Global warming: Hogwash???

did you read Crichton's "State of Fear"?

 

Here's something on cooling...

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8398

 

global warming will in effect cool the entire planet. the caps will warm hence the term 'global warming' this warming of the caps will cause glacial flow(fresh water) to disrupt the ocean current(salt water) and it's ability to regulate the tempeture on the planet. this will also cause a disruption in the weather pattern. the oceans play a very large role in the planets abilty to regulate it's climate. once we as a species have gotten to the point that we have destroyed that, why do we deserve to stay?

thats the short of it.

 

Bad analogy........... I only took one environmental physics class but IIRC the Greenhouse gasses absorb parts of the spectrum that are normally re-radiated back into space. Here is one that makes a little more sense:

Global warming is like parking two cars in the sun, one is black and the other white. The black one will absorb the sun's energy more efficiently and will heat up faster. The bottom of the car doesn't cool off to compensate for the top getting warmer.....

FWIW I'm an agnostic when it comes to this stuff

 

It's an interesting argument, but it relies on flawed logic because the earth is not simply a static vessel to be acted on. It isn't, say, a tub of water. We're altering its ability to absorb and radiate heat. Thus, the sun can stay constant (or near constant) in its output, but the absorption/reflection of heat by the earth changes, allowing global warming. No laws of thermodynamics are violated because the sun's output hasn't changed, only the amount absorbed and reflected.

As for the talk of global warming, it may slow during blizzards but if we look at things like ocean temperatures (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4275729.stm) and shrinking polar ice (http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3375415), you'll see it's alive and well.

 

You wouldn't happen to have a chat program or something such that we could have more of a conversation, would you? You are misunderstanding a few principles, and it's rather hard to make it clear with a single post.

 

Yes..... It's complicated because the atmospere acts as a blanket that insulates the Earth. First you must consider a object like the moon that is basically a naked ball of rock (technically it has an extremely faint sodium atmosphere) The portion of the moon in the sunlight heats up quite quickly (around 100C) and part that is not re-radiates that heat back into space very fast and it is quite cold (around -150 C). Now for the Earth.... on the sunlit side the atmosphere reflects and absorbs a portion of the sun's energy so on the surface we never see high temperatures like those on the moon. On the night side the atmosphere insulates and the heat absorbed during the day is re-radiated much more slowly so we don't plunge into a deep freeze.


I'm a little sketchy on some of this but IIRC "greenhouse gases" absorb parts of the spectrum that normally passes through the atmosphere which causes it to heat up more during the day and then prevents heat from being re-radiated back into space at night. I seem to remember a lot of charts and whatnot explaining how it worked with all the various bits of the spectrum but I'm too lazy to dig them up on the internet right now.

 

Because there are all kinds of complicated things that go on...... volcanos erupt which change the atmosphere, the sun has cycles of activity, ocean currents change, there is all kind of stuff.

 

Arlie:

The sun is a variable star. It's output varies, but I'm not sure of the cycle. T
That would account for the ice ages, etc. Additionally, there have been natural occurances which contribute to the ice ages: examples would be massive volcano eruptions, which put dust into the air, blocking the sun, causing cooling. Remember when Mt. St. Helens went off, the temps droped for a couple of years. There have been far more massive such eruptions, and they been able to track the cooling period.

However, we've been adding to the mix in our production of the greenhouse gases. The real question is how much are we assisting the heating? That is the question.

Art

 

yes this is a process that happens naturally over long periods of time as well but 'WE' are accelerating it at a alarming rate.

 

My take on global warming is that we simply do not have enough information over long periods of time to make such a judgment. Going on 20 years of information and figuring out what a 4 Billion year-old planet is doing is like (Horsefly-ism here) looking at a two year scribbling with a pen and proclaiming that he'll be an artist the rest of his days. We just don't have all of the pieces of the puzzle.

That being said, I'm still big on environmental causes and try to leave the planet better than I came into it. However, for as much work as the U.S. & European countries do to be globally responsible we've still got developing asian countries that have more people and simply don't give a f*ck about their pollution. I can put up solar panels, recycle and ride my bike to work but when 5 billion Chinese are driving around in cars that belch smoke like a diesel engine at a tractor pull will it really matter?

 

Easy. Ice ages can be explained rather nicely by changes in the earth's axis of rotation. Right now it is about 23.5 degrees, but it changes about every 40,000 years, varying between approximately 22.5 and 24 degrees. A study at Woods Hole Oceanographic institue noted that the timing of the last 7 ice ages corresponded with the periods of decreasing tilt and the ends of the periods corresponded with periods of maximal tilt.

