My belief in Global Warming is getting shaky

[litespeed]

GW - Good thing or bad thing.

 

Regardless of whether GW is human or solar in origin; Warm is good. Cold is bad. It seems to me the same people who go all wide eyed at nuclear winter aslo go all wild eyed at Global Warming. Since temperatures have varied from extreme cold to extreme warm over billions of years, I invite the GW crowd to compare the ravages of each with one another. For instance, how many mass extinctions do you suspect were caused by global warming?

[freeztar]

Regardless of whether GW is human or solar in origin; Warm is good. Cold is bad.

 

No. Gradual change is good, rapid change is bad. (whichever direction the change is heading)

 

Species can adapt, given enough time.

[Moontanman]

I'd like to point out that the worst known mass extinction in Earth's history was caused by warming. Something like 90%, the Permian extinction :shrug:

[litespeed]

Moon,

 

Although the Permian Extinction is not conclusive to GW I acknowledge the possibility.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event

 

"However, there may be some weak links in this chain of events: the changes in the 13C/12C ratio expected to result from a massive release of methane do not match the patterns seen throughout the early Triassic;[10] and the types of oceanic thermohaline circulation which may have existed at the end of the Permian are not likely to have supported deep-sea anoxia."

[litespeed]

In any event, we are not today speaking of super volcanoes and mass release of methane hydrates etc resulting from human activity, and resulting in deep-sea anoxia, etc.

 

Further, routine glaciation has been a routine and periodic phenomena for a very long time. INMH, the inter glacial eras are far more congenial to life in general. A few degrees warmer, and the subarctic becomes habitable. A few degrees colder, and Chicago, New York, and perhaps London need not budget snow removal.

 

Acordingly: Warm is good, cold is bad. However, in warm eras I will not stipulate to the quality of English wine such as exported during Roman times. We are not warm enough yet to test this for ourselves......

[Moontanman]

In any event, we are not today speaking of super volcanoes and mass release of methane hydrates etc resulting from human activity, and resulting in deep-sea anoxia, etc.

 

No, not now, but we cold be, there are huge deposits of methane hydrates under the sea floor that are just a fraction of a degree away from being released. We can even see areas where they have been released in the past, huge holes in the ocean bottom in methane hydrate areas. We really do not know who much warmer the Earth can get and not release these deposits en mass.

 

Further, routine glaciation has been a routine and periodic phenomena for a very long time. INMH, the inter glacial eras are far more congenial to life in general. A few degrees warmer, and the subarctic becomes habitable. A few degrees colder, and Chicago, New York, and perhaps London need not budget snow removal.

 

 

to worry about snow removal.

 

This is may be true, but these periodic shifts have been slow, now we are forcing the climate fast, we really don't know what will happen.

[litespeed]

Moon - You wrote: " ...we are forcing the climate fast, we really don't know what will happen."

 

I suspect nothing catastrophic will happen whether or not humans are responsible for it. Furthermore, it does not matter since it is going to happen anyway. Again, all of human history, short as it may be, has demonstrated cold is bad, warm is good.

 

Eventually the climate may become warm enough for England to export wine once again. I may not live long enough for that industry to resurect, but ff that wine turns out to be GOOD wine, THEN I will begin to wory about dire cosequences of GW.

[freeztar]

Again, all of human history, short as it may be, has demonstrated cold is bad, warm is good.

 

Repeating a claim does not make it true.

 

Life has survived extremely cold periods and extremely warm periods. Certain creatures living today are only adapted to cold climates. As the Earth warms rapidly, these species face extinction. In their case, how is warm "good"? How will the Inuits fare once the seals are gone?

 

It's not the warmth that is troubling to life on Earth, it's the rapidity of temp change that precludes any chance of adaptation.

[Eclipse Now]

How many mass-extinctions of life on earth have there been? As far as I've read, we are in the 6th now. (Mainly caused by our ploughing up and paving over most of the vital ecosystems, deforestation, over-hunting, over-fishing, over farming and denuding the landscape.)

