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Rob Honeycutt at 10:16 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
CBD@21... Doh! I actually knew that about the EPA endangerment finding. I've argued it many times in various comments sections.
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CBDunkerson at 10:16 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Found a bit more info on what exactly they are doing. By September the EPA is supposed to put into effect regulations which require all new power plants to produce less than 1000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour of electricity produced. This is the same standard the EPA delayed releasing a few months ago. Given that the average coal plant produces ~2250 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour, that basically outlaws them or would require vast improvements in 'carbon capture' technology... not to mention huge decreases in its cost. It would also stop many natural gas plants as they currently average ~1135 lbs/MWh. However, there are natural gas plant designs which can meet the new standard while remaining profitable. Petroleum based power plants (very common in Hawaii) are also pretty much impossible under the new regulation.
They aren't doing anything with existing power plants right away. Instead, Obama has directed the EPA to come up with regulations for those within a year. That would likely be before any litigation on allowing existing power plants to emit above the new EPA designated harmful level could work through the courts. Again, this seems designed to let them phase out and avoid a disruption in the power supply.
The ironic thing is that this really doesn't amount to much at all. It will prevent a few coal power plants from being built, hopefully shut down some of the existing ones a little earlier, and force natural gas plants to be a little less polluting. The reason it isn't a big deal is that most of that was already happening. Coal power has gone from 53% of all US electricity in 1997, to 44% in 2011, to just 36% in 2012. Basically, it was already falling off a cliff. There were very few new coal power plants in the works, just a handful in heavy coal mining states, and most of the existing coal plants are old and likely to shut down within a decade anyway.
Meanwhile, in the US, natural gas is booming and wind and solar are taking off in some areas where they are now cheaper than coal. Half of the new US power installed so far in 2013 has been solar. Probably the biggest impact this regulation is going to have is by slightly reducing the emissions from each natural gas plant. Obama will probably get credit for 'ending coal', but really it was already inevitable without this new regulation.
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heb0 at 09:42 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
@22 -Donthaveone
To add to JasonB's explanation, the following article addresses why it isn't accurate to think of water vapor in the same way we think about CO2 and other GHGs.
http://skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm
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JasonB at 09:39 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthaveone,
We have a carbon tax which actually does nothing in regards to reducing emissions it just makes our manfacturing un competitive so i hope O Bama does not go down this path for your sake.
Strictly speaking, we have an emissions trading scheme with a fixed permit price for the first few years, but the effect is similar, which is this: it makes carbon-intensive technologies less competitive than the alternatives, and because it's an ETS, it also puts a cap on the total emissions.
And, in fact, emissions have been reduced in the 11 months since it was introduced. Not only that, but since the whole point of an ETS is that emissions are capped, over time the emissions are reduced simply by virtue of lowering the number of permits on offer. It's not a difficult concept and it has been used widely in the past for other pollutants.
Funnily enough, it's the kind of approach normally favoured by free-market types because rather than the government picking winners and deciding what technologies to support through subsidies (i.e. Tony Abbot's scheme), the government simply tells the market what their emissions quota is and the market decides how that is to be met, with the various competing technologies duking it out.
Regarding manufacturing, as an exporter I can tell you that putting a price on carbon has had a negligible effect compared to the strong A$. It's lost in the noise. And those that are more carbon-intensive actually get free permits.
By the way if the EPA deem GHG's as a pollutant then do they have the power to regulate H2O as well as CO2 and i assume methane?
Methane, yes — if you look carefully they're talking about "CO2e", where "e" stands for "equivalent". H2O no, for the obvious reason that H2O is a condensing greenhouse gas — it goes up and down automatically with temperature. If you tried to emit a large quantity of water vapour into the atmosphere, it would quickly precipitate out again before it had a chance to have a long-term effect. It is one of the most important positive feedbacks, because as CO2 warms the earth, the atmosphere can hold more H2O, amplifying the effect of the CO2, but the H2O itself is not directly controllable. Think of it like a turbocharger in a high-powered car — the accelerator pedal is the CO2, and the turbocharger is the H2O. You can't control the speed (and therefore boost) of the turbo directly, it responds automatically to changes in the accelerator, multiplying its effect.
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Donthaveone at 08:54 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Thanks to all those who replied i must say your politics is a lot different than mine where i live (how many times can you sack a prime minister in their first term of office LOL).
We have a carbon tax which actually does nothing in regards to reducing emissions it just makes our manfacturing un competitive so i hope O Bama does not go down this path for your sake.
To actually reduce emissions via something like carbon capture and storage (CCS) is nothing more than a pipe dream, our old PM who was elected, then sacked and is now our PM again likes this dream so wish us luck.
