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Comments 78701 to 78750:
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caerbannog at 03:22 AM on 26 July 2011Michaels Mischief #1: Continued Warming and Aerosols
If Michaels weren't so disingenuous, he'd acknowledge that you don't need *any* of the CRU's supposedly "destroyed" raw data to confirm that the global-warming trend is very real and is quite in line with the CRU's (and NASA's, and NOAA's) results. I know that I've put up a number of posts here pounding on this basic theme, but it's important enough for new visitors/lurkers to see this that I don't think that the "old timers" here will mind too much if I pound on it yet again. 1) All of the publicly-available *raw* temperature data needed to do perform your own verification of the NASA/NOAA/CRU global-average temperature results are available at the NOAA/GHCN data repository. 2) The basic algorithm used to compute global-average anomalies is straightforward and well-documented. There are many variations on this basic procedure, but just the basic procedure (without any of the extra fancy stuff that the NASA/NOAA/CRU folks do) will still produce global-average temperature estimates very much in-line with the pros' results. 3) All of the software-development tools needed to put together your own "hand rolled" global-average anomaly program are freely available for anyone to download and use. Some time ago, I wrote up a program that implements the simplest, most basic version of the global-average temperature anomaly algorithm, and then ran GHCN *raw* data through it. And once again (for those who haven't already seen this), here is a plot showing how my results compare with NASA's official "Meteorological Stations" results.
The bottom line is, it does not matter how you slice and dice the global temperature data -- if you don't completely screw things up, you'll get results very similar to the results that the "pros" get, whether or not you have access to the CRU's supposedly "destroyed" raw data.
The deniers who have been attacking the climate-science community's global-temperature work know (or should know) this. The fact that they have continued with attacks like this indicates to me that they are incompetent or dishonest (that's an inclusive "or" btw...).
Moderator Response: [RH] Readjusted width. Please keep images down to 450 so that it doesn't break the page formatting. Thx. -
Robert Murphy at 03:19 AM on 26 July 2011Michaels Mischief #1: Continued Warming and Aerosols
"Robert - no, according to HadCRUT the trend is 0.08°C per decade since 1996" OK. I was thinking of Phil Jones who said the trend was .12C/decade from 1995 thru 2009, so I assumed the trend didn't change much from 1996 through present. Just another example of how changing the start year can make a big difference when dealing with small sample sizes. -
KR at 03:13 AM on 26 July 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Philippe - This has been a pattern with damorbel from the beginning. When a bit of nonsense is firmly refuted, he skips to the next argument in a Gish Gallop. The original bit of nonsense will then re-emerge weeks later, perhaps to a different visitor, in a sort of never-ending zombie manner. And damorbel has shown no compunctions against contradicting himself, if it continues the argument. I've yet to see actual discussions of science with this poster - just arguments. DNFTT. -
Eric the Red at 03:04 AM on 26 July 2011It's the sun
gcdem, The solar cycle has nothing to do with the Southern (especially Texan) drought. The main culpret has been the strong La Nina. Areas to the north experienced above normal precipitation (rain and snow), whereas southern areas were rain-starved. Similar occurrances accompanied past strong La Ninas, many of which were more severe than the current situation, particularly the mid 1950s. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/seasonal_drought.html -
dorlomin at 02:41 AM on 26 July 2011Michaels Mischief #1: Continued Warming and Aerosols
An aerosol spreading confusion? Sounds like Michaels. -
dana1981 at 02:40 AM on 26 July 2011Michaels Mischief #1: Continued Warming and Aerosols
Robert - no, according to HadCRUT the trend is 0.08°C per decade since 1996 (0.12°C total). It's nearly twice that (0.15°C per decade) according to GISTEMP though. Paul - the Forbes family (specifically Steve Forbes, I believe) own the magazine. -
Paul Magnus at 02:33 AM on 26 July 2011Michaels Mischief #1: Continued Warming and Aerosols
Forbes is well know for its anti GW bias. Is it owned by Murdoch? -
Byron Smith at 02:28 AM on 26 July 2011OA not OK part 10: Is the ocean blowing bubbles?
