Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 1222 1223 1224 1225 1226 1227 1228 1229 1230 1231 1232 1233 1234 1235 1236 1237 Next
Comments 61451 to 61500:
-
Glenn Tamblyn at 19:09 PM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
HGK @45 Your calcs look about right. If lake Mjøsa is about 56 cubic kilometres - 56,000,000,000 cubic metres, then that is about 10 times Sydney Harbour at 562,000,000 cubic metres. So roughly 10 times the volume. So a boiling time of 5-6 days is about right. -
Tristan at 19:05 PM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
I think if the feedbacks played nice we'd more or less get away with this slowly coalescing slipshod approach to tackling climate change that we've seen over the past 25 yrs. If going to +2-2.5 triggers a substantial methane release or the collapse of the amazon basin we may find ourselves up fifth street without a camel. -
Roger D at 18:45 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
Ms Maddow did well with respect to challenging most of Inhofe's "mythy" statements. And overall, she is also very good about not losing her cool with those who make up fake "facts". The only let down for me is that it turned out Maddow mistakenly called Inhofe to task for a reference he made about her in his book The Greatest Hoax: in short, Maddow told Inhofe that she never mentioned Inhofe's impending protest trip to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference in a Dec 2009 episode of her show, as he contends in his book. While watching the interview I thought wow, Inhofe really feels like he has to make things up in order to make it look like "the liberal climate change alarmists" in the media are aligned agaist him. But it turned out she had in fact discussed Copenhagen in the episode in questioin(simply gave the facts and maybe poked a little good nature fun). However, climate change deniers, if any watch the Rachel Maddow show, would see the interview as a he said/ she said affair regarding the climate change discussion and would believe Infhofe probably made sense with respect to that topic: And when they find out Maddow got a non-science related point wrong they'd interpret her mistake as confirmation Inhofe was correct about his contentions regarding the science. Otherwise, I agree with the other commenter's above. -
Fran Barlow2 at 18:32 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
Rachel Maddow has long been my favourite on-air journalist. She's possessed of a sharp mind and the willingness to use it in her job without worrying who objects. -
owl905 at 18:07 PM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
@Michale Sweet 51 It' not peer-reviewed, just: "While variations close to the ocean surface may induce relatively short-term climate changes, long-term changes in the deep ocean may not be detected for many generations." http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/oceanography/ocean-earth-system/climate-variability/ "Neither is this heat going to come back out from the deep ocean any time soon (the notion that this heat is the warming that is ‘in the pipeline’ is erroneous)." Gavin Schmidt, Real Climate: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/10/global-warming-and-ocean-heat-content/ SKS: "Heat buried in the deep ocean remains there for hundreds to thousands of years. It is not involved in the heat exchange occurring in shallower layers." http://www.skepticalscience.com/Ocean-Heat-Poised-To-Come-Back-And-Haunt-Us-.html hth. -
Doug Bostrom at 18:03 PM on 18 March 2012The History of Climate Science - William Charles Wells
Lovely article. I particularly enjoy having people and things put into historical context; the recent London sewerage piece and this article are prime stuff. Thanks! -
mohyla103 at 17:10 PM on 18 March 2012It's not bad
Yes, that's exactly the sentence I'm referring to. The wording here is tricky, so this is probably where the misunderstanding comes from. I find it strange that he mentioned summer months, then specifically referred to "summer flow" with the Ganges, but not with other major rivers. So I interpret this sentence like this: "a key source of water for the region in the summer months" Glacier meltwater provides water in the summer for the Ganges and other major rivers. The sources all confirm this as well. "as much as 70% of the summer flow in the Ganges" This one's straightforward. The abstracts of Barnett's sources don't mention this but I presume this figure is in the full text and I'm not arguing anything here. "and 50-60% of the flow in other major rivers" What flow is he talking about? I interpret this as a yearly average, not summer specifically, especially since the sources all mention a yearly average figure around 50-60% right in their abstracts. Notice Barnett did not say "summer flow" like he did with the Ganges. Obviously, glaciers do provide water "in the summer months", so Barnett is not wrong to word the first part of his sentence this way, but I don't think you can assume this 50-60% figure actually refers to summer flow. I'm working on getting access to the full text of the Singh, Jain, Kumar paper and I'll let you know what it says in there as soon as I find out. -
Glenn Tamblyn at 15:58 PM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