Interestingly, we seem to have an ice age on average every 100,000 years - whch is explained by the fact that this number is an average with points varying between 80,000 and 100,000 years. Curiously, the period of ice ages appears to be increasing - suggesting a cooling earth, rather than warmer.


And this is where global warming comes in. The changes in artcic ice and permafrost, to choose but one index, have occurred over a much shorter timescale.

 

If you are willing to do some reading, here is an excellent site for info on the topic of climate change and all its complexities.

http://www.climate.unibe.ch/

Also, http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/
especially
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/

For specifics on the impact of the ocean, try the links on thermohaline circulation
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/thc/

The very recently released ice data from Antarctica goes back an additional 250,000 years from the previous best data and indicates that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere today has never been this high in the last 650,000 years...even when the average global temp was 2-4C warmer than now.

 

I read somewhere that one concern is that GW would most likely alter the earth's currents, such as the Gulf Stream that flows from the Caribbean towards Great Britain and moderates their climate, which would result in cooling temperatures over there.

 

The Thermohaline current site is very nice Bryan, thanks!

I should add that a similar process, the release of massive amounts of fresh water by the melting of the Laurentian ice sheet 12,800 years ago, helped cool the planet by disrupting the warming cycle and extending an ice age.

 

From what I have seen, pictures of the hole ozone hole over the polar caps its some what of a cyclical occurrence. Yes the caps might melt but this has happened many times as stated above. This will induce a global climate change and the earth will once again go into an ice age, as it has done many times before.

If you want my real opinion on the current state of global warming I think it’s a bunch of BS. Why do you ask? Well why only now when all and all our industries are "clean" compared the standards of say just 100 years ago. The past industrial revolutions history has created much more waste in the air than we put out now. This brings up my question of why is it a problem now? Is it because there is money to be made of the fears of others? This is most likely the case as it is with most things.

Simply put the current state of waste output by the world wont change or speed up the inevitable warming the ice age like before.

 

The environment and the things that can impact the environment and human health are very complex. For example, there are actually two concerns over ozone and neither one of them is related to climate change.

Stratospheric ozone protects us from UV rays. The stratospheric ozone layer is destroyed (the Ozone hole) by a very complicated chemistry involving chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs, like Freons and Halons). There is no debate across the scientific or political communities about this mechanism (1995 Nobel Prize in Chem for Crutzen, Rowland, and Molina) and it is one of the best examples of how international agreements (Montreal Protocol and Helsinki Accord) have worked to help reduce the destruction of the ozone layer.

Ground level ozone causes respiratory problems and is the result of complicated chemistry involving sunlight, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds.

(Yes, someone has proposed a big pump that would move ground level ozone to the stratosphere. The costs are ... stratospheric.)

The industrial age is generally agreed to have started 100-120 years ago and if you check out the atmsopheric CO2 concentrations on some the sites listed earlier, there is a direct correlation between the beginning of the industrial age and the increased atmospheric CO2 concentration. Does this mean that climate change is happening? ...that's a different question. Again, no one disputes the increased CO2. The discussion is over the impact of this change.

At the other end of the spectrum in terms of amicable and consensus international agreements is the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change.

 

The THC research is an important component to one of the more recent theories...abrupt climate change. Typically, the world has been concerned over climate change occurring over the next 50-150 years. Abrupt climate change, 'precipitated' by a rapid ceasing or even reversal of the ocean currents (esp Atlantic Gulf Stream), could conceivably bring about dramatic impacts in less than 20 years, depending upon which model you choose to believe. If you are Dennis Quaid, it happens in 3 days...isn't Hollywood educational and so realistic!

 

Global warming is potentially very real. This is a long post and I'm attempting to take complicated science and put in plain english so please be gentle.

The talk about ice ages is somewhat misinformed, but is generally considered as fact so that's very understandable. Geologists theorize (based on physical evidence) that there has only ever been ice on the earth during 5 periods of earth's existence. Each of these ice ages is further subdivided into little ice ages, like the ones we are so familiar with during the last larger ice age.

In essence, this means our planet is MUCH COOLER at this time then during almost any other during the 5 billion years or so of its history. BUT, atmospheric CO2 levels have risen from around 200 parts-per-million to over 370 ppm in the last century or so. The last time atmospheric CO2 was this high there were dinosaurs wandering the arctic regions (again, no ice during most of earth's history).