So i suspect O Bama is talking about a tax and some type of credit system, each your the coal company gets less credits and is fined if they exceed this limit which is great for them because they just jack up the cost of your power.
By the way if the EPA deem GHG's as a pollutant then do they have the power to regulate H2O as well as CO2 and i assume methane?
Moderator Response:[RH] Our president's name is Obama. Please show some repect toward the office by correctly spelling his name.
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grindupBaker at 07:27 AM on 27 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
Ned @ #4 (belongs really on Obama post but yours is here). It's my understanding that U.S. real action is needed to spur China & other industrializing powers by example and moral superiority as the basis for whatever cajoling. Apparently, U.S. & China now ~6 bt CO2 each but China is the rapid increaser (not sure whether that's coal only). So U.S. action is about much more than U.S. CO2 emissions due to their still somewhat pre-eminent position.
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scaddenp at 06:37 AM on 27 June 2013Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
Stealth, regulars here use the "comments" tab to see new comments made anywhere on the site. This makes it possible to have all comment threads open while also keeping comment threads on topic.
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CBDunkerson at 05:11 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Rob @18: Actually, the original act didn't list CO2 specifically. The provision of the clean air act in question was very general - stating that the EPA should regulate any materials emitted into the atmosphere which are found to be harmful. The findings Dana referred to were an EPA analysis finding that CO2 was harmful and a Supreme Court decision that they were required to act on it (that was in 2007 with the EPA under George W. Bush resisting doing anything about AGW).
So yes, the original Clean Air Act was designed with the 'presence of mind' to make it flexible and allow the EPA to decide on the details... rather than needing to pass a new law for each pollutant and specifying the allowed emissions levels and so forth. Instead just a nice simple, 'the EPA is in charge of identifying and regulating air pollution'.
Of course, whatever they eventually do will be challenged by conservatives. Indeed, there have already been a host of challenges to the EPA finding that CO2 is harmful (and it has been fun watching those wither and die as standards on allowed scientific evidence bar virtually all denialist nonsense from the courtrooms). That may prevent implementation for years... with their hope being that the next president if then a Republican and can toss the new standards before they ever go into effect.
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fk9014 at 04:15 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
voneschen has not been seen here before but managed to get a first post on a new article, that was off-topic. surely a troll.
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Non-Scientist at 04:12 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
"voneschen" has not responded, nor will he.
The troll, feed it not.
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:02 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Jay Dee Are @17... It's interesting that they had the presence of mind to make sure CO2 was included in the Clean Air Act.
Kinda hard to blame that one on Al Gore. ;-)
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grindupBaker at 03:59 AM on 27 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
Me @ 28. Correction: "ecosystem warming" is not correct at all, stick with "global warming", just tell people the heat content of the various major segments of the "global", lakes, oceans, water everywhere.
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grindupBaker at 03:55 AM on 27 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
"global warming" is the best traditional description. "ecosystem warming" would have been better but it's too late now. Would have been far better to have explained what it was from the outset and hoped that enough persons had the ability to understand it, but I suppose it was handy to show surface temperature graphs because of proxies for it going back millions of years. "climate change" is a symptom of "global warming". Surface temperature change is a symptom of "global warming" and is a fever trying to stop it. It's counter-intuitive to hypothesize that, say for example only, AST going quite flat then dropping for a while indicates "global warming" increasing simultaneous with the AST dropping (oceans take heat suddenly in my example, AST drops, TOA radiative imbalance increases). I'm not projecting that (I don't know ocean currents), I'm suggesting if this type of physical possibility had been explained to anybody with a half-decent high school education they'd have found it fascinating.
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Jay Dee Are at 03:24 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthavone @6, and others not from the US: The US Department of Energy makes US energy policy. The EPA does what its name says: protect the environment. The EPA does its job through regulation and by direct involvement in major cleanup activities, for example through its Superfund program.
As Dana points out, President Obama is limited by the US Constitution from imposing new laws unilaterally. All US regulations have to have implementing legislation behind them. The Clear Air Act allowed the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions, and President Obama is working that angle.
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meher engineer at 01:34 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
voneschen @ 1, tiny isn't insignificant. The example of ozone shows that, in spades.
Present in the stratosphere, it saves life on Earth from being destroyed by the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation.