Thanks Doug, that is very helpful. A further question: If the ocean as a whole remains a carbon sink but some areas are a carbon source, what are the local conditions that contribute to the latter? Is it more common in certain parts of the globe? Do these areas shift significantly over time or are there long term patterns certain areas being sources? -
gcdem at 02:23 AM on 26 July 2011It's the sun
Great Post! It's 2011, and we in the US are in the middle of another Summer heat wave and severe drought. I used a few arguments from this post to totally debunk someone in my office who was trying to use the "11-year solar cycle" argument to explain this drought. -
Robert Murphy at 02:10 AM on 26 July 2011Michaels Mischief #1: Continued Warming and Aerosols
"the average surface temperature has warmed 0.12°C since 1996" Shouldn't that be .12C/decade? -
jyyh at 01:56 AM on 26 July 2011OA not OK part 10: Is the ocean blowing bubbles?
the resident 'skeptic' asks of the volcanos present somewhere them earth scientists haven't looked and points to http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm -
muoncounter at 01:51 AM on 26 July 2011The Medieval Warm(ish) Period In Pictures
More bad news from the Sargasso Sea: The graph shown in the source cited in #28 (Bluemle), attributed as 'modified' from Keigwin's original work, is really the misrepresentation done by Art Robinson, Sallie Balliunas and Willie Soon (originally published in 1998 by that prestigious climate source, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons; apparently they liked it so much they published it again, under the same title, in 2007).
The lower panel in this composite is the version in Bluemle; the upper is Robinson. Neither contain all of the data published by Keigwin 1996.
This is clear-cut scientific dishonesty, yet the meme lives on. Olson's work is a must-read.
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Philippe Chantreau at 01:15 AM on 26 July 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Damorbel, your attempts at distracting from your poor comprehension of the subjects on which you would pretend to comment, and even lecture, are amusing. I note that you fail to defend your IR photon thermometer/temperature of the source idea; not suprising, since it is not defensible. "thermodynamics is rather complicated" Well, it's not so bad, really. Reflect on the following long and deep and you will eliminate a lot of the confusion that has been plaguing you during this astoundingly tedious exchange: You have to play. You can't win. You can't break even. That's enough for anyone to understand thermodynamics better than what transpires from your comments. -
muoncounter at 01:10 AM on 26 July 2011Rising Oceans - Too Late to Turn the Tide?
Ger#23: "What will be the effect of the rising pressure of the sea on the lower agricultural grounds?" Some chilling pictures of the effect on agriculture in Kiribati, on the front lines of sea level rise, are available here. Some chilling words from coastal Germany, Sterr 2008: Although additional investment in flood and erosion protection will be considerable (estimated at more than 500 million US$) this seems manageable for the national and regional economies. On the other hand, hard coastline defence and accelerated sea-level rise will increase “coastal squeeze” on the seaward side, endangering important coastal ecosystems such as tidal flats (Wadden Sea), saltmarshes, and dunes. Currently there is no strategy to remedy this increasing ecological vulnerability. --emphasis added Isn't it good to hear that there's no strategy? -
muoncounter at 00:55 AM on 26 July 2011Gripping video of Arctic sea ice melting away before your eyes
Badgersouth#15: "The negative consequences that melting Artctic sea ice is having, and will continue to have, on the ecology of the Earth are many" And this can't be good. A single-celled alga that went extinct in the North Atlantic Ocean about 800,000 years ago has returned after drifting from the Pacific through the Arctic thanks to melting polar ice. And while its appearance marks the first trans-Arctic migration in modern times, scientists say it signals something potentially bigger. -
DSL at 23:43 PM on 25 July 2011Rising Oceans - Too Late to Turn the Tide?