 

Extinction event - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Sustained and significant global warming

 

This would have the opposite effects: expand the area available for tropical species; kill temperate species or force them to migrate towards the poles (or perish); possibly cause severe extinctions of polar species; often make the Earth's climate wetter on average, mainly by melting ice and snow and thus increasing the volume of the water cycle. It might also cause anoxic events in the oceans (see below).

 

Global warming as a cause of mass extinction is supported by several recent studies.[31]

 

The most dramatic example of sustained warming is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which was associated with one of the smaller mass extinctions. It has also been suggested to have caused the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, during which 20% of all marine families went extinct. Furthermore, the Permian–Triassic extinction event has been suggested to have been caused by warming. [32][33][34]

[Michaelangelica]

Water vapour helps heat Earth

Tuesday, 24 February 2009

Charles Darwin University

. . .

Known to science as water vapour feedback, it is responsible for a significant portion of the warming predicted to occur over the next century, according to Dessler and Sherwood. This is because water vapour itself is a greenhouse gas.

 

As a result of burning fossil fuels and other human activities, rising temperatures are increasing the volume of naturally occurring evaporation on our warm, watery planet, they point out. In turn, that evaporated water contributes additional global warming.

 

In their article, the authors note that doubts have long been held about whether the phenomenon was significant. They summarise the peer-reviewed evidence in support of water vapour feedback and conclude that the facts supporting it are now overwhelming.

 

Dessler and Sherwood base their statement on studies of how atmospheric water vapour varies in line with the natural cycles that warm and cool the planet, such as the cyclical temperature change caused by the seasons and El Nino events. These natural cycles of warming and cooling are very different to long-term global warming because they are not caused by human sources of greenhouse gases.

. . . .

 

Water vapour helps heat Earth(ScienceAlert)

[Eclipse Now]

Yes, definitely some important extra information to account for in their models! Co2 might be the trigger, but water vapour seems to be the extra "gunpowder" that can give it some extra kick.

[Flying Binghi]

This is because water vapour itself is a greenhouse gas

 

Please give them a prize :lol:

[Eclipse Now]

OK, so you'll admit that is a greenhouse gas? FB, please tell us why? How do we know it is? I personally think it is a conspiracy! The dreaded glasshouse people want to start a campaign that all agriculture is doing is spraying far too much water vapour into the air, and move all food-growing indoors! It's a conspiracy I tell you! We have to audit this study or I simply won't believe it!!!

[Flying Binghi]

OK, so you'll admit that is a greenhouse gas? FB, please tell us why? How do we know it is? I personally think it is a conspiracy! The dreaded glasshouse people want to start a campaign that all agriculture is doing is spraying far too much water vapour into the air, and move all food-growing indoors! It's a conspiracy I tell you! We have to audit this study or I simply won't believe it!!!

 

I'll let a mister Byson speak (by proxy through me :lol:)

 

First a little background -

 

Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology—now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences—in the 1970s he became the first director of what’s now the UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He’s a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor—created, the U.N. says, to recognize “outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment.” He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.

 

Some sundry extracts from an interview -

 

“Climate’s always been changing and it’s been changing rapidly at various times, and so something was making it change in the past,” he told us in an interview this past winter. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?”

 

“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

 

We ask Bryson what could be making the key difference:

 

Q: Could you rank the things that have the most significant impact and where would you put carbon dioxide on the list?

 

A: Well let me give you one fact first. In the first 30 feet of the atmosphere, on the average, outward radiation from the Earth, which is what CO2 is supposed to affect, how much [of the reflected energy] is absorbed by water vapor? In the first 30 feet, 80 percent, okay?

 

Q: Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor…

 

A: And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.