G. M. B. Dobson described how in “40 years’ research on atmospheric ozone at Oxford: a history” (see: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ozwv/dobson/papers/Applied_Opt ics_v7_1968.PDF), first by telling reader's how Fabry and Buisson, after making careful measurements of the absorption coefficients of ozone in 1912 and comparing their results with the absorption of sunlight by the atmosphere, concluded that about 0.5 centimeters worth of ozone was present in one vertical thickness of the atmosphere or, in other words, that the amount, when condensed into a liquid and spread uniformly over the Earth’s surface would cover it with a layer 0.5 centimeters thick!
To make the point even more clear, Ozone in concentrations as small as a few parts per million in the air that we breathe, is enough to destroy our lungs.
Small amounts of Ozone at the Earth’s surface kills life; small amounts of it in the stratosphere stops solar ultra violet radiation from destroying life completely.
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dana1981 at 01:20 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
The president can't impose taxes or pass laws - he's very limited in what he can do to address climate change. He was able to implement these regulations because Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, followed by the Supreme Court and EPA decisions in 2007 and 2009 that GHGs qualify as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Thus he didn't need any new laws to implement these regulations, only to enforce existing law.
Only Congress can put a price on carbon emissions. That's really their only alternative to these government regulations, so at least President Obama has put pressure on them to do so.
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John Chapman at 01:13 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
One wonders where that 54.5 miles per gallon figure came from. Wouldn't 50 have been more realistic, and what assumptions about the weight of the passengers?!
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KR at 00:13 AM on 27 June 2013Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
Stealth - The relevant SkS thread for ocean heating is How Increasing Carbon Dioxide Heats The Ocean.
Long story short: the surface of the oceans have a viscous skin layer where surface tension out-matches turbulence/convection, thermal energy from SW sunlight must pass through that layer via conduction to get to the atmosphere, downwelling IR reduces the thermal gradient and hence rate of energy lost to the atmosphere - all in the last fraction of a millimeter. This has been directly and experimentally confirmed. Further discussion of that particular topic should go to that thread.
As to how fractions of a degree are measured, I would strongly suggest looking at the Central Limit Theorem and the reduction of errors and deviations with large sample numbers. This is a core element of sampling theory - the size of sampling error is inversely related to the sampling size. If you don't understand that, you just don't understand sampling statistics. And direct measurements of temperature are quite straightforward, whether done with the ARGO system, XBTs. or even just thermometers on ropes.
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I've noticed that your posts are, quite frankly, skipping around quite a bit - jumping from topic to topic. In the process, it is not entirely clear whether your questions have indeed been answered - just that you've moved on to yet another question.
I would suggest you read through some of the summaries on the topic of the greenhouse effect, and the anthropogenic influences upon it - such as Spencer Weart's excellent Discovery of Global Warming site, in particular the Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect. I believe a good overview will answer a great many of your questions up front, and provide more of a framework for the discussions you have been in.
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StealthAircraftSoftwareModeler at 00:10 AM on 27 June 2013Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
Tom Curtis @30: You’re everywhere on this site, yes? And I like your answers. They have the most detail and explanation. What is your background?
TC @30.1: I need to read your link to see what it says.
TC @30.2: Doh! My Homer Simpson moment. I triple checked my math as not to embarrass myself, but I computed cubic millimeters instead of centimeters. Still embarrassed myself, though. But it’s not like I mixed up English and metric units and crashed a probe into Mars. :-) Okay, I easily believe they can measure 0.1 C.
TC @ 30.2: I find the warming in the first 700m interesting as some light colors (mostly blue at 490nm) penetrate fairly deep (but not 700m). The average ocean surface temperature is about 22C and the average surface air temperature is 15C, so the ocean surface is much warmer than the air. If the air warms to 16C from CO2, then this would reduce the thermal gradient from the ocean to the air, reducing the cooling from the ocean. The question though, is this enough to warm the oceans this amount? Another explanation is that the oceans have been warmed by more light from reduced cloud cover – perhaps? The more sun light that hits the ocean the more energy that penetrates deep to warm the top 700m. It seems hard to figure out the components of ocean warming – is it more light from reduced clouds, or reduced cooling due to a warmer? If you assume the amount of solar energy hitting the ocean is constant (it can’t be because that would require clouds to be constant) then it all has to be reduced cooling due to reduce ocean/air thermal gradient. Perhaps your link above discusses this.
TC @ 30.3: “Energy balance”. I still want to see the numbers and discuss this. I think this is closely related to my above point about what is warming the oceans.
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Klaus Flemløse at 23:13 PM on 26 June 2013Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
An example from Jyllands Posten about falling sealevel around Maldives:
This picture is used as an argument for falling sea level around Maldives.
Moderator Response:[RH] Fixed image width that was breaking page formatting.
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CBDunkerson at 22:04 PM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthaveone asked, "Is the intention to apply a tax to the CO2 emissions or to actually reduce the said emissions?"