CO2 is a very powerful greenhouse gas because of its molecular formation. (Google rotational and vibrational energy and blackbody radiation & absorption bands).

Incoming solar radiation is normally re-radiated away from the earth by the ground (or reflected by snow, ice etc). Albedo (reflectivity) accounts for 30% of the radiation balance. The other incoming solar radiation re-radiates from the earth towards space as long-wave infrared radiation. Clouds, water vapor and CO2 are very powerful contributers to the greenhouse effect. Dont get me wrong, we absolutely need the greenhouse effect; without it Earth would be very, very cold! (Lookup energy-balance equation or Wien's law on google). Something to the tune of 255K (vs. the balmy 288K we enjoy today).

Where EXCESS atmospheric CO2 becomes problematic is in 2 ways:

A.) It causes energy re-radiated towards space to not escape the atmosphere. This causes rising temperatures globally in our oceans, which is bad-news for anyone with waterfront property. Small island nations are trying to sue the US because climatologists theorize that if the thermal expasion of the oceans continues unchecked their lands will largely dissapear. The ocean acts as a giant "heat sink" since H2O has such a great ability to hold latent heat. This is why the ocean stays relatively the same throughout a 24 hour day but beach property will heat and cool dramatically during the same 24 hours.

B.) CO2 is naturally "scrubbed" from the atmosphere by silicate weathering (rocks absorbing it), but sadly this process takes place over many millions of years. This is why highly volcanic periods don't overwhelm the earth with CO2 and other gases making it unlivable. The emission of gases is balanced by silicate weathering. Yes, that includes methane emissions.

 

There is a theory that without global warming we wouldn’t have any real civilizations, or be such a successful species. It goes like this:

The earth has long cold periods (ice ages) followed by short periods of stable warm weather. The reasons for the infrequent warm periods are three fold. The benign weather relies on our distance from the sun, the tilt of the earth and a wobble in the earth’s rotation. Basically our planet’s temperature comes from the sun hitting a land mass and warming up the air, sunlight that hits the sea, thanks to reflection, is not as useful. Most of the land mass is in the Northern hemisphere, thus when the earth is tilted with the north closest to the sun during our elliptical orbit, and the tilt and the earth’s rotational wobble are all favorable, then we have a warm period during which you can plant seeds and be fairly sure a crop will grow.
About 12,000 years ago, during the second half of a natural stable/warm period, farming was invented. Trees were cut down and land was cleared. The burning of the wood contributed to in increase of carbon dioxide, as did the rapid crop cycling - marginally, but enough to keep the weather stable and the crops growing as our orbit moved into a cold period. At the moment the Southern hemisphere is nearest the sun during summer, not the Northern, and yet we don’t have a quarter of mile of ice sitting on my home town in on the West Coast of Canada, and historically we should. In place of that crops are still growing, we are still eating, and life is good.

Since the industrial revolution we have gone too far and the carbon dioxide level has gone out of control. Why? Well, traditionally empires have relied on slave labor. In the last 150 years (with two notable exceptions) we have largely replaced that with energy derived from coal and oil, both of which release CO2. This leaves us with two alternatives; either we give up the idea of using fossil fuel as a replacement for slave energy and we once again become barbarians, or we promptly find an energy alternative, while working out how to deal with the excess carbon dioxide that has built up in the atmosphere.

I’m not too worried. We only have this long term problem because we have overcome so many short term problems.

As others have pointed out we live in a closed system, which is to say we don’t exchange matter (in any significant amount) with the rest of the solar system, but we get plenty of sunlight. It has been estimated (I’m working from memory here: Rifkin, The Hydrogen Economy) that in 2002 the amount of energy burnt by our oil/coal economies, were it expressed in sunlight at a 100% exchange efficiency, would account for 42 minutes of global sunlight. That’s right. 42 Minutes of the sunlight that hits this planet's troposphere is equal to a year’s energy consumption by all mankind. Phew!
There is a hell of a lot of energy out there - all we have to do is figure out how to use it. Don’t forget that plants are about .5% efficient at converting light to biomass and yet forests can grow, and do grow.

What do I think will happen? The carbon dioxide will not be such a problem when an infection, such as flu, carries off about a third of the planet’s population. With the reduced population will come a different pattern of energy use. I almost certainly won’t be around to see it, but I believe in our species.

Advice: Drive your Ferrari while you can.