 

This begs questions about the widely publicized mathematical models researchers run through supercomputers to generate climate scenarios 50 or 100 years in the future. Bryson says the data fed into the computers overemphasizes carbon dioxide and accounts poorly for the effects of clouds—water vapor. Asked to evaluate the models’ long-range predictive ability, he answers with another question: “Do you believe a five-day forecast?”

WECN May 2007

[Eclipse Now]

Nice bunch of waffle, but the question was, how do we know what water vapour does? See, if you don't care about the thousands of climatologists that verify how we know what we know about Co2, then I don't care about your precious man with a degree, even if you put his qualifications in bold! Because you've got to follow the money trail and AUDIT this guy all the way back to the bank! (Exxon Mobile funded, of course). Or maybe not, I shouldn't speak ill of the dead. Maybe he was just too old and stuck in his views... a quick look at his wiki says the last time he was published by peer reviewed journals appears to be nearly 30 years ago. :lol:

 

Quack quack.

 

Now, any chance you'll be getting to those 4 questions any time soon? How about debunking the science of spectroscopy for us? You know, the science of light and refraction and all that jazz, the very thing that enables us to have, I don't know, little things like the internet!

And try quoting something peer reviewed from, say, the same century as the one we're in now? There's a good lad.

[Flying Binghi]

Nice bunch of waffle, but the question was, how do we know what water vapour does? See, if you don't care about the thousands of climatologists that verify how we know what we know about Co2, then I don't care about your precious man with a degree, even if you put his qualifications in bold! Because you've got to follow the money trail and AUDIT this guy all the way back to the bank! (Exxon Mobile funded, of course). Or maybe not, I shouldn't speak ill of the dead. Maybe he was just too old and stuck in his views... a quick look at his wiki says the last time he was published by peer reviewed journals appears to be nearly 30 years ago.

 

Quack quack.

 

Now, any chance you'll be getting to those 4 questions any time soon? How about debunking the science of spectroscopy for us? You know, the science of light and refraction and all that jazz, the very thing that enables us to have, I don't know, little things like the internet!

 

And try quoting something peer reviewed from, say, the same century as the one we're in now? There's a good lad.

 

I dont know what to say to that Eclipse Now, i'll leave you with it for a while...

 

 

.................:lol:

[Essay]

Q: Could you rank the things that have the most significant impact and where would you put carbon dioxide on the list?

 

A: Well let me give you one fact first. In the first 30 feet of the atmosphere, on the average, outward radiation from the Earth, which is what CO2 is supposed to affect, how much [of the reflected energy] is absorbed by water vapor? In the first 30 feet, 80 percent, okay?

 

I can only take a moment at lunchtime today, but even though Bryson didn't asnwer

the question, his comment implies that the question doesn't matter....

---

 

btw... [Thanks for the background on Bryson, EclipseNow.]

 

I'll ignore the silly metaphor that Bryson's answer to the second question (uh, statement)-

degenerates into, and just add a bit onto the answer of the first question.

I wish i could express how misleading such a simple statement (his answer) is,

when it's presented so far out of context, but let me just ask rhetorically:

 

Where do you think the heat goes--after it's been absorbed in that "first 30 feet," eh?

===

 

Binghi,

You need to understand the whole casade of energy--scrambling to escape the planet--

and not just look at a snapshot of one slice of the complex mechanism,

if you personally want to understand how CO2 actually affects the overall heat balance.

 

Do you know the temperature of the "heat" that CO2 absorbs?

Do you know how it absorbs, or what happens to the energy after it's absorbed?"

I think my replys to EngineerDude over the past few months-

(his golfball experiment) addressed these complexities.

Or I could refer you to at least one thread (on another forum) which details all this stuff--over about 5 pages....

===

 

I also wish i could express how unusual it is for anyone to [purely by chance] have spent a

lifetime learning about this stuff and these complexities--and how we take it so much for granted.

Thanks for reminding me how lucky i am, not to have to try and learn all the background science at once.

 

~ :shrug: