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prokaroytes at 04:34 AM on 26 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Sphaerica: "Why did you change topics to ozone?" Because the process of ozone depletion causes oxygen depletion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone-oxygen_cycle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion -
Clyde at 04:32 AM on 26 July 2012Tar Sands Oil - An Environmental Disaster
This is not a climate catastrophe-causing quantity of carbon emissions James Hansen disagrees. If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate. Read more here. -
KR at 03:59 AM on 26 July 2012Earth hasn't warmed as much as expected
Lindzen is still pushing his nonsense, this time in a talk at Sandia labs. WUWT is echoing it as well. Points refuted a thousand times... -
Bob Lacatena at 03:29 AM on 26 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
15, 16, Chris, Why did you change topics to ozone? We were discussing O2 depletion in the entire atmosphere, and I presume (because we are on the topic of this post) as an indicator of an anthropogenic cause of CO2 increase. Any casual reader of your comment is going to interpret it in that fashion, and your comment suggests oxygen depletion is not an indicator of an anthropogenic source of CO2 increase. As such, you need to support the claim. Your shift to ozone depletion has no bearing whatsoever on the matter, and dodges the point. Your explanation of the chemistry is similarly irrelevant. I well understand the reaction, and anyone who doesn't can google it quickly enough. But you still haven't provided the necessary foundation for your argument, which is observational and computational evidence not merely that the reaction occurs (as it does naturally and continuously), but also that the mass balance involved, as compared to fossil fuel combustion, is high enough to diminish the argument in the original post. You've failed to do so. I'll give you a second chance, or dismiss your statement as unsubstantiated noise. -
prokaroytes at 01:53 AM on 26 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
And the reaction Shindell mentions, includes Oxygen. methane's reaction with hydroxyl radicals formed from singlet oxygen atoms and with water vapor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane -
prokaroytes at 01:51 AM on 26 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Re 14 Sphaerica Observations of ozone show a thinning of the Earth's protective stratospheric ozone layer by about 3 to 8% overall since the 1970s. In the upper stratosphere, ozone depletion has been from 15 to 20%. Again, the model is better able to reproduce these values when increased water vapor is included. This is especially true in the upper stratosphere, where ozone is most sensitive to water. The model indicates that increased water vapor accounts for about 40% of the ozone loss in the upper stratosphere, and about 20% of the overall loss to date. There are two driving forces behind the change in stratospheric moisture. Increasing emissions of methane are transformed into water in the stratosphere by chemical reactions. This can account for about a third of the observed increase in moisture there. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/shindell_05/ -
Bob Lacatena at 01:30 AM on 26 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Chris, Do you have a citation for your Oxygen Depletion understanding... one complete with actual numbers? Nothing is ever "just this one cause," and the conversion of CH4 + O2 to CO2 and H2O is an ongoing natural process that gets H2O into the upper atmosphere. The question becomes one of simple math... how much O2 does the increase in the amount of CH4 (presumably from anthropogenic sources) consume, and how does this compare with the total oxygen depletion. Without those numbers, and a citation, your statement is pure speculation. But I strongly doubt that the numbers balance, or that fossil fuel combustion fails to dwarf the upper atmosphere methane contribution. -
vrooomie at 23:26 PM on 25 July 2012New research special - satellite measurement papers 2010-2011
Record Greenland Ice MeltModerator Response: [RH] In the future you should try to include more context rather than post a link only comment. -
mdenison at 19:41 PM on 25 July 2012Tar Sands Oil - An Environmental Disaster
82% higher (broken link) -
prokaroytes at 17:06 PM on 25 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
As i understand the Oxygen Depletion is attributed to greenhouses gases like Methane breaking down in the upper atmosphere and this reaction consumes O2 molecules. On another note (-Snip-)Moderator Response: [DB] As an FYI: promoting awareness of research tangential to the OP is acceptable; promoting your blog is not. Self-promotional link snipped. -
mandas at 16:25 PM on 25 July 2012Tar Sands Oil - An Environmental Disaster
Thanks dana -
dana1981 at 15:11 PM on 25 July 2012Tar Sands Oil - An Environmental Disaster
mandas - McKibben's number is from now to 2050, whereas the Aussie Climate Commmission was 2000 to 2050. We've already emitted 328 Gt, bringing the remaining budget down to 672 Gt. McKibben also uses an 80% probability of limiting to 2°C vs. the Climate Commission's 75%. Not sure what accounts for the rest of the discrepancy, but it's not an exact calculation. -
mandas at 13:36 PM on 25 July 2012Tar Sands Oil - An Environmental Disaster
I am interested in the number from the Australian Climate Commission's The Critical Decade report that humanity has a budget of 1 trillion tonnes of CO2 between 2000 and 2050 to have a probability of about 75% of limiting global warming to 2°C or less. I read the piece by Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone last week which quoted a figure of 565 gigatonnes to stay below a 2 degree increase - which is only half the ACC figure. I would be interested to see the basis for both of these numbers, and an explanation for the discrepancy. -