Ianash, if I extend the trend in the historical data, my best guess is "no." However, we can't rule out an anomalous response (hope, of course, being required for despair). -
Ken Lambert at 23:27 PM on 25 July 2011Trenberth on Tracking Earth’s energy: A key to climate variability and change
Dear Dr Trenberth Very good of you to respond to comments on this thread. Could I draw your attention of a very detailed discussion from a SKS thread entitled "Robust Warming of the Global Upper Ocean" found here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=78&&n=202 Posts by Berényi Péter at #6, #30, #40, #45, #72 are of interest as well of a few of my lesser efforts at #24, #43, #60, #67. Berényi Péter at #30 in the above says: "TOA imbalance is extremely important. Below is satellite measurement for the last ten years: (see chart) These measurements have low accuracy but reasonable precision. It means that the curves above have an arbitrary offset (within several Wm-2), but would show a marked level change whenever accumulation rate of thermal energy changes in the climate system. Nothing like that is seen between 2002-2004. Therefore either satellite data are absolutely useless or the 6-8×1022 J heat accumulation in the oceans after 2000 followed by a more or less level plateau from 2004 on is an artifact due to transition to ARGO. There is no other possibility. Net TOA radiative imbalance should be very nearly identical to the temporal derivative of OHC, because there is no heat storage capacity in the climate system comparable to the oceans and all energy exchange between Earth and its environment is mediated by electromagnetic radiation (any other forms of energy transfer, e.g. tidal breaking are many orders of magnitude smaller)." What I call the 'step jump' in OHC in the 2002-04 period is not reflected in satellite measurements of TOA imbalance and this strongly suggests that the 6-8E22 Joules of increase in OHC is an artifact of the XBT-Argo transition. Linearizing the OHC charts including this step jump from 1993 to 2010 giving the equal of 0.5-0.6W/sq.m TOA imbalance is therefore invalid. Could you comment on this issue? -
CBDunkerson at 22:12 PM on 25 July 2011Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
On another thread Ken wrote: "When Water Vapor is included as a GHG, it represents 95% of the GHGs." Water vapor represents about 0.4% (or 4000 ppm) of the total atmosphere. CO2 is at about 395 ppm currently. The other greenhouse gases are all measured in parts per BILLION or less and thus disappear in the rounding. Based on these numbers water vapor molecules would account for about 91% of all greenhouse gas molecules. The warming impact of water vapor obviously varies by location (i.e. not much in deserts, rather alot in humid areas), but on average it represents 36% (if we exclude water vapor impacts which would also be caused by other GHGs) or 72% (if we exclude impacts by other GHGs which would also be caused by water vapor) of the total greenhouse effect. Thus, I'm not clear where your figure of "95% of the GHGs" comes from. The closest is the 91% of total molecules figure... but that value has no direct relevance to the warming impact you were referring to in your post. -
Tom Curtis at 21:59 PM on 25 July 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel @1109, it is rather more important to keep clear about the content of the physical laws you are appealing to, something you continually fail to do. But your just keep on plugging away drawing attention to the use of a metaphor as a substitute for actually learning the topic on which you expound so frequently. -
Bob Lacatena at 21:57 PM on 25 July 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
1107, damorbel, Your obsession with semantics and word choice is crippling you. The rest of us understand exactly what is meant by "diffusion," "transfer" and "flow" without the need to apply only certain terms to gases, solids or fluids... as do the learned men who wrote the referenced papers and used those terms to begin with. You have a whole lot of studying to do before you can contribute to a discussion like this. In particular, I suggest that you try to get away from what you think you know and understand (traditional thermodynamics) and begin to study more modern quantum and molecular level physics and radiative transfer (or diffusion or flow or emission/absorption for whatever term you'd like to use). Until you do, you're trying to both understand and argue from a too limited perspective. You're like one of the blind men trying to describe an elephant.So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!
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damorbel at 21:55 PM on 25 July 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #1108 Dikran Marsupial, you wrote:- "Speaking of heat flow does not necessarily imply adherence to caloric thory" I know that too. But thermodynamics is rather complicated so it is essential to be quite certain of the meaning of words. There is all the difference in the world between processes involving transport of fluids and diffusion in solids. The 'flow' problem is not the only one. Frequently diagrams are drawn shoing the GHE where the authors do not distinguish betwen the reflection (as with a mirror) and the absorption/emission of radiation. These two processes are completely different, it isn't possible to even think of a CO2 GH effect unless the two processes are clearly separated.Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] In that case, as you know that nobody in the discussion is talking about caloric theory when they speak of "flow", any further mention of "caloric" on this thread is off-topic and will be deleted, likewise any further general discussion on the meaning of the word "flow". As you apparently recognise that "flow [of heat]" is being used as a metaphor for "transfer [of energy]" this should be no hurdle to communication. -
Dikran Marsupial at 21:40 PM on 25 July 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel Speaking of heat flow does not necessarily imply adherence to caloric thory. One can talk metaphorically about there being a flow without the supposed existence of a fluid. For instance in information theory it is perfectly reasonable to talk of the flow of information through a channel, but information isn't carried by a fluid. It is just a metaphor. -
Tom Curtis at 21:37 PM on 25 July 2011Gripping video of Arctic sea ice melting away before your eyes
Dan Olner @16, personally I enjoyed seeing the sun "bounce" without going below the horizon. -
Christina McGraw at 21:28 PM on 25 July 2011OA not OK part 10: Is the ocean blowing bubbles?
