Global Warming

[Lancewen]

http://hinode.nao.ac...e/index_e.shtml

 

Took a little searching, but this showed up... on the other side... far away from everything else on the other side... :)

 

 

 

 

 

Sun! Have you rehabilitated yourself?

 

That was interesting but how does that relate to global warming?

[Turtle]

That was interesting but how does that relate to global warming?

 

it has nothing to do with global warming. but then you knew that. if you didn't know that, see my earlier post debunking the idea that the sun is causing global warming. post #14 (nothwithstanding that the sun is ultimately responsible for earth's warmth.) if you did know the post has nothing to do with global warming then report the post using the button in the lower left corner. (you may get an error, but rest assured the report is getting through. just hit refresh and move on.) :smilingsun:

Edited April 22, 2012 by Turtle

[7DSUSYstrings]

That was interesting but how does that relate to global warming?

 

We can't truly say at this point. We need to see if this actually happens. If it does, we need to measure the effects this time around and compare those to the earlier records of weather during and directly after the Maunder Minimum.

 

Just a hunch, but we might expect, if each of these type phases is incrementally rising the temperature magnitude, the new cooling period may be severe, but very short in duration. How short? Nobody knows right now. If the cooling phase is a duplicate of weather during the Maunder Minimum, then we could expect a return to normal as weather history basically repeats itself.

 

My best WAG as of now? It'll kick the temperatures up a notch, whatever a notch is.

[Lancewen]

it has nothing to do with global warming. but then you knew that. if you didn't know that, see my earlier post debunking the idea that the sun is causing global warming. post #14 (nothwithstanding that the sun is ultimately responsible for earth's warmth.) if you did know the post has nothing to do with global warming then report the post using the button in the lower left corner. (you may get an error, but rest assured the report is getting through. just hit refresh and move on.) :smilingsun:

 

What you say may be, but my question was to the poster. I personally don't mind a little off topic if it's interesting and holds some promise of adding to the topic. Also, rather than being overly critical of anyone I like to make an attempt to bring the conversation back on topic. If I fail at that, I will probably ignore the topic. I like to have a little fun with posting and maybe learn something too. When it's not fun anymore I will probably quit doing it.

[Turtle]

What you say may be, but my question was to the poster. I personally don't mind a little off topic if it's interesting and holds some promise of adding to the topic. Also, rather than being overly critical of anyone I like to make an attempt to bring the conversation back on topic. If I fail at that, I will probably ignore the topic. I like to have a little fun with posting and maybe learn something too. When it's not fun anymore I will probably quit doing it.

 

regardless, i can, will, and do respond to any post as i see fit. this is a science forum and critical thinking is a hallmark of science. if you want to make fun and/or promote unfounded imaginings, then find a joke forum.

[Lancewen]

regardless, i can, will, and do respond to any post as i see fit. this is a science forum and critical thinking is a hallmark of science. if you want to make fun and/or promote unfounded imaginings, then find a joke forum.

 

I won't dispute your right to post as you see fit. However you were going out of your way to encourage me to report another poster. If you find a post to be needing a report do so. How would you like me trying to influence your response to another poster? In any event I'm not looking to having a running battle with anyone on this or any other forum. Also, you are just a member not a moderator or administrator. It's not your job to be a forum policeman. As a good forum citizen you should make reports if you think there is a problem and after you make a report, it's out of your hands or should be.

[7DSUSYstrings]

Actually. I don't see anything he posts. I only click occasionally to see if it is still stlking, inflamatory, demeaning, etc. and if it is, I move on.

 

 

The discussions I have with real people on the street about global warming are interesting, not from the viewpoint of good or bad information, but from the position of the person's psychology. Some people who smoke cigarette, for example, will agree with my "soapbox" but also admit they can't quit. Others will vehemently demand their right to smoke and in the same breath denounce any evidence of cigarettes contributing to cancer, let alone global warming and often take the opposition side to GW in the first place.

 

A cooling phase may very well be the calm before the storm. In the 1600's there was a calm and right after temperatures resumed to normal, but what is normal? I'll see if I can dig up the last warming trend. I think it was around 500 AD, but don't hold me to that.

[Turtle]

I won't dispute your right to post as you see fit. However you were going out of your way to encourage me to report another poster. If you find a post to be needing a report do so. How would you like me trying to influence your response to another poster? In any event I'm not looking to having a running battle with anyone on this or any other forum. Also, you are just a member not a moderator or administrator. It's not your job to be a forum policeman. As a good forum citizen you should make reports if you think there is a problem and after you make a report, it's out of your hands or should be.