Probably fines for emissions in excess of amounts allowed. The EPA backed off issuing regulations on how much CO2 just new power plants could emit a few months ago... apparently because they were facing lawsuits holding that if these emission levels were harmful from new power plants then surely they must also be harmful from existing plants. Which, of course, is simple logic and thus likely to prevail at trial.
Thus, based on Obama's speech, they are now planning to set a limit for both new and existing plants. If it is the same limit that they were considering previously then it would basically outlaw all coal power in the US. Technically, power companies could continue operating coal plants and pay fines for violating the clean air act, but they would lose money doing so... and that kind of defeats the whole purpose.
It is also possible that they will set a higher 'allowed CO2 emissions level' or a transition plan where the allowed CO2 emissions decrease over time. Obama didn't give details so it is impossible to tell, but the phased approach seems most likely to me. That will allow existing coal plants to shut down at natural end of life, as they have been doing anyway since natural gas became cheaper in the US (and now solar and wind are doing so in some areas). Meanwhile it would also prevent new coal power plants from being built because they'd just have to shut down or start paying fines right around the time they'd be paying back the initial investment. Thus, end result is the same as the previous EPA regulations... no more new coal power plants but existing ones get to wind down to avoid a sudden drop in available power... but because of the way it is structured it would now be more resistant to legal challenges.
All speculative, but that's my guess.
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Composer99 at 21:59 PM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Obama and the EPA are notallowed to impose a carbon tax or equivalent price, whether as a straight-up tax (e.g. as British Columbia has done), a fee-and-dividend system, or a cap-and-trade system (as the European Union has done): only Congress has that ability.
The advantages of a carbon pricing system are that it (a) internalises the externalities imposed by burning fossil fuels (that is, global warming, ocean acidification and their respective consequences), and (b) sends a clear price signal to markets.
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Paul D at 18:25 PM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
voneschen@1
Given that you quoted quite complex figures (for many people) and estimates regarding the amount of different gases in the atmosphere. It suggests you know what the 'big deal' is.
eg. you know infra-red radiation doesn't 'see' Nitrogen and many other gases, so the fact that the gas is a large proportion of the atmosphere is irrelevant. At the simplistic level that you present your theory, Nitrogen may as well not be there as far as trapping/delaying IR goes.
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Cornelius Breadbasket at 18:09 PM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthaveone @ 6
I'm not from the US either but from my understanding Obama made no mention at all about a carbon tax and his administration has flatly denied that one will be introduced as a result of this speech. I don't know how the regulation will be enforsed. What I do know is that many are saying that Mr Obama is doing too little too late.
This link is to an opinion piece. Obama's Fracked-up Climate Change Speech.
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Rob Painting at 17:54 PM on 26 June 2013A Looming Climate Shift: Will Ocean Heat Come Back to Haunt us?
dvunkannon - yes, the deep ocean warming is occurring pretty much where we expect, given the behaviour of the wind-driven ocean circulation and the spin-up of the subtropical ocean gyres. The image below is from Levitus et al (2012) linked to in the article.
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rockytom at 15:43 PM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Now you know one of the reasons we re-elected this President!
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scaddenp at 14:40 PM on 26 June 2013Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
I would second the SoD articles (and see the followup on the cool skin also). This is all the nitty-gritty textbook stuff that SoD does so well. For detail on the ocean measurement system and its limits, then I guess start with Von Schuckmann and La Treon.
Check you math. I get 6.12e17m3 of water give 6.12e20 kg (density at 1000kg/m3) and 6.12e23g (actually more like 7.23e23g using more accurate estimate of ocean area).
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Tom Curtis at 14:29 PM on 26 June 2013Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
Stealth @28:
1) "Heat" is an active verb. The better term is "warm". The increased IR back radiation slows the cooling of the ocean by slowing the rate at which heat from below the first few millimeters comes to the surface. So, the Sun heats the ocean, but it heats it more because of the warming effect of the back radiation makes the ocean's cooling less efficient. (This is exactly analogous to the way CO2 "warms" the Earth.) Science of Doom has an excellent series of posts covering, and demonstrating the physics, if you want a more technical explanation. The starting point is "Does back radiation heat the ocean part 1".
2) You misplaced a decimal point. There are one million (100^3) cubic centimeters in a cubic meter, not one billion. Ergo there are 6.12x10^(17+6) cubic centimeters in the first 2000 meters of the ocean. Hence the average temperature increase is 0.1 C over the period. Note that the increase near the surface is significantly larger, with most of the warming being in the first 700 meters. Consequently, while the error is quite large, the measurement is statistically significant.