Hi Alan, We simplified as we didn't think people would understand if we wrote
where ∂ is the partial derivative. Thanks for noticing.
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damorbel at 21:00 PM on 25 July 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #1105 Tom Curtis, you cited a very nice article on Victorian Science which I intend to read fully. But it is quite clear that the author is not entirely clear about the diffusion equations that Fourier famously derived. Your citation has:- "Fourier focused on heat flow, using differential equations to express how much heat diffused from a substance over time" This is exactly the kind of confused thinking one finds today (and in history). Fourier is justly famous for his diffusion equations, I was taught them in my thermal physics course too. But his equations are about diffusion, a process found in solids not 'flow' which requires fluids. Flow is covered by Fluid dynamics which is also a relevant subject to the 2nd Law of thermodynamics but it is quite separate from diffusion. -
Dan Olner at 20:49 PM on 25 July 2011Gripping video of Arctic sea ice melting away before your eyes
A slightly cheerier thing I got from that: a real sense of sitting on top of a spinning planet as the sun whizzed past. -
damorbel at 20:39 PM on 25 July 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #1103 Tom Curtis, you give a link - http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/SPRING/propulsion/notes/node119.html This link is about heat tranfer in solids with various shapes - hollow shells, cylinders etc. under the general title "16.5 Steady Quasi-One-Dimensional Heat Flow" The explanation seems quite good to me but the title, as so ften is the case, is not really correct. What the author is describing is diffusion. Later in the article (perhaps an editor chose the title) he writes:- "The heat transfer rate per unit length is given by...." and give a formula that I can't copy here. The article is rather strange because further down it has :- "The steady-flow energy equation (no fluid flow, no work) tells us that....." Yet further it has:- "The heat transfer rate per unit length is given by... " with another formula that doesn't copy All very confusing and not really helpful for understanding the fundamental physics. You can check what Wikipedia has on this here :- Derivation in one dimension In your link the equation (16..25) corresponds to the last one in the 'one dimensional section' of the Wiki article where it adds helpfully :- "which is the heat equation. The coefficient k/(cpρ) is called thermal diffusivity and is often denoted α." You will also notice that the article refers to these equations as 'Fourier's law'. -
Tom Curtis at 20:16 PM on 25 July 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Damorbel, it turns out that your history of science is almost as bad as your science:By 1800, alternatives to the caloric hypothesis appeared and, in 1811, Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) published a mathematical theory of heat conduction that was entirely independent of the caloric hypothesis. Fourier's first step was to avoid speculation about "caloric." In this way, Fourier set the study of the theory of heat in the tradition of rational mechanics, basing it on differential equations that characterized the transmission of heat, equations that were independent of all physical hypotheses. In contrast to Poisson (who was, as mentioned above, a devoted Laplacian, committed to physical mechanics and to the existence of caloric), Fourier focused on heat flow, using differential equations to express how much heat diffused from a substance over time. The heat transmitted between two molecules was proportional to the difference in their temperature and a function of the distance between them, which of course varied with the nature of the intervening substance. Though formally (that is, mathematically) equivalent to Poisson's model, Fourier did not rely upon any speculation about the nature of heat. For Fourier, what was important was not what heat was, but what it did, in a given experimental setting."
(source, emphasis added) So, Fourier made not commitment to calorific theory, for which there where alternatives at his time. What is more he directly declared his agnosticism on the issue:"Of the nature of heat uncertain hypotheses only could be formed, but the knowledge of the mathematical laws to which its effects are subject is independent of all hypothesis; it requires only an attentive examination of the chief facts which common observations have indicated, and which have been confirmed by exact experiments."