michael sweet @51. I can't give you a citation but I can give you some basic numbers. To heat 1 kilogram of water by 1 Deg C takes a bit over 4 times as much heat as heating a kilogram of air by 1 Deg C. The total mass of the ocean is about 280 times the mass of the atmosphere. So roughly speaking the oceans need 1100-1200 times as much heat to warm by 1 Deg C compared to the Atmosphere. And currently the oceans are absorbing around 30 times as much heat as the atmosphere. So, on the back of a convenient envelope, that is 37-40 years for the oceans to warm as much as the atmosphere does in 1 year. So a significant time but not Eric's 1000's of years either. Since ocean overturning time is of the order 800-1000 years, heat can flow into the ocean faster than it can reach the depths. So we are likely to see an initial thermal equilibrium based on only part of the ocean in decades then a slower long term equilibrium that could take centuries. Hence the dividing of Climate Sensitivity (CS) into Transient CS, on the scale of a few years, Short Term CS on scales of multiple decades and Long Term CS on scales of centuries. -
muoncounter at 15:54 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
The Inhofe interview can be found on youtube. It should be required watching, as it fully illustrates the duplicity of this Inhofe character. 'I was on your side until I found out how much it would cost' is just the tip of the iceberg. -
Bob Lacatena at 14:35 PM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
19, Eric (skeptic), You are fooling yourself. No chance. None. -
michael sweet at 13:10 PM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
Eric, What a wonderful suggestion. All the third world can change their economies into manufacturing from agriculture. Then they can eat the cars they build!! Think through your suggestions. What will people eat after their agriculture fails due to drought? You have been making a lot of these types of suggestions lately. -
Doug Hutcheson at 13:00 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
How refreshing to see a member of the MSM actually seeking the truth! I'd love to see her debate Jo Nova, for example, but she makes a pretty good job of deflating Inhofe. I wonder how much hate mail she gets from the pawns at WUWT? -
michael sweet at 12:55 PM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
Eric (skeptic) This is supposed to be a scientific discussion. Please cite a peer reviewed source for your wild claim that it will be thousands of years for the heat to return. In reality, it is estimated that it is only about 40 years for 90% of the surface warming to occur. (Since you do not provide references I will not bother either). If you are younger than 40 that heat will come back to get you. When you make wild, unsubstantiated claims people stop taking you seriously. You have made a number of unsupported opinion statements lately. Please try to reference your wild claims. You will find that many of your questions have already been answered. -
owl905 at 12:47 PM on 18 March 2012Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science
Sincerest thanks to SKS for not making anyone sit through the interview with Senator Inhofe. The missing link in Ms.Maddow's terse deconstruction of the decline issue, was the revelation at the time that the divergence problem was known and peer-published before the temperature reconstructions. http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline.htm -
Doug Hutcheson at 11:47 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
william, you askWhat happens if we melt enough of the Greenland ice to shut down the overturn by the Gulf stream.
Could you explain that process to a complete layman, please? I had not realised that the one could cause the other. -
YubeDude at 11:09 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
Sceptical Wombat Thank you for your reply. I am interested in the tonality of the message and not the content. All the charts and graphs, the science in general, sail way above my pay grade. I am one of those in the masses who is the target of the communication barrage. It appears to me that though the science community has the facts to support their position they don't have the catchy spin and subsequently lose ground to those that doubt. Arm wrestling the data should be a rather one sided affair but it is not and the reasons it is not is what interest me. The science side uses the data to lever their opponent while the other side uses smoke and mirrors to distract the audience; they make claims that kids will go hungry and old ladies will freeze if this Socialist restructuring happens. They turn the argument on its head and beat it with illogical non sequiturs I opened with a post wondering if Singer and his minions had started to rebrand their message in an attempt at re-positioning the argument. They can't fight the science so why not target the perception. Not wishing to invoke Godwins Law...let's not forget that the second most powerful man in the NSDAP was Dr Goebbels. I think Karl Rove and Sean Hannity were tied for third. Thanks again for your reply. -
Eric (skeptic) at 10:07 AM on 18 March 2012CO2 limits will harm the economy
Doug H, I think they were assuming that all the proceeds would be used for emission mitigation and they did not count any economic benefits from that mitigation since they would presumably come much later. -
Doug Hutcheson at 09:36 AM on 18 March 2012CO2 limits will harm the economy
Eric, you quote from the Heritage report, but miss the following passage in the OP:The reason the Heritage estimate was so high is that it evaluated the costs of a carbon cap, and then ignored the distribution of those funds. ... The Heritage Foundation report effectively assumed that the generated funds would disappear into a black hole. Their analysis was the equivalent of doing your household finances by adding up your expenditures while ignoring your income. It sure looks bad, but tells you nothing about your overall finances.