3) The TOA energy imbalance equals on average total forcing from all factors since 1750 (by convention) minus the increase radiation to space due to increased surface temperature. On top of that there are year to year fluctuation due to short term changes in humidity, cloud cover, surface temperature and change in temperature distribution which can be ignored for this discussion. Current climate models estimate that TOA imbalance to be 0.47 W/m^2 for the mean value between 2000-2010 inclusive (see figure 2a of Stevens et al). The TOA energy imbalance as measured by the 0-2000 meter change in OHC over the same period is 0.57 +/-0.4 W/m^2 (90% confidence interval). The 0-2000 meter OHC underestimates total TOA imbalance because, of course, there is additional warming at greater depths, heat used to melt ice, and heat used to warm land and atmosphere. That figure is greater than your estimate solely because the TOA energy imbalance was much smaller in the mid-twentieth century, and has been increasing since then.
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DSL at 14:05 PM on 26 June 2013Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
Stealth, what JasonB said, and it was not meant to be demeaning. Your overall response moved the DK spectre well back into the forest.
As for thermal infrared warming the ocean, the ocean's thermal gradient starts at the skin of the ocean. That's one answer. SoD has more on this, and I think there's an SkS thread somewhere on it. The circumstantial evidence for this is enormous, but the actual physsical mechanism is not well-described or, perhaps more accurately, not well-observed (for obvious reasons). -
Paul Pukite at 13:47 PM on 26 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
Definitely the OHC is the way to go. Also consider the realationship between land and ocean temperatures. I started an analysis on proportional ocean vs land warming here http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com/2013/05/proportional-landsea-global-warming.html
Isaac Held has done something similar on his blog “38. NH-SH differential warming and TCR « Isaac Held’s Blog.”
The assertion is that the ocean will sink excess heat, thus preventing the SST from reaching the same temperature as the land. Over time, we can look at that gap vary. Right now, the gap appears to be widening, thus leading to a leveling of the global temperature.
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StealthAircraftSoftwareModeler at 13:35 PM on 26 June 2013Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
I have a question about ocean warming – how is that possible from increased CO2? From my understanding, increased CO2 reduces IR flux to space and the back IR radiation warms the surface and troposphere. Since water completely absorbs any IR within the first few centimeters, how can IR from CO2 heat the ocean at any meaningful depth?
Second, how can ocean temperature be measured to determine this? Assuming 2.5e23 extra joules (based on the chart of this thread) are dumped into the ocean from 1960 to today from 0 to 2000 meters of depth. Using 60% of the earth surface that has water to 2000m, I compute this is roughly 6.12e17 cubic meters of water, or 6.12e26 cubic centimeters, or 6.12e26 grams of water. Using 4.18 J/g/C for water I compute that 2.5e23 joules would heat this volume of the ocean only 0.0001 deg C, which has to be immeasurable. So, how have they figured out the ocean has warmed this miniscule amount? It doesn’t seem possible to make a direct measurement.
Third, assuming all this energy passed through the ocean surface, I compute that this is approximately 0.4 W/m^2 increased energy into the ocean. Again, I am only assuming 60% of the earth has water to 2000 meters, so this is about 3.06e14 square meters. 2.5e23 joules / 3.06e14 meters is 8.17e8 extra joules per square meter over 53 years. Divide that by the number of seconds in 53 years (~1.7e9 seconds) and I get 0.4 W/m^2 for the last 53 years. That doesn’t sound that impressive given the reduced IR flux due to CO2 is on the order of 1 W/m^2 over this same time period. Or, this could mean that 40% of the IR back radiation from CO2 is absorbed by the ocean, but how, given that IR doesn’t penetrate water?
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Ken in Oz at 13:31 PM on 26 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
Dana, I think you are pushing in the right direction with this; heat content is a much more direct measure of the underlying changes to the climate system than average air temperatures and climate science communicators should make heat content their first response to the suggestion that global warming is something that waxes and (allegedly, recently) wanes.
I think examining the scientific consensus and other efforts by contributors at this site all help. The Escalator is great. Foster and Rahmstorf style adjusted temperatures, that look at the known natural influences help.
I don't know where the best value for effort in communicating the seriousness and urgency of the climate problem lies but one thing that I would like to see is National Academies and the like increasing their role. Not that they've failed to step up, but the idea that they could (again) provide an independent assessment of the science comes to mind. It needs to be done with maximum publicity and video documentation (prime time Television in mind), demonstrating how they select the experts for the right combination of knowhow, independence and integrity. Not that I'm criticising what everyone has done to date but clearly the message is still not being communicated well enough in the face of ongoing, organised, deliberate and well communicated dis- and mis- information.