(Joseph Fourier, Theory of Heat, p 26) Further, if the the independence of mathematical theory of heat flow was not independent of calorific theory, then calorific theory would be established as true, for certainly his mathematical treatment of heat flow is. As it stands, his theory is independent of calorific theory (contrary to your claims) but consistent with the metaphor of heat flow (again contrary to your claims) as is established by his use of that very metaphor. What is more, as is established by the actual practice at MIT, that metaphor is alive and well in physics today, and causes no confusion. Except, perhaps to small minded pedants. -
Tom Curtis at 19:36 PM on 25 July 2011Milankovitch Cycles
Glenn Tamblyn @31, just speaking of the top of my head but, wouldn't the first response by by early snow melts in as yet unglaciated land areas. Because of the preponderance of land in the Northern Hemisphere, this would lead to greater sensitivity in the NH which is necessary to explain the asymmetric response between the hemispheres. If sea ice is the first element to respond to the Milankovitch cycle, that would suggest a significantly stronger SH response than NH. Further, my understanding is that the sparse land masses north of 60 degrees South in the SH prevent the build up of continental ice sheets, and hence prevent the lapse into an ice age. On that basis I would suggest that if the SH had a similar land distribution to the NH, that would lock the Earth into permanent glacial conditions rather than prevent glacial conditions from forming. -
Glenn Tamblyn at 19:23 PM on 25 July 2011Milankovitch Cycles
Let me suggest several contributing factors to what happens over a glacial/interglacial cycle. Starting at the bottom of a glacial. Milankovitch triggers some warming. Sea ice responds faster than land ice so more warming. Oceans respond with CO2 outgassing. Slowly the land starts to respond which is primarily northern hemisphere. Moderate ice sheet retreat starts to produce more melting permafrost, more methane. Later in the cycle, land ice sheets start to respond - it takes a fair old while to remove ice sheets kilometers thick. So albedo change and more warming, but only late in the cycle. Also, as ice sheets retreat polewards, geography and trigonometry come into play - more change early, declining change later. As ice sheets retreat they leave bare rock. Over 100's and 1000's of years this bare rock is slowly converted to soil and biomass. A carbon store. Then Milankovitch starts to tip things the other way. A bit of cooling. First impact of cooling is to extend snow ranges towards the equator. A snowfall can have as much effect on albedo as a huge ice sheet, but it can happen much quicker. so albedo change can have a bigger impact earlier in the cooling phase. Cooling triggers CO2 uptake by the oceans. More cooling. However, all that new biomass on the colonised rock is still there. How long does it take to kill off those recent forests and return their CO2 to the oceans or the atmosphere. In the intervening period, will they hold CO2 levels up even as Milankovitch and Albedo are cooling things. This surely makes for a nice complicated cycle over 1 glacial period. And all of this is probably due to the assymetric configuration of the continents between morth & south. If the Earth's continents were arranged symetrically, we may not see ice ages. And past arrangements of the continents probably had a huge impact on the Earth's predisposition to Ice Age behaviour or not. -
alan_marshall at 18:57 PM on 25 July 2011OA not OK part 10: Is the ocean blowing bubbles?
Thus the temperature change required to sufficiently change the Henry's Law coefficient is 140/200 × 16 = 11oC Doug, I am enjoying the series so forgive me for being picky. I read you as saying the quantity of outgassed CO2 is an exponential function of temperature. As this function is by definition non-linear, are you justified in using linear interpolation to get 11oC? I suggest this value should be a little higher. -
Tom Curtis at 17:27 PM on 25 July 2011China, From the Inside Out
Agnostic @87, I can clearly see the point you are making. I can also clearly see the fallacy involved. I think you come to the position from shoddy thinking rather than racism, but at its root your position comes down to the assumption that one US citizen is worth four Chinese citizens, is worth twenty Indian citizens. It is further premised on the idea that the US (and other Western nations) because they have profited greatly from the exploitation of fossil fuels, should be absolved of any responsibility for any harm that exploitation will do; and indeed that they have only one quarter of the responsibility for future action to prevent harm from it than is born by any Chinese citizen. Such an idea may fly well on fox news, but it won't fly in China or India. Nor to China or India have self interest gulling them into accepting transparent nonsense. So as long as the West sticks to that premise as a basis of negotiation, for that long they guarantee that China and India will not sign up to any substantive cuts in emissions on any time table. -
ianash at 16:16 PM on 25 July 2011Rising Oceans - Too Late to Turn the Tide?
so pirate, you've been given at least three separate sources that show that you are incorrect. Will you have the good grace to admit that your statements were wrong? -
Riduna at 15:34 PM on 25 July 2011China, From the Inside Out
Tom Curtis @86 Again, the right to energy is conflated with an assumed necessity to emit CO2-e. Energy can and will be (already is) produced from clean sources and I certainly accept that the R&D into best achieving this outcome is largely the responsibility of the developed world. Likewise it is responsible for making that technology affordable for poor nations. Lovely column chart though of course it does rather ignore, at least not disclose the difference between the differing numbers of per-capita’s in each country and so avoids disclosing any national emission totals or the extent to which they contribute to global warming. Shorry you can not or do not want to see the point I making. -
Tom Curtis at 15:00 PM on 25 July 2011China, From the Inside Out
Agnostic @85, in that case at what rate do you suggest the west subsidize China to reduce its emissions then?