 

you say you are not looking for an ongoing battle, and yet you say it in a post that perpetuates one. well, certainly a battle of words if you like. i'm not a mod by choice and preference, thank you very much. while "policing" is not my job, it is my right. unlike many other areas of human endeavor, science relies on specificity and details. little mistakes can have major consequences, e.g the conversion error that led to the hubble space telescope lens being ground to the wrong shape which necessitated great expense and the risk of human life to correct. in the case of this thread, misunderstandings, misinformation and errors in the science of climatology can have equally serious consequences. property and lives in value and counts far greater than hubble are undeniably at risk.

 

i suggested you report sudsy's post because i got the sense you didn't think it was appropriate and as you are a new member i thought you might not be aware of how to manage inappropriate posts. as a good forum citizen i not only report inappropriate posts, i publically post on them as is allowed for and codified in our rules.

 

Science Forum Rules

■ If you want to refute someone's claims, please stay calm and point out where you think they went wrong, and what kind of proof you base your own opinion on.

 

all that said, it is your choice to make this ongoing or not, report this post or not, or give a positive or negative rep vote or not.

Edited April 22, 2012 by Turtle

[Turtle]

Actually. I don't see anything he posts. I only click occasionally to see if it is still stlking, inflamatory, demeaning, etc. and if it is, I move on.

 

 

The discussions I have with real people on the street about global warming are interesting, not from the viewpoint of good or bad information, but from the position of the person's psychology. Some people who smoke cigarette, for example, will agree with my "soapbox" but also admit they can't quit. Others will vehemently demand their right to smoke and in the same breath denounce any evidence of cigarettes contributing to cancer, let alone global warming and often take the opposition side to GW in the first place.

 

A cooling phase may very well be the calm before the storm. In the 1600's there was a calm and right after temperatures resumed to normal, but what is normal? I'll see if I can dig up the last warming trend. I think it was around 500 AD, but don't hold me to that.

 

obviously you are reading my posts because you continue to refer to them. ignore is a useless function as it only affects you and even then it doesn't work when you visit the board as a guest. your anecdotal conversations aren't science and i/we will hold you to everything you post. your ongoing unsupported questioning of climate science is disruptive and a disservice to our board and our readers. you can at any time stop my criticisms by stopping your posting of hunches, beliefs, imaginings, and any and all other non-scientific thoughts that you have and hold.

[7DSUSYstrings]

So it's warnings of hazardous snow storms out East... close to May. I don't blame anyone in the hazard zones for staying in denial.

[CraigD]

What if it becomes evident that GW is caused by changes in the solar wind and our magnetic fields ...

This seems to me a very unlikely “what if”. According to the wikipedia article Earth's energy budget, solar wind is a “negligibly small” source of the total solar energy enter Earth’s atmosphere. This wikipedia article would be improved by a reference for this statement, because as presently written, the reader must either laboriously calculate the approximate power of the solar wind interacting with the Earth, or take on faith that it is, as claimed, negligibly small, but taking this on faith, a change in a negligible effect is itself negligible.

 

... not from pollution ...

I have to call out a common misconception entailed in the use of the word “pollution” to refer to the contribution of released gasses to global warming. The greenhouse gasses with the largest effect on Earth’s atmospheric temperature – H₂O, CO₂, and CH₄ – aren’t in the ordinary sense of the word, pollutants. Their presence doesn’t harm ecosystems, but, contrariwise, their absence does. GW itself isn’t, in a strict ecological sense, bad. While it leads to changes damaging to some ecosystems, it improves and creates others. The main reason we humans are concerned about it is that it can be personally, economically, and socially disruptive to us, for example, by making once valuable costal property less valuable due to flooding, or farmland less valuable due to famine.

 

... of which the cheeseburger is a byproduct of bovine/porcine generated methane, or perhaps it's the other way around. The point is we still can't say for certain, but every phag sucked or cheeseburger stuffed (in our faces) can't be helping.

I think you make a good point that personal lifestyle decisions can be helpful or harmful to maintaining climate and ecosystems. In a science discussion, however, we like to go beyond mere good/bad qualitative judgments, quantifying specific things and their relative importance to others. This is especially valuable, because it allows us not only to explore the causes of GW, but have insights into ways to control it and its disruptive effects.