The economic cost of acting now is incorrectly represented in the Heritage report, which smacks of a scare tactic. Yes, there will be a cost to mitigation and everyone will share the burden, but there will be a greater societal and personal cost to be borne if we delay. -
Eric (skeptic) at 09:01 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
JoeTheScientist, considering the entirety of the oceans, the equilibrium time you are talking about is 1000's of years, simply not worth caring about. The oceans are sinking heat that won't come back (i.e. water is being warmed from 35 to 35.1 or something along those lines). If that water comes back to the surface it will cool the atmosphere. -
Eric (skeptic) at 08:56 AM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
The technology to sequester will be there, just a modest amount of government research funding and extensive cross-fertilization from commercial technology (e.g. nano-tech) will make it happen. What we will lack is the economics to perform the sequestering on a large scale anything close to the scale of the automobile and other fossil fuel burners. For that reason I don't see it happening either. But I do see a variety of things happening that will all add up. If, for example, we can build a space elevator or something like that, we can also build large chimneys to suck excess heat into space. The updrafts created in the chimney would provide alternative energy. That's just one idea off the top of my head. -
Eric (skeptic) at 08:44 AM on 18 March 2012CO2 limits will harm the economy
Sphaerica and scaddenp: From the Heritage report (link in the OP):It is no surprise that the economy responds to cap and trade as it would to an energy crisis. The price on carbon emissions forces energy cuts across the economy, since non-carbon energy sources cannot replace fossil fuels quickly enough. Energy prices rise; income and employment drop....As the economy recovers and the caps tighten, the detrimental effect of cap and trade gets more and more severe. In the worst years, GDP losses exceed $500 billion per year.
As DSL said above: "The system [capitalism] requires poverty, desperation, and unemployment. It requires taxation without representation (capital is a tax imposed by property owners on "their" laborers). It lifts all boats, but it requires the water to rise faster and faster, but the boats are chained to the dock of material and historical reality--some with longer chains than others." The system of capitalism does have those features that DSL points out. It has one more, relevant to the discussion on the other threads which should be on this thread. Namely that the externalities of burning fossil fuel are not currently priced into the fossil fuel. The increase in those prices from any of the proposals listed in the OP will (to borrow DSL's phrasing) keep some boats tied to the dock as temperatures rise and the consequences arise. An example of a boat tied to the dock is a small pizza place. The current propane bill to run the ovens is $1000 / month and will rise under the proposals to where the business will probably shut down. Another boat tied to the dock is the long distance commuter, common in my area. I pay $250 / month to ride in the van and that would likely be at least $350 using the Heritage gas price rise of 75%. I don't have a problem with that but other people will. In the sensitivity thread Sphaerica said "40% chance of a cost of $1 trillion to $2 trillion per year for decades to centuries (or more, with higher sensitivity)." I don't think centuries is realistic, that would assume practically static technology. But Heritage points out the GDP loss of $500 billion per year which is guaranteed unlike the 40% chance of the higher cost. The biggest difference between the two types of expenditures are that the cap and trade money goes into offsetting emissions whereas the 1-2 trillion that I proposed goes straight into infrastructure (mainly better water retention systems to prevent floods and alleviate drought). With that infrastructure we all benefit from more water resources for public and farming uses. Note that I do not propose doing "nothing" but put forth solutions here. Some of those would in fact require a modicum of cap and trade, but many would be implemented by policy changes (e.g. we pay farmers and tell them what to do already). -
wild monkeys at 08:15 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Am I right it's more than 2300 tonnes of heat? -
william5331 at 07:44 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
The escalator graph seems to be a reflection of periods when there is more mixing in the ocean, absorbing heat and allowing the atmosphere to cool a little and periods when mixing is less (el Nino conditions?) and the atmosphere temperature jumps. We should be due for an El Nino very soon and it will likely fall within the present, fairly weak solar maximum. Perhaps the next upward lurch in the Escalator graph will convince the skeptics but I doubt it. Perhaps the accompanying Arctic sea ice melting will be more convincing. What happens if we melt enough of the Greenland ice to shut down the overturn by the Gulf stream. That could be interesting. -
