice cover ,desert cover, volcanic sulfur dioxide emission, soot emissions, ozone layer thickness and cloud cover play important parts.

3) Outgoing long wave radiation anomaly charts are often a reasonable aproximation of whether the planet is warming or not and variations in cloud cover can have as big an impact as CO2 increases.

4) oceanographic currents ,salinity of waters and deep water formation points all affect heat transport which can equally cause a sizeable impact on climate.

5) If all factors remain constant then increases in CO2 should result in a warming atmosphere due to well known physical processes.Arguments still remain about feedback processes and whether they will accellerate or reverse the resulting warming or even whether those feedbacks remain consistent with temperature change.

The melt of ice in the arctic last summer indicates to me that climate is changing, common sense suggests this may be triggered by anthropological factors. I would argue that we need to tackle all types of emissions and changes and strongly believe we will have anthropological climate change even if we drastically reduce CO2 emissions. There are many improvements that can be and will be made to climate models over the next few years which I think will make the picture even clearer (climate modellers have a long list of improvements of the models they want to implement).

[bluecon]

There is nothing that can be done to reduce CO2 emmissions and pollutants unless China, India, etc. are reigned in and I don't see them slowing down soon unless there is an economic meltdown. It is all pie in the sky talking about the need to stop AGW emmissions. Anthropogenic CO2 has seen a huge immense rise in output in the last decade and none of the AGW models have shown true. The huge increase in CO2 seems to be conveniently ignored.

[Gray-Wolf]

At least 20% of the Co2 currently going into our atmosphere is from the destruction of the rainforest's. We were talking about saving the rainforest's when I was a lad yet ,30 odd years on, we are in as bad a position.......... do we really expect things to change without a major incident making change inescapable?

[biffvernon]

30 odd years on, we are in as bad a position.......... do we really expect things to change without a major incident making change inescapable?

No, we are now in a much worse position. 30 years ago I thought there was still some hope of avoiding catastrophe.

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

No, we are now in a much worse position. 30 years ago I thought there was still some hope of avoiding catastrophe.

I'm glad Schwarzenegger made Predator in 1987 as there would have no forest fro him to crawl around in...phew. No the destruction is massive though and getting bigger by the day.

BFTP

[bluecon]

At least 20% of the Co2 currently going into our atmosphere is from the destruction of the rainforest's. We were talking about saving the rainforest's when I was a lad yet ,30 odd years on, we are in as bad a position.......... do we really expect things to change without a major incident making change inescapable?

Why don't you save the English rain forests, first?

[SnowBear]

Not sure about English rainforests, we don't have rainforests as such here but I have done my bit. I have planted a Silver Birch, a Maple, a Blackthorn, a Hawthorn hedgerow, a Wisteria, a Ceanothus (which I have trained into a tree) along with a Buddlea at the bottom of the garden which I let run wild and a multitude of other shrubs into what was a blank page wall to wall grass garden.

[bluecon]

Not sure about English rainforests, we don't have rainforests as such here but I have done my bit. I have planted a Silver Birch, a Maple, a Blackthorn, a Hawthorn hedgerow, a Wisteria, a Ceanothus (which I have trained into a tree) along with a Buddlea at the bottom of the garden which I let run wild and a multitude of other shrubs into what was a blank page wall to wall grass garden.

Well there were rain forests in England before they were destroyed. Instead of worrying about all the other rain forests in the world England and Europe could replant their own rain forest.

[biffvernon]

Well there were rain forests in England before they were destroyed.

'Rain forest' doesn't mean just any old forest on a wet day. The last rain forest round here was back in the Miocene.

[Cheviot]

A number of things worth noting:

1.Temperate rainforests, whilst rare and interesting turn over less C02 than their tropical cousins.

2.There is evidence that planting some tree species in temperate zones actually increase C02 output and may just break even.

3.Planting trees in the UK for carbon credit is politically motivated and has almost no reality in mitigating the vast volumes of greenhouse gases we produce

4.The tropical rainforests have been known for many years to be the principle global climate controlling ecosystem.

Planting Scottish hillsides with trees is about as useful as a chocolate teapot

[biffvernon]

Planting Scottish hillsides with trees is about as useful as a chocolate teapot

No bias?

[bluecon]

'Rain forest' doesn't mean just any old forest on a wet day. The last rain forest round here was back in the Miocene.

The western part of England was covered in temperate rain forest not that long ago.

[Bobby]

It is the tropical rain forests that are the most important though. The temperate forests that covered much of the temperate zones on Earth are almost completely gone. Rain forests are heading in that direction too sadly.

[Thundery wintry showers]

There is nothing that can be done to reduce CO2 emmissions and pollutants unless China, India, etc. are reigned in and I don't see them slowing down soon unless there is an economic meltdown. It is all pie in the sky talking about the need to stop AGW emmissions. Anthropogenic CO2 has seen a huge immense rise in output in the last decade and none of the AGW models have shown true. The huge increase in CO2 seems to be conveniently ignored.

In contrast, you posted this in the other thread:

I am not asking for inaction. If the enviros used as much energy as they have used pushing the AGW from CO2 nonsense to do something concrete great progress could have been made. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on this theory. And where did that money come from? Largely produced from polluting industrial sections of the economy. I would like to see the enviros do something concrete without it resulting in an increase in taxes, which is what it seems to always be about.

and I agreed with much of that. Yet your other arguments tend to have a sense of this about them:

A. We should continue business as usual.

B. Either AGW is a myth, or it exists but we can't do anything about it, or some other article says we should continue business as usual so it must be right.

C. A is true because B is true because A is true because B is true because A is true.

Those two posts are so inconsistent with each other that I can't help but feel that there's a defensiveness over something that isn't backed up by sound evidence.

As for the points on rainforests, there's unfortunately a lot of truth in them. Planting forests is no good if it actually causes more CO2 than it reduces. The problems with demolishing the tropical rainforests include changes in albedo as well as reduced plant density, it is one area of anthropogenic change that may well take thousands of years to reverse, if not longer.

[bluecon]

In contrast, you posted this in the other thread:

and I agreed with much of that. Yet your other arguments tend to have a sense of this about them:

A. We should continue business as usual.

B. Either AGW is a myth, or it exists but we can't do anything about it, or some other article says we should continue business as usual so it must be right.

C. A is true because B is true because A is true because B is true because A is true.

Those two posts are so inconsistent with each other that I can't help but feel that there's a defensiveness over something that isn't backed up by sound evidence.

As for the points on rainforests, there's unfortunately a lot of truth in them. Planting forests is no good if it actually causes more CO2 than it reduces. The problems with demolishing the tropical rainforests include changes in albedo as well as reduced plant density, it is one area of anthropogenic change that may well take thousands of years to reverse, if not longer.

I don't believe AGW is a myth, I believe it is junk science.

Unless you stop China, India, etc., destroying are economies will do nothing to stop the AGW(Yes I think it is a scam).

I do not fear AGW, but I fear the AGW religion.

The reduction of CO2 is always lead by a clamoring for more or higher taxes.

Think of a watermelon, green on the outside and red on the inside.

The English should replant their own rain forests before telling the rest of the world what to do. Do not fear replanting trees, we have been doing it for decades and it works well.

Edited May 24, 2008 by bluecon

[biffvernon]

or did I say that before?