scaddenp at 11:09 AM on 25 July 2012New research special - satellite measurement papers 2010-2011
Note also that the Sorenson paper linked in the Cryosphere list uses altimetry for ice change. Dome is positive is anything. -
scaddenp at 10:23 AM on 25 July 2012New research special - satellite measurement papers 2010-2011
Paul, I dont know. It might not be falling at all (depends on amount of winter accumulation) but do you expect much change? The GRACE maps of mass loss show most of the losses around the edges (as you would expect). -
yocta at 09:00 AM on 25 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Fantastic post! Really great to see a short succinct summary with the points expanded on. This is great fodder to fight away the armies of the night. -
Paul Magnus at 06:41 AM on 25 July 2012New research special - satellite measurement papers 2010-2011
indeed, but how fast is the height of the dome falling? Greenland Ice Melt, Measured By NASA Satellites, Reaches Unprecedented Level http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/24/greenland-ice-melt-nasa_n_1698129.html -
Martin Vermeer at 05:53 AM on 25 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
Ah, that explains. I find on Wikipedia for the mean ice thickness of Antarctica "at least 1.6 km" and area 14M km^2, while the total ocean surface is 360M km^2. That gives 62 m for the sea-level effect. It's actually over 1.6 km thick; other sources give 2 km. (But OTOH the rock surface on which it lies is up to 2.5 km below sea level in West Antarctica.) And then, of course, ice contracts when melting. That gives us 0.9*2000*14/360 = 70 meters, which is the value most often found in the literature. -
prokaroytes at 03:59 AM on 25 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
Re the 100-180 figure: That statement according to David Noone is a simple calculation. Area of the Antarctic divided by the surface area of the earth. And the mean depth of the ice sheet 2km on average, or 4km on top. -
Alexandre at 00:06 AM on 25 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Thank you Tom! You commented briefly about this weeks ago, and I'm glad you put all the effort and work to release this post with more depth. I'll definetely save it as a reference. -
ajki at 23:29 PM on 24 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #29
@1: Some browser plugins exist for different browsers to assist input into a html textbox. For an example see Text Formatting Toolbar [mozilla.org] for Firefox (no recommendation intended). There will be a learning curve using such tools. Not all html tags supported by those tools are usable within all textboxes or on SkS. The site owner could integrate a WYSIWIG-Editor into the codebase of this server (CKEditor clones, TinyMCE or the like). This would lead to some additional server load and questionable benefit for most users. -
chriskoz at 23:26 PM on 24 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Tom @7, Then it would make sense to break "fossil fuel arrow" into 2 arrows: 1) "C components of fossil fuels burning", which would form an isosceles triangle 30ppm x 30ppm 2) "H components of fossil fuels burning", which would be vertical arrow as it does not produce CO2 It would be clearer for me and would also indicate the difference between CO2 emmissions from burning pure coal vs. carobhydrates. Regardeless my comment herein, I join my predecessors in praising the value of this article: this is the best summary of arguments why humans are controling CO2. The AGW linking piece (CO2 rise=>warming) was best explained by Richard Alley in AGU 2009. -
robert test at 21:45 PM on 24 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Tom, you nailed it -- in content, style, and method. Agree with Dikran Marsupial "definitive" describes your piece perfectly. I'd like to see a follow-up definitive posting using the same methodology to nail down atmospheric CO2 as the cause of current warming. -
Dikran Marsupial at 21:07 PM on 24 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Super post Tom, this is the definitive SkS article on this issue! -
Tristan at 19:17 PM on 24 July 2012New research special - satellite measurement papers 2010-2011
Ari, you're the bomb. -
Tom Curtis at 19:16 PM on 24 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
chriskoz @6, oil products and methane also contain large quantities of hydrogen. The equation for methane is: CH4 + 2 x O2 => CO2 + 2 x H2O Other hydrocarbons are very similar. Estimates of total O2 consumption depend on estimates of total fuel use divided among the three main form of fuels - coal, oil, and methane. -
chriskoz at 18:37 PM on 24 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
I don't understand how the amount of O decline has been quantified in 6). In particular "fossil fuel burning" arrow covers 30ppm on CO2 axis but more than 40ppm on O axis. That sounds incorrect, because according to the obvious reaction: C + O2 -> CO2 O2 & CO2 are matched molecule for molecule, so deltas in O2 & CO2 should be the same. Am I missing something here? -
prokaroytes at 17:56 PM on 24 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
Alright i emailed him. -
prokaroytes at 17:53 PM on 24 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
Re Martin, i believe that Noone, mistaken feet for meters here. -
Martin Vermeer at 17:48 PM on 24 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
chriskoz #23:They assumed CO2 reaches 550, 750 and 1000ppm (3 scenarios) and stays constant after that for almost 3000y until 5000AD. That's very pessimistic/unlikely ...