jatufin at 07:44 AM on 18 March 2012Newcomers, Start Here
Perhaps this money thing would deserve its own article? Most people have very vague understanding of research funding. When it's told that some project has received so and so many millions of grant money, there might rouse suspicion individual scientists walk away backpacks full of greenbacks. If it were so, Harrison Schmitt would be one damned rich geologist, all the Apollo dollars in his bank account. -
JoeTheScientist at 07:08 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
@Eric (skeptic)40 Plotting CO2 vs T may give a climate sensitivity of 2.0 to 2.5C/doubling (e.g. http://i44.tinypic.com/m1wcm.gif) , but this is a non-equilibrium state, because there will be more warming as the oceans "catch up" even if CO2 stops dead in its tracks. I think what climate scientists report is "equilibrium sensitivity", which will inevitably be higher than what we can pull off a graph. Us amateurs have no way to estimate the difference between equilibrium and non-equilibrium, which is why we have to put some trust in professional scientists to do the estimates. Taking that into account, 3 to 4C/doubling sounds very reasonable. If any significant amount of methane disgorges from permafrost or deep sea methane ices, watch out! I agree civilization will not end, but consider that more than 50,000 New Orleans citizens were refugees from hurricane Katrina. Imagine the chaos that might result from the equivalent of 100-400 Katrinas (5-20MM new refugees) worldwide every year for decades (from flooding, storms, droughts, etc.). Civilization would certainly be strained! -
actually thoughtful at 07:01 AM on 18 March 2012Roy Spencer's Bad Economics
The real problem with the analysis is it assumes costs to reduce emissions. Over the medium to long term, there are HUGE savings to renewables. And when you factor in the trillions saved in avoided wars - the ledger tilts dramatically towards renewables. We are in no brainer territory. -
Bob Lacatena at 07:01 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
88, Eric, So... 30% chance of 2.5˚C or more 10% chance of 3˚C or more 40% chance of a cost of $1 trillion to $2 trillion per year for decades to centuries (or more, with higher sensitivity). And your position is that technology is certain to improve and save us from this, so there is no need to take simpler, cheaper, and more conservative action now? -
JoeTheScientist at 06:35 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
@Sceptical Wombat 41 My skeptical "friends" would have called you a warmingista. (but I have a new set of friends now. ;) I don't think the Arctic Ocean ice sheet will melt in this decade either, but consider this: Right now the summer melt zone goes up to about 75N latitude, clearing a Northwest passage through Canada's arctic islands by the fall equinox. Once the melt zone gets as far as the top of Ellesmere Island though, winds and currents will push the ice into a melt zone whichever way they move and the last bit of ice will melt "catastrophically". -
scaddenp at 06:26 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
But I note Eric, that you seem very keen in past posts that the costs of adaption/geoengineering be paid by those affected by the issues, rather than those who are causing the problem. I would suggest though that this discussion belongs elsewhere. This doesnt seem like a discussion of why sensitivity could be lower. -
r.pauli at 06:05 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
Singer is a paid lightning rod deployed to attract all our energy. His task is to deflect criticism and distract true science involving the tobacco indust... er, make that the carbon fuels industry. -
Eric (skeptic) at 05:43 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
A correction to the above, the Army Corps budget for flood control is about 0.1% of US GDP not 1%. -
Eric (skeptic) at 05:40 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
No, I don't include sea level rise. If you want to pick a thread for that, I will explain why I don't think I need to include it. -
Eric (skeptic) at 05:38 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
Sphaerica, I don't know whether the Thai estimate was one-time or ongoing annual, but assuming the magnitude keeps increasing, your estimate sounds reasonable. In that case I would point out that the extra precipitation is a negative feedback, so it has the benefit of limiting warming, see my explanation here. The American SW is already partly a permanent desert. Perhaps Texas will end up in the same condition. The expanding Hadley cell theory is sound, but mainly applies to summer. Texas got a lot of unpredicted rain this past winter when the drought was predicted to continue. -
Joel_Huberman at 05:36 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Thank you, Glenn, for an informative, but alarming, article, and thanks to the commenters for their further refinements and contributions. I have one question: haven't meteorologists, atmosphere scientists, and climate scientists made measurements of the ratios of low clouds to high clouds over the past 50 years, or at least over recent decades? I'm surprised that data relevant to calculating the contributions of clouds to global warming do not appear to be readily available. -