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Jim Eager at 13:29 PM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Voneschen, the big deal is the first 999,600 feet has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect, other than to act as a passive heat reservoir. It's the last 400 feet that absorbs enough energy to keep earth from being a frozen slush ball all the way to the equator.
Your argument is that of a child innocent of the knowledge of reality. -
JasonB at 13:29 PM on 26 June 2013CO2 effect is saturated
Stealth,
DK = Dunning Kruger, an unwarranted belief in one's own expertise (and an inability to recognise true expertise in others) due to lacking the expertise necessary to recognise that one's own expertise is limited. Note that it's not the same as "stupid", and it can apply to anyone, no matter how much of an expert they are in their own domain, when they venture outside of that domain — xkcd's "Physicists" comic is a good example of this.
Regarding energy balance, a quick Google search came up with this, although it's a few years old now. The basic point is that the difference between energy entering the system and energy leaving the system has not only been modelled, it's been empiracally observed. Basic physics dictates that if there is a difference, then due to conservation of energy, that energy must be going somewhere. You can work out the accumulation of energy in the earth by trying to physically measure it everywhere you can think of, or you can just integrate the energy imbalance measured by the satellites at the top of the atmosphere over time. This last point really puts all the arguments over thermometer placement and adjustments into context.
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SeaHuck5891 at 13:24 PM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
I thought it was very apropos that President Obama kept wiping the sweat off his brow throughout the speach.
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KR at 13:19 PM on 26 June 2013CO2 effect is saturated
Stealth - The 'go-to' reference for direct CO2 forcing is Myhre 1988, who estimates it at a simplified (curve-fit to the more complex radiative computations) expression of:
ΔF = 5.35*ln(C/C0) W/m2
This means that the radiative forcing increase from 310 to 400 ppm of CO2 would be 5.35*ln(400/310), or about 1.36 W/m2. A doubling of CO2 will produce a non-feedback ΔF of 3.7 W/m2.
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Tom Curtis at 13:09 PM on 26 June 2013CO2 effect is saturated
stealth @220, the version of Modtran available at the University of Chicago website is an early version (1987), which has been superceeded by 4 other versions since then. More importantly, no single atmospheric condition will effectively model the mean effect over the entire Earth. You need to take representative samples from a large number of conditions (tropical over forest, tropical over sand, tropical over ocean, various cloud conditions etc) and determine an average effect to get accurate values. Unfortunately the University of Chicago interface does not allow that level of flexibility in conditions. Nevertheless, Gunnar Myhre and associates did exactly that in 1998. There result was that over a broad range of values, the radiative forcing of CO2 was 5.35 * ln(CO2c/CO2i) where CO2c is the new value and CO2i is the initial value. The error given is +/-1%. This yields a forcing for the doubling of CO2 of 3.7 W/m^2, and a forcing of 1.36 W/m^2 for the CO2 increase from 310-400 ppmv.
NOAA maintains a usefull webpage showing the relevant formulas for the most significant GHG that do not condense at normal atmospheric pressures and temperatures, along with their estimated radiative forcing. For what it is worth, this is the aspect of climate science that even Spenser and Lindzen agree with, and which Anthony Watts feels insulted if you suggest he does not, even though he frequently publishes and publicly endorses articles which disagree with it.
Regarding your questions, it is hard to suggest an appropriate thread without knowing what they are. You could either use the search function on this site to find an appropriate topic, or ask the questions and we can switch topic for the answers if appropriate.
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StealthAircraftSoftwareModeler at 12:28 PM on 26 June 2013CO2 effect is saturated
DSL @ 219: what does “DK” mean? I’d guess “denialist knowledge”.
By the way, I am male, 52, with a BS in computer science and physics. And for the record, I do not blindly accept what you guys say, nor do I blindly accept what WUWT or Dr. Spencer’s website has to say. My natural inclination is to think that natural variability is a significant cause of recent warming, but I think CO2 may have a sizable role, hence the reason to discuss this with you guys. I figure you all are pro AGW, have access to the data, and can backup your position. I can be convinced with the right data and good arguments.