Yep. And this is a paper by Richard Alley and colleagues... not good. Chris Machens #21, those are lecture notes. You may want to take it up with the lecturer (seriously): David C. Noone The statement "In unlikely case that all of Antarctica melts, 100-180 meters of sea level rise!" on the last slide is just plain wrong, as you know by now. -
prokaroytes at 17:41 PM on 24 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
I updated the image, after considering the feedback from this discussion. However i still display the flood map with 100 meter SLR. Because it still seems not so far fetched. Based on maximum SLR of 80 m (USGS, 2003). The wikipedia is stating a TE of 5-10 m during the PETM. So because i have not a better image, the more precise "90 m" ( with today's measurement) is not so far fetched from 100 m SLR given in the flood map i use. There seem to be some updates to ice sheet melt contribution to SLR ie. the wiki cites Greenland ice to rise 7.2 SLR, where the USGS numbers only use 6.4 - and maybe thermal expansion is higher then 10 m too. However if somebody can point me to a better graphic for showing the ice free planet, i would be happy to use that. -
jyyh at 17:34 PM on 24 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
MarkR: [[so many 'skeptics' argue it's natural is absolutely incredible to me!]] Well, I'm pretty much of the same opinion, since I know no one who has extracted the steel and chrome and oil needed to plastics from the ground, and who has built, f.e. a car from these, literally from scratch. Some people might argue learning is natural for humans, and that the products made with the skills acquired from learning are thus also natural, but I'm more old fashioned with my definitions and append these things to culture, since the support structure to build something from scratch (i.e. from the elements that have not been modified by other humans), is likely to involve some sort of culture. To take an example, f.e. I couldn't build even a wooden bow naturally, for I do not have the skills to weave a strong string from the wool that I could get from lambs by some stone tools I can make (I've not done any refining of metals though I know the principle (that I couldn't have found out by myself (the lake/swamp ore process)). But all of the above depends on the various uses of 'natural' that are not connected to the scientific evidence presented here, but are likely more of a subject of philosophy and semantics... Moderators please delete this if this is too out of line and OT. -
MarkR at 17:04 PM on 24 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
For me, it's the mass balance argument that seals it. There is physically no way that the rise isn't being caused by humans. Anyone who sees the mass balance emasurements and then accepts claims that it's a natural rise really needs their skepticism checking. The mass balance shows that for the rise to be natural, one or both of these things must be happening: 1) maths is wrong and bigger numbers are actually smaller than smaller numbers or 2) chemistry is wrong and molecules of carbon dioxide magically disappear in the atmosphere. That's the sort of hypothesis that's needed for a natural rise in CO2 to be logically consistent. The fact that so many 'skeptics' argue it's natural is absolutely incredible to me! -
chuckbot at 15:20 PM on 24 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
well done! It's things like this that sealed the case for AGW in my mind - you've presented 10 solid lines of evidence linking fossil fuel emissions to rising atmospheric CO2. One might imagine that a handful of those evidences are critically flawed, but that still leaves multiple independent justifications intact. To doubt the conclusion, you'd have to explain, not just why ALL the pieces of evidence are flawed, but how the flaws coincidentally line up in favor of the same conclusion. This would take considerably more work than the average fake skeptic is willing to invest. And when you move beyond "Emissions => CO2 Rise" to other core tenants of AGW, you see similar lists of solid, independent evidences (NOAA's graphics on signs of a warming world and human fingerprints on warming come to mind). I really don't see how someone can look at this and not, at least provisionally, accept the obvious conclusions. This is a question I run into surprisingly often. Thanks for putting the answers all in one place. -
jyyh at 14:51 PM on 24 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