Bob Lacatena at 05:14 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
85, Eric, Also... does your number include sea level rise? If not, no matter... no need to argue about how great that will be and how fast. We'll just stick with 3%-5%... that's more than enough for our purposes. -
Bob Lacatena at 05:11 AM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
17, Eric, Certainly, agreed, multiple incremental solutions will be needed. My point in the redwood analogy is to demonstrate the scope of the problem. That's what I'm afraid you don't appreciate. You're waving future technology like a magic wand that will make everything just go away in the nick of time, when I don't think the technology will ever exist to restore the balance. The problem is quite simply too large for that. We have spent a hundred years running uncounted millions of motors, small to large, that create energy by burning carbon and emitting CO2. The reverse process will at best require uncounted millions of filters, running for a hundred years, using energy from some unknown source simply to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and somehow sequester it so it can't get out again. I just don't see it happening. Ever. -
DMarshall at 05:05 AM on 18 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
Is the rightwing trying to head off a backlash? ClimateCrocks.com report that Ann Coulter smeared Sarah Palin and other leading GOP loons as charlatan conservatives. I'll pass on the clear irony of Coulter's statement and comment that it seems the US Republicans might FINALLY be waking up to the reality that a leadership composed entirely of radical ignoramuses is no longer palatable on the national stage. I imagine Singer's remarks, given his history going back to the Acid Rain days, are equally ironic. -
Bob Lacatena at 04:58 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
85, Eric, Okay, so we have anywhere from 3-5% of USA GDP, which in turn is about 25% of the world GDP. The "civilized" world (USA, EU, Japan, China) all account for about 63% of the world GDP. Can we assume that all of those will be affected in roughly the same proportion, so that by ignoring the developing world, climate change will cost, per year, about 3-5% of 63% of the world's current GDP of about 63 trillion US $? That would mean an annual cost, not counting the effects of suffering and lost lives as being priceless, equal to about $1.2 trillion to $2 trillion dollars per year, every year, for fifty or more years, and potentially a whole lot more if it takes that long to clean up the mess, which is assuming that the mess can be cleaned up (that the American Southwest doesn't become a permanent dust bowl, that sequestration technology can draw down atmospheric CO2 levels on what amounts to a Herculean scale, etc.). Do you agree with this appraisal? -
Eric (skeptic) at 04:46 AM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
Sphaerica, your comment here points out that a single solution can't solve the entire problem. But as I point out above, there are no silver bullets, we will need lots of solutions. Your comment about it being much easier to burn the fossil fuels than capturing the emissions is very valid. Your tree growing example that I linked above points out that difficulty using photosynthesis as the primary solution. But we will undoubtedly have technology for that as well, it's only a matter of time. Nano-Engineered Bioconstructs Perform Photosynthesis Faster Than Nature Does -
citizenschallenge at 04:45 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Glenn I agree great article. I shared it at SkepticForum and our old pal X had a few things to say. In particular, I'm curious how you would reply to this (at #21): Tamblyn seems to be making the claim that ocean heat content is the only significant measurement, despite that scientists do not have a very good understanding of the ocean's heat content. Trenberth is at least honest enough to admit he does not know where the heat went (assuming it exists and went somewhere). -
Eric (skeptic) at 04:38 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
Sphaerica, nobody should die from floods. If the frequency increases due to global warming, that does not change the needed preparations. But the magnitude will also increase. In Thailand that means about 2.5% of GDP for flood control and other costs, see http://www.nationmultimedia.com/business/NESDB-boosts-growth-forecast-to-5-5-6-5-30176305.html for the costs, about 15 billion US dollars. For the US, our costs will be a bit smaller percentage, but for developing countries a much larger percentage of GDP. Bear in mind that there is some cost regardless of global warning. Temperature can be mitigated and there are savings from lower heating costs (US on average spends 1/2 as much on cooling). Droughts will be harder to mitigate than floods, maybe only with a long term change from agriculture to some form of industry. Like with floods the third world countries will have the largest impact relative to their economies. My ballpark cost for both flood and drought is 3-5% of GDP versus 1% (mostly Army Corps funds) without global warming. -