Absent such a subsidy, you are asking the poor to pay for the emissions reductions and at a far higher utility cost than the rich are prepared to pay.
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Ger at 14:34 PM on 25 July 2011Rising Oceans - Too Late to Turn the Tide?
What will be the effect of the rising pressure of the sea on the lower agricultural grounds? Will the salt water level rise to an extend that it is not usable any-more? Seems to me especially a problem from Zeeland and Noord-Holland provinces in the Netherlands AND for large delta areas. It can be that rising water levels in rivers will counter the effect. For rivers already locked in by dykes that effect will be less. -
Doug Mackie at 13:44 PM on 25 July 2011OA not OK part 8: 170 to 1
Thanks Sarah, though overall weathering actually produces mainly bicarbonate HCO3- (Eq. 4) We discuss alkalinity in post 12. Seawater alkalinity is a more complex expression than that for freshwater and also includes species like B(OH)4-, SiO(OH)3-, and HF. -
Doug Mackie at 13:34 PM on 25 July 2011OA not OK part 10: Is the ocean blowing bubbles?
Byron, your question has some subtleties that mean it is hard to give a soundbite answer so bear with me and I will answer what I think you mean. I think you mean: "Under the current regime of increasing retention of heat energy and of increasing atmospheric CO2, then how much would the oceans have to warm for the oceans to become a net source of CO2?" In a closed system in a laboratory water reaches an equilibrium with the gases above it. That equilibrium is described by a Henry's law coefficient. So the first point to clarify is that the atmospheric doubling per 16oC warming we noted refers to a system with constant atmospheric CO2 and is useful to describe what happens when water moves between the poles and the tropics. The second point to note is that unlike a closed system in a test tube the ocean is an open and dynamic system. In most areas the ocean is not in equilibrium with the atmosphere. See this plot of Hawaii ocean data (HOTS) and Mauna Loa atmospheric data. The disequilibrium has several causes, including biological uptake and export to deep water. Some areas of the ocean are a source of CO2, though overall the ocean is a strong sink. With biological processes taking up carbon then equilibrium is not reached and so long as the atmospheric pCO2 is greater than that of the surface ocean then (for realistic warming)the oceans will take up CO2. (Though the rate of uptake may change). -
Sarah at 13:25 PM on 25 July 2011OA not OK part 8: 170 to 1
Jeff, You are correct that a mixture of only CO2 and water won't make pH 8 (I did not mean to suggest that). Pure water in equilibrium with air is about pH 5.7. Weathering has added CaCO3 to the oceans over millions of years, which dissolves to the base CO32-. Alkalinity (AT) is a measure of how much "excess" base is in the system, for example, how much CO32- came in with Ca2+ instead of with H+ as the counter ion (to balance the charges, you can't add negative charge without adding + charges too). The charge balance in the system provides another constraining equation. The sum of charges of all the species present must add up to zero. The pH is determined by how much of the charge ends up being H3O+ after all the equilibrium equations are satisfied. -
John Hartz at 13:22 PM on 25 July 2011Gripping video of Arctic sea ice melting away before your eyes
What the video doesn't show is described in Melting Arctic ice releasing banned toxins, warn scientists an article posted (July 24) on Guardian.co.uk. The negative consequences that melting Artctic sea ice is having, and will continue to have, on the ecology of the Earth are many, and they are severe. -
scaddenp at 13:01 PM on 25 July 2011Rising Oceans - Too Late to Turn the Tide?
There was a public meeting here about sealevel rise and it's threat to the city (which has some immediate issues) with contributions from surveyors, engineers, town planners etc. One very good point that an engineer made was that scope and affordability of engineering solutions was inversely proportional to total expected sea level rise. If the rise is around 1m, then engineering is possible and effective. If it is 2-3m then retreat is only realistic option. -
barry1487 at 12:52 PM on 25 July 2011Milankovitch Cycles
Yes, I thought the equivalent warming of both hemispheres over Milankovitch cycles was strong evidence, firmly corroborated by the ice core (and other) records of both hemispheres, that GHGs play a significant role in global temperature changes. The only other mechanisms I can think of for this effect are atmospheric teleconnections and lateral heat transport via ocean currents, but even so, hemispheric temperatures would be significantly different for periods where one hemisphere is receiving more insolation than another - except for GHGs. -
Paul Magnus at 12:51 PM on 25 July 2011Rising Oceans - Too Late to Turn the Tide?