(flame) so the ratio of 6/10 vs 1/10 makes AGW only 6 times more likely than GW if one prefers to look only the positive evidence. F.e. who has measured all the ratios of C isotopes from submarine ridges? And there might be ultra-sulfuric low-activity shield volcanoes near upwelling regions making the ocean more acidic. Has the sun produced more 13/14C(4+) that has hit the Earth in recent years? Is the sun transitioning to the alpha2 process (or what ever it was that involved Carbon fusion) and going to He burning??? OMG, we're all gonna die!!!(/flame) (no explanation for the rising [CO3(2-)] though.) Thanks, I guess this list of evidence is pretty extensive, and might be worth a quicklink. Does anybody come up more examples of the evidence of the source of the extra carbon in the atmosphere/ocean? For my part, after 5) had been solved 1999abouts I've seen nothing to doubt the Anthropogenic part of the GW, though I accept the deforestation is a part (and it's mostly anthropogenic too.) -
DaneelOlivaw at 14:19 PM on 24 July 2012Climate Change Cluedo: Anthropogenic CO2
Nice. I love all the other "hockey stick" graphs :) -
Daniel Bailey at 08:56 AM on 24 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
dr2chase, I believe the image you show is Greenland without ice, after isostatic rebound equilibria changes are fully achieved. A more revealing image depicting the bowl-shaped morphology, including the deep ice-advecting drainage channels of Zachariae and Petermann, is shown thusly:
[Source]
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dr2chase at 08:31 AM on 24 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
chriskoz @7 -- The Greenland ice cap is not saddle shaped, but the land underneath it is.
What happens when ice melts in the middle; does it run to the bottom and collect there? Does it get part way down and re-freeze? It's hard to imagine the ice above melting fast enough (takes a LOT of heat) to create a saddle in the ice, but there is a saddle underneath. -
Martin Vermeer at 03:37 AM on 24 July 2012Esper Millennial Cooling in Context
Lambda 3.0, With "Figure S6" I assume you mean Figure S9, right? I'm not a treeringologist, but know a little about stats. You have to look carefully what is being plotted. The year number at the horizontal axis is the end year of an interval, of which the start year is 138 BC. Over this interval, a linear regression is performed. The core point is that the length of the regression period is very short at the left (538 years) and very long at the right (2138 years), and the data regressed is very "wiggly". Of course the trend variations due to the wiggling will then be considerably greater at the left end of the graph than at the right end. As we see. We also see that wood density gives different results then ring width. Due to the way this plot was made, also that difference has an effect on the plotted trends that grows going to the left (I suspect the tree-ring score differences themselves aren't any greater for the earlier times). About Figure 10, you have to look again at what is being plotted: 15-year moving-window correlations. So the "dip" at 1912 (I think) shows the correlations over the period 1905-1920. If you look at the upper part of the plot, you see that in this window, there happens to be only little variation in instrumental ("real") temperatures (black); these are almost constant over the window period. So, there is no temperature signal to cause corresponding variations in the proxy record, and no hope to extract good correlation values. The values we see (lower graph, colored curves) are more or less in the noise. The instrumental records for different stations show much better correlations among themselves (grey curves), because, well, purpose-built weather stations are more fit for purpose and less "noisy" than proxies-of-opportunity ;-) -
Alexandre at 00:23 AM on 24 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #29
By the way, Beth Gardiner's article linked on this post is so good it deserved a post of its own! -
Composer99 at 00:14 AM on 24 July 2012Yes, Virginia, There is Sea Level Rise
RonManley: From previous discussions on this site (and examining all the graphs posted in this thread) it is my understanding that the principal driver of fluctuations in sea level rise (but not the trend) is ENSO; with the many La Niña years recently causing an appreciable dip in sea level rise. This seems to correlate with ENSO being a driver of fluctuations in surface temperatures, again without really affecting the trend in that metric, either. That would seem to account for the fluctuations you have remarked upon. -
anchr at 23:56 PM on 23 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #29