dana1981 at 02:39 AM on 18 March 2012Prediction: New Surface Temperature Record in 2013
John Russel - to be honest, I'm not terribly concerned about how the denialists will misrepresent what we say. That's just what they do. However, for the most part, they're just talking amongst themselves. Nobody in the mainstream media is going to say "did you hear that a climate blogger's prediction about a record temperature in 2013 was wrong?", and nobody is going to pay attention if a climate denialist blog says so. -
Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Excellent piece, Glenn! If reasonably open-minded people with some science background read this, it’s hard to understand why they should not be convinced the Earth is still warming, and that an increased greenhouse effect is the only possible explanation. Maybe I will translate it to Norwegian, but in order to make it more interesting for Norwegian readers, I would like to add a paragraph about how fast the increasing heat content could boil away lake Mjøsa, the largest lake in Norway. The volume of lake Mjøsa is about 56 cubic kilometres, and its average temperature is close to 5°C. On that background I would be grateful if someone could confirm that the following calculations are accurate: The heat capacity for water is 4.2 J/g/K, so it should take 4.2 x 95 = 399 joules to heat each gram of water in Mjøsa from 5°C to 100°C. According to Wikipedia, the water’s heat of vaporization is 2257 joules per gram at the boiling point, so it should take 399 + 2257 = 2656 joules to heat each gram of Mjøsa to 100°C and then boil it away. The total amount of water in lake Mjøsa is 56 km3 x 1 billion x 1 million = 5.6 x 10^16 cm3 or grams. Boiling all this water away once should therefore take 2656 x 5.6 x 10^16 = 1.49 x 10^20 joules. If the total heat content change the last 50 years is 2.1 x 10^23 joules, this is enough to boil away lake Mjøsa 2.1 x 10^23 / 1.49 x 10^20 = 1409 times. And if the present energy imbalance is 0.58 w/m² or 2.96 x 10^14 watts globally (twice the average for the last 50 years), this should be able to boil away lake Mjøsa in a little less than 6 days! Is this calculation more or less correct, or have I missed something here? -
Jose_X at 02:16 AM on 18 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
owl905 #25. Huge oceans slow down a rise in temperature but later slow down a fall. Also, the inertia of the oceans might possibly mean we overshoot the equilibrium value by a larger amount (if not, we simply exponentially decay towards it) since everything we gain today we pay for tomorrow. Deep oceans vs shallow oceans may not change the equilibrium value by much (if by anything), and it will mean "momentum" we have to stop tomorrow. Are we going to leverage the extra time the oceans are giving us today or are we going to let a much larger avalanche accumulate for our descendants? I foresee a future where we find many ways to control the climate temperature. This is a great time (say the next 5 decades) to figure out how to cheaply lower the GHE since it is easier to work at this solution under current temperatures than under the hotter ones of tomorrow. -
Bob Lacatena at 01:56 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
81, Eric (skeptic), First, I don't want to derail from our train of thought, but as far as solutions go... once the CO2 genie is out of the bottle... you need to realize that it was very easy to extract 337 gigatons and counting of carbon in liquid form from the ground, burn it, and release it into the atmosphere as a widely scattered gas. See this past comment of mine on the numbers to see exactly how gigantic that problem is now (let alone after we reach 560ppm). Also note that your hopes for technological progress are in fact very dependent on maintaining the robust nature of our civilization. If climate and resource pressures grow too great, if some countries see their infrastructure collapsing while others invest their energies in other directions (defense in an increasingly unstable world, the need to maintain dwindling food supplies, the need to find new energy sources), then the resources available to dedicate to the difficulty of correcting the problem will be less. We might have been able to do so, if everything stayed the same, but will we be able to when civilization is under severe pressure exactly caused by our lack of solutions today? But that's a digression... more to the point: You accept certain guesstimated probabilities for higher levels of sensitivity. We have as yet not quantified the chances of future technological miracles which allow us to ignore the simple, available solutions we have at present. We will get to this eventually. But, given possible climate sensitivities of 2˚C, 2.5˚C or 3˚C or more, and recognizing that at least some of the extreme fire, drought, flood and temperature events that we see today are almost certainly connected to the meager global temperature change that we have achieved to date (which, because of lag time, is far less than the change to which we are already committed, even if we were to stop all emissions completely today), and that those events point to the expense and hardship their continued and increasing existence would pose... Can you put a number (in lives, dollars, whatever) to what you think the impact of a 2˚C, 2.5˚C or 3˚C or more climate change will be on the citizens of your own country, and on various people around the world in general? Can you in any way (just for the purposes of ball-park decision making) quantify the danger that a higher climate sensitivity implies? -