Since Tom Curtis appropriately moved my question to this thread, I wanted to read the whole thing to avoid rehashing the same stuff all over. Overall, good stuff and information in this thread. As for my conversation with you guys, I think Tom Curtis made an excellent point @213, namely that energy at the TOA is not 1366 W/m^2 over the entire globe. I knew this since the curvature of earth reduces the W/m^2 as a function of the incidence angle. I was going to compute this with integration, but I like the clever way to just divide by 4 to arrive at an average “effective” energy input over the whole globe. Therefore, I agree that the average effective energy at the TOA is, over a 24 hour period, 341.5 W/m^2. I also think that the solar variance over a solar cycle probably isn’t meaningful to this value. It may be 1.3 W/m^2, but when divided by 4 we get a relatively small 0.325 W/m^2. I’m good with that.
As for CO2 being fully saturated, I agree that it isn’t. The doubling of CO2 is probably on the order of 3 W/m^2 of reduced IR flux based on my computations with MODTRAN. What is the consensus value for the amount of reduced IR flux from the increase in CO2 from 1950 until now (CO2 increasing from 310 ppmv to 400 ppmv)? Running MODTRAN, I figure it is about 1 W/m^2.
Next, I have some questions about energy balance, which related to TC’s @218 comments, but I don’t think those belong in the CO2 saturation thread. John Cook commented @132 of this thread to the moderators about starting a thread on the energy budget. Is there such a thread for that? If so, please post a link here.
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Donthaveone at 12:07 PM on 26 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
Skywatcher,
The year 2013 was mentioned numerous times however that was not the point i was trying to make. Esop (14) claimed that "deniers" would use 2013 as evidence of a recovery plus coming ice age etc (if in fact the ice loss ends up less than 2012). Esop then made the unsubstantiated claim that 2014/15 will be lower than 2012 and the "deniers" would then claim this is all part of a natural cycle.
I supplied the link to show that even "experts" can get things wrong and to subtly show Esop that the way they where behaving was the same as those they mock. The artcile i link to clearly states Professor Wieslaw Maslowski claims the the Arctic "could" be ice free in the next 5 - 6 years (from 2007) no mention of a 6 year tolerance. Do you have a link to support the =/- 3 years?
This is the problem with the subject of AGW there are a lot of claims made based on computer models which generally dont pan out but yet according to Esop it is only the deniers that shift the goal posts.
Cheers
Moderator Response:[DB] You illustrate the fallacy of relying on news articles instead of primary sources.
In reality, Maslowski's prediction, based on a proprietary model he runs on a US Navy supercomputer at the US Navy Postgraduate School, is 2016 ± 3 years. He originally made this prediction, based on data through the 2005 melt season, in May of 2006.
Maslowski formalized that prediction in January of 2007, here. Maslowski provides more details on his model, and the future of the Arctic sea ice, here.
To sum: you are very much incorrect. In this forum, credibility comes from referencing reputable sources, preferably the primary literature published in reputable journals. Continuing on in the approach you have taken will get you nowhere, here.
Lastly, posts at SkS have a narrow focus. Your reference to models is an unsupported assertion and indicates an unfamiliarity with models. Please read the Models Are Unreliable rebuttal in its entirety before commenting further on them.
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dvunkannon at 11:51 AM on 26 June 2013A Looming Climate Shift: Will Ocean Heat Come Back to Haunt us?
The way I am reading this, the effect of changes in the IPO is _not_ that heat buried in the deep ocean resurfaces, it is simply that less heat gets buried than otherwise.
Does ARGO float data from the area of these gyres confirm that heat is descending near their centers? I would expect that floats near the gyre centers would show higher temperatures at depth than floats in other locations.
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Donthaveone at 11:49 AM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Composer99 @ 5
This is an issue worthy of more discussion, i should say i am not from the US so am not sure where the EPA sits in all this regarding energy policy etc so i cannot comment on political issues one comment by Obama has spiked my interest.
This statement
Agency (EPA) will regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, in addition to the rules already in draft form that are set to regulate emissions from new power plants.
Is the intention to apply a tax to the CO2 emissions or to actually reduce the said emissions?
Cheers
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skywatcher at 11:36 AM on 26 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
@Donthaveone : you do know that Maslowski's prediction was 2016 +/- 3 years don't you? What is your reasoning for thinking such a prediction would be falsified in 2013, when the uncertainty bound is in the range 2013-2019? Do you think the prediction is unreasonable, given the acceleration in ice volume loss?And yes, climate scientists know full well that climate's changed before (#20). Evidence of that is one of the powerful reasons we know that the Earth is sensitive to change in forcing, including changing CO2 levels- approximately 3C per doubling from palaeoclimate data. For me, global warming is what is happening, climate change and climate disruption are the consequences of our increasing the heat content of the Earth system. -
Composer99 at 11:12 AM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
(On topic:)
While I am hardly either anti-government nor an unqualified booster of markets, I certainly feel that fee-and-dividend, by sending clear price signals and relying on decentralised decision-making, is more likely to gain traction with political conservatives, and takes advantage of, instead of trying to fight, human nature. (And, for those who don't like government, it also means money goes straight into people's pockets.)