Re geoengineering: yes. Once the realities of global warming is obvious, even for those who don't even want to look for it, geoengineering is likely to be the next line of defense. Partly as an argument for continued inaction, like KBow point out, but also partly because there will be a lot of money in this, that that will attract the same companies that makes a lot of money from oil extraction today. Although inaction on GW has made a lot of damage, getting geoenineering wrong might totally overshadow any damage we've seen so far. Besides, in that context they might be as opportunistically optimistic about the climate models as they are critically dismissive of them today. Thus, I think it is very important for this site to counter 'bad geoengineering'. -
KBow at 23:28 PM on 23 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #29
The potential for geo-engineering is likely the next big argument to further delay action in favor of fossil fuel burning. Understanding the hurdles and risks will be important in developing opinion in whether we should delay action because we have a "cure" or if we should take an ounce of prevention. I would like this information explained to see if it would be reasonable to add this as part of the long-term solution. -
Bernard J. at 23:03 PM on 23 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
John Mason's comment at #20 cuts to the chase. The real problem of sea level rise does not involve big numbers. A rise of more than a few metres will place indecribable pressure on future generations, already labouring under the stresses of a heated planet with a seriously degraded biosphere and dwindling energy, soil, water and other resources. These few metres of sea level rise are already set in train with the current rate of human-caused global warming and its concurrent SLR change, and given a little more time than the arbitrary time limit of 2100. It's these simple, little numbers that will have huge consequences. And most human action these days continues as if these future consequences are still only hypothetical. -
Daniel Bailey at 21:48 PM on 23 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
Chris Machens, you disappoint me. The source you link to, despite hosted on a university website, is a slide presentation nearly devoid of source attribution. As such, it is little more than opinion. Which is cheap these days. You stake your reputation on essentially hearsay. -
Alexandre at 21:36 PM on 23 July 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #29
About geoengineering: I resist to admit the need of that kind of half solution, but yes, SkS should discuss those possibilities as well. It would even help people know their limitations, and it would help putting the low-carbon alternatives in better perspective as well. -
chriskoz at 21:29 PM on 23 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
Martin@18, Thanks for correcting my typo. Chris@21, You should know by now that the claim of "potential SLR of 180m" in that presentation is unsubstantiated rubbish. I have also noticed another problem: in their simulation of GIS melt on slide 17. They assumed CO2 reaches 550, 750 and 1000ppm (3 scenarios) and stays constant after that for almost 3000y until 5000AD. That's very pessimistic/unlikely because, according to Archer 2009, figure 1 therein, pulse 1000GtC in the atmosphere cannot stay constant for so long, because its tail is reduced to 350-450Gt in just 1ky timescale after ocean invasion and neutralization by CaCO3. So their scenarios assume humans to keep burning coal (or some other CO2 release, e.g. from permafrost) into 5000AD to keep up with ocean CO2 uptake. That assumption cannot be substantiated. CBDunkerson@22, Thanks for puting it together. Now the numbers make sense to me. -
CBDunkerson at 20:45 PM on 23 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
chriskoz wrote: "This article incorrectly puts a figure of SLR 9 m in 500a during MWP1A, whereas the quote from www.nature.com reads "14–18 metres over 350 years" which is substantially different figure." The article stated: "The melted ice flowed into the oceans leading to rapid sea level rises of 9 m in 500 years during the Meltwater pulse 1a event 14,600 years ago..." AND: "The meltwater pulse produced by the saddle-collapse can explain more than half of the sea level jump observed around 14,600 years ago." 9 * 2 = 18 No 'substantial difference'. -
prokaroytes at 20:05 PM on 23 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
Here is a paper from Colorado University with the same 100 meter flood map http://atoc.colorado.edu/~dcn/ATOC1060/Members/Lectures/26_SeaLevelRise.pdf The author claims it is unlikely but if all ice melts it could be up to 180 meter? -
John Mason at 19:47 PM on 23 July 2012Trigger for past rapid sea level rise discovered
Danial @#14 has it about right. We need not wave big numbers about here. 2m would be pretty serious; 10m would be catastrophic, regardless of whether it occurred within 100 or 500 years. It takes a lot - an awful lot - of time and expense to relocate a coastal city - and there are an awful lot of 'em!
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