Eric (skeptic) at 00:47 AM on 18 March 2012A detailed look at climate sensitivity
Sphaerica, yes I assumed doubling to 560ppm. I think all three of your statements are very likely to be true based on various possible positive feedbacks. I also think there are chances of technological progress in 50-100 years to offset those possibilities, see my post on this thread It could also be that we get larger positive feedback and fail to attain sufficient technological progress, but I think that is a very small probability because progress in science and technology is not contingent on political will or economic incentives (although they both help). -
Eric (skeptic) at 00:44 AM on 18 March 2012It's too hard
There are no silver bullets, there is no one solution that will mitigate all CO2 and/or heat effects but there are several solutions for 1/4 to 1/3 of the problem like soil sequestration, CCS, carbon tax and rebate, alternatives, and yet-to-be-designed ways to pump heat to the upper atmosphere (I'm an engineer so that's generally how I would approach it). Some of these policies imply a need for cap and trade, but that may be mitigated by the fact that we subsidize traditional farming already and would change that to techniques like this: http://epsc413.wustl.edu/Lal2004_Geoderma.pdf -
Doc Snow at 23:28 PM on 17 March 2012The History of Climate Science - William Charles Wells
Nice link, perseus. Thanks! -
Sceptical Wombat at 22:59 PM on 17 March 2012Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
YubeDude Most of the things I that I would take a denialist approach to are in fact straw men created by the fake sceptics to try to justify their use of the term "alarmist" - though some of Hansen's descriptions of worst case scenarios (for instance complete evaporation of the oceans) fall into that category. Hansen of course makes it clear that these are worst case, would take multiple centuries and are not likely - but the fake skeptics tend to ignore that. I also think that some news outlets have a tendency to automatically associate any problem of inundation from the sea with sea level rise and global warming. A recent example would be the ABC's treatment of problems in the Torres Straight. Now I will accept that, in a business as usual scenario, future sea level rises are likely to cause major problems with huge economic costs - but I very much doubt that anything significant has already happened. The other thing I absolutely do not believe is that transitioning to a carbon neutral energy regime would wreak havoc with the worlds economies. The people who claim that it would are in my opinion the real alarmists. As far as I know there is nothing in the FAR that would put me in the denialist camp - with the obvious exception of the Himalayan mistake. The point I was trying to make was there is nothing particularly wrong with Singer's classification - its just that he has drawn the boundaries in the wrong places. -
MA Rodger at 21:39 PM on 17 March 2012Breaking News...The Earth is Warming... Still. A LOT
Glenn Tamblyn @38 A long shot, but neuro-scientist Talia Sharot had a book out last year that got her into New Scientist. Coincidentally, she appeared on BBC 2's Horizon last Tuesday. This i-player link sadly does not work worldwide (perhaps even extra-UK). Sharot was featured in the programme (about 20 mins in) quizing folk while watching their brains to find out why their responses were so stupid. To make this comment more meaningful for those unable to access BBC i-player, it goes something like this:- Subjects were asked 80 questions (this is a test from psychology) about chances of them in future suffering something bad, a broken bone, cancer etc. After answering, they were given an answer based on real-life data which is acceptably a more accurate figure. Afterwards they were asked the same 80 questions again. Where they had over-estimated the bad outcome first-time-round, the happier 'accurate' data-based figure tended to be their answer second time round. But where their 'less accurate' initial response gave the happier answer, the second response tended to ignore the 'accurate' data-based but unhappy answer. Sharot's work shows the bit of brain that deals with negativity doesn't work so well in humans. Humans have a built-in optimistic "yeeehaaaa" bias.
Prev 1222 1223 1224 1225 1226 1227 1228 1229 1230 1231 1232 1233 1234 1235 1236 1237 Next