So I certainly hope that Congress can get its act together and get on with passing some fee-and-dividend legislation.
However, I suspect that will (a) have to wait for Congressional midterms in 2014, and (b) the Democratic Party will either have to do much better or moderate Republicans will have to win primaries against the Tea Party caucus.
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Donthaveone at 11:12 AM on 26 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
Esop in 14,
You raise some interesting points re Arctic ice however you need to be careful with what you say. For example Professor Wieslaw Maslowski made a rather bold prediction when he stated according to his model the Arctic will be ice free by the summer of 2013 (see link below)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
Now if we look at the current state of Arctic sea ice we can see it is a long way from being ice free, granted we are a few months away from "peak melt" but the Arctic will not be ice free (see link below)
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Obviously Professor Wieslaw Maslowski got his prediction/projection wrong i will be interested in hearing what his reasonings are.
Moderator Response:[DB] See my response to you below.
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JasonB at 11:03 AM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Ah, the feeling that if something is tiny it would surely have a tiny effect — what Peter Hadfield calls the "Feelie Method of Scientific Enquiry".
Yes, let's put that into perspective:
He wasn't driving drunk, he just had a trace of blood alcohol; 800 ppm (0.08%) is the limit in all 50 US states, and limits are lower in most other countries).
Don't worry about your iron deficiency, iron is only 4.4 ppm of your body's atoms (Sterner and Eiser, 2002).
Ireland isn't important; it's only 660 ppm (0.066%) of the world population.
That ibuprofen pill can't do you any good; it's only 3 ppm of your body weight (200 mg in 60 kg person).
The Earth is insignificant, it's only 3 ppm of the mass of the solar system.
Your children can drink that water, it only contains a trace of arsenic (0.01 ppm is the WHO and US EPA limit).
Ozone is only a trace gas: 0.1 ppm is the exposure limit established by the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends an ozone limit of 0.051 ppm.
A few parts per million of ink can turn a bucket of water blue. The color is caused by the absorption of the yellow/red colors from sunlight, leaving the blue. Twice as much ink causes a much stronger color, even though the total amount is still only a trace relative to water.
All from the appropriately-named "CO2 is just a trace gas" page right here at SkS.
No idea why you thought converting it into feet would help. How big do you think an influenza virus is compared to a person? Ebola? I guess "Feelies" aren't the best method of scientific enquiry after all.
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Dave123 at 11:02 AM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
@1
Your myth is covered in this Skeptical Science write-up:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/CO2-trace-gas.htm
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Composer99 at 11:02 AM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
voneschen:
Assuming for the sake of argument that your comment survives moderation, given it is (a) off-topic for this thread and (b) practically constitutes sloganeering, your simplistic analogy, put bluntly, has no basis in the reality of what is going on.
There are many resources, online and in textbooks that are presumably available at public libraries in your general area, which explain the radiative physics of atmospheric gases, and precisely why only the gases identified as greenhouse gases (namely CO2, H2O, and a few others) are important for modulating the outgoing flux of infrared from the Earth's surface, resulting in the atmospheric greenhouse effect.
Please avail yourself of, say, David Archer's online materials at the University of Chicago before continuing with further, similar analogies which have no bearing on the applicable physics. Certainly you will be in a far better position to ask more interesting and perhaps even incisive questions.
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Donthaveone at 10:58 AM on 26 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
I think AGW is the best title as it states clearly that the globe may warm from mans actions, climate change is not a very good title because the climate changes all the time with or without us. Climate extremes, well we already have that think the poles winter/summer etc.
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voneschen at 10:38 AM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
CO2 is now 400 parts per million. Lets put that in a new perspective. Lets use "feet per million". Therefore air is 78% nitrogen or about 780,000 feet per million or about 140 miles. Oxygen is about 21% or about 40 miles and that leaves 1% of other gases, mostly Argon, or not quite 2 miles. Then CO2 is 400 parts per million or 400 feet. So all the gases except CO2 will reach 999,600 feet or just about the distance across Minnesota's midsection from SD to Wisc. and the CO2 will reach from home plate to the fence at Target Field. So What the hell"s the big deal?
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Skeptical Still at 10:17 AM on 26 June 2013Climate's changed before
Thanks to those that responded to my post- I will look through the references and continue to visit this site; it’s the best representation I’ve found for the pro-manmade argument. I am open to the idea and willing to review more data but I remain unconvinced. Thanks again.
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