#20 Bad, Yes, but peer review information is now coming out indicating that, especially if we dont reduce our rate of emission, but even if we do, that we might (could) get 5-6ft by around 2100. And then it will keep going up and up.... They take about 6ºC giving 4ms, but we can see in this article (& from Hansen) that a 1ºC rise from now will result in a 8m rise at some point. What this article shows also is that it is not stopping there, but will continue on to around 20ft+ even if we do stop our emissions as there is at least .7ºC in the pipeline and probably more. We also have to get back to around 350ppm and below before we see equilibrium (Hansen). It really does not make sense for the Netherlands to spend billions and billons to defend when they will have to retreat. That money could be better spent. This reality has to enter the debate now. Nothing is certain, but this is looking more and more certain with each year! And the current data should cause pause for re-review of strategy I would guess considering the cost. -
villabolo at 12:33 PM on 25 July 2011SkS Weekly Digest #8
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Riduna at 12:19 PM on 25 July 2011China, From the Inside Out
Tom Curtis @84 I would have thought it obvious from my remarks made it clear that the last thing I expect is for any country to be excused reducing their emissions. Your suggestion that I expect poorer nations to bear the burden of reducing their emissions is as fallacious as suggesting that a 50% increase in China’s emissions is conducive to limiting global warming to less than 2C. -
Doug Mackie at 11:19 AM on 25 July 2011OA not OK part 10: Is the ocean blowing bubbles?
Fixed. -
Bern at 10:51 AM on 25 July 2011OA not OK part 10: Is the ocean blowing bubbles?
"However, this amount of released fossil fuel CO2 is less than the amount of extra CO2 that is currently in the atmosphere." Should that be greater than? -
Bern at 10:41 AM on 25 July 2011OA not OK part 9: Henry the 8th I was (*)
Doug, no, my opinions on climate change are almost diametrically opposed to Ken's. :-) -
pauls at 10:34 AM on 25 July 2011Monckton Myth #16: Bizarro World Sea Level
There appears to be no end to the hilarity that can be drawn from Morner's recent work. This quote from his 2004 paper Estimating future sea level changes from past records is brilliant: 'IPCC launched their hypothesis of a disastrous flooding of coastal low-lands and low islands (like the Maldives) in the next century (e.g. Hoffman et al., 1983).' That's right, his example of the IPCC (founded in 1988) hypothesis of disastrous flooding is a paper from 1983. The 'modelled vs observed' graph is actually appears to be a comparison between Church & White 2006 and a multi-source record described in Morner 2004. The Church & White data can reasonably be termed 'model data' since they use a model to infer global sea level change from coastal tide gauge data back to 1870. However, in no way could this be termed a 'prediction', as suggested in the legend. How Morner arrives at the 'observations' plot is interesting. The data from 1840 to 1960 is quite reasonably a mean of tide gauges, giving a fairly standard average SLR of ~1.2mm/yr over the whole period. Then things get weird. He states 'During the 1970s and 1980s, our data are not really clear enough for a proper evaluation of any general trend in sea level.' How this could be isn't explained but, undeterred, he moves right on to the satellite era (~1990 to present) which he determines shows no trend, contradicting everyone else in the world with no explanation. Note on the graph that there is also no trend from about 1960 to 1990. How was this determined given the documented sudden loss of data during the 70s and 80s? Well, his only reference that includes this period is to calculated contributions to sea level change over 1910-1990 from various sources, as documented in IPCC TAR 2001. He cites the figure 0.9mm/yr though it's unclear from where because the central value given by the IPCC is actually 0.7mm/yr (Link). So the curve after 1960 is an attempt at reconciling the long-term 1.2mm/yr trend with the IPCC 0.9mm/yr (0.7mm/yr) figure to 1990. And I think he massively overdoes the 'correction' too. No matter though, the great thing about this is that the IPCC figure is largely derived from modelling studies. So the point at which the 'models' and 'observations' diverge is the point at which the 'observations' become 'models'. -
Dcrickett at 10:34 AM on 25 July 2011OA not OK part 10: Is the ocean blowing bubbles?
Mr Smith: Excellent question; thanks for asking it. I too am curious.
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