 

According to many sources, including the wikipedia links above, agriculture byproducts are a significant source of greenhouse gasses – about 12.5%, weighted by their effect on temperature, by producing about 40% of methane released into the atmosphere. However, even if the majority of people would stop eating cheeseburgers and other meat, allowing the amount of cows and pigs kept to be much reduced, the problem of non-animal methane sources – primarily wet rice cultivation, which is estimated to countribute 6-29% of methane emissions (source: wikipedia article rice).

 

I find the question of the effect of cigarette (AKA phag) smoking on anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission an interesting one, as it challenges my intuition. Intuitively, cigs are small, so seem impossible to be significant sources of gasses compared to big emitters, such as combustion powered electric power stations and vehicles.

 

It’s good to approach this kind of problem using rough approximation:

On the order of 10^{13} cigs are smoked each year (source: “1998 USDA estimate”, per http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_cigarettes_are_smoked_every_year)

The burnt part (mainly tobacco leaf) of 1 cig masses about 0.001 kg (source: weighing on my home scale)

The abundance of carbon in tobacco can be approximated by the chemical formula of cellulose, [imath] C^{(12}_6 H^1_{12} O^{16}_5[/imath], as 40%.

 

From this, we can calculate, assuming that all of the carbon in a cig compounds into atmospheric gasses such as CO₂ (which we know to be an overstatement, as cigarettes leave carbon-rich ashes and visible smoke that precipitates from the air, but for rough approximation, such overstatement is allowed), smoking releases about [imath]4 \times 10^9[/imath] kg of carbon into the atmosphere each year.

 

Compare this to the amount of carbon released by fossil fuel burning and cement production of about [imath]5.5 \times 10^{12}[/imath] kg/year (source: wikipedia article carbon cycle), and we find that cigarette smoking produces at most 0.7% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission.

 

While negligibly small, and likely rendered much smaller, perhaps by more than a factor of 10, by a more detailed analysis (eg: one that accounts for the carbon in cigarette ash and smoke), this number surprised me, because it was much bigger than my intuition lead me to expected. There’s a science lesson in this, I think: don’t rely completely on intuition - use arithmetic as often and as well as you can.

 

There’s also an environmental responsibility lesson: beware assuming small-seeming releases necessarily have negligible consequences.

 

A single phag sucked to the butt will output about .85 cu ft of various greenhouse gases including CO2 and a wide variety of hydrocarbons through destructive distillation. Assuming, quite kindly, that only half that volume escapes to the atmosphere, even say .4 cu ft to stack the comparison against my claim, multiplied by 1.7 billion cigarette packs smoked every day around the planet times 20. Do the math. You don't need a link.

You'd possibly be less unhappy if you took a pack of phags and took measurements of the gas volume after 20 are sucked and blown out and multiplied it by 1.7 billion. I actually doubt if you found it matched the numbers in that link, assuming you weighed the exhaled gas. If you simply burn the phags and collect the gas, weigh the gas and weight the ashes you could establish the weight, but I'd guess the total destructive distillate (do I need to provide a link for that process? :rolleyes: )

Yes, Dr C, you do need to provide links for your claims. It can only improve the quality of your thinking and writing, and it’s a site rule.

 

Scientific writing is explained by definitions and supported by evidence via references, which ideally, in an internet forum setting, are in the form of links. Writing that uses the words and style of science, but isn’t subjected to the quality control and improved readability gained by references, runs a great risk of being pseudoscientific, especially if its writer rarely adheres to this rigor. I fear that your writing, and by extension, you, Dr C, are often pseudoscientific.

 

In these forums, please don’t be.

[Deepwater6]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17803691

 

Europes Cryosat mission is producung valuable information on the condition of sea-ice.

[labelwench]

The people of Old Crow, Yukon, brought their concerns forward as early as 1992, when I was a co-chair on the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board. The elders came in person to share their observations that the weather was changing, the marshes and flats were drying out, the river ice was not to be trusted and that the caribou on which they largely depend were changing in their migration routes.

 

This was unprecedented in their oral history and so they came to the people of science to augment their observations.

 

They were far ahead of science in their noticing of these changes.

 

(I, also, spend much time out of doors and I first noticed in 1988 that I was getting blisters on my face from the sun, something that had never happened before. Very soon after, daily UV index announcements were attached to each weather report. )

Global weather change is very apparent to those of us living in this region and the pace of change is disconcerting.

 

https://docs.google....pCO-Wx2cw&pli=1

[labelwench]

The article from which this excerpt is taken looks like it would fit well with this thread.

 

 

 

As Arctic sea ice breaks apart, massive amounts of methane could be released into the atmosphere from the cold waters beneath.

 

High concentrations of the greenhouse gas have been recorded in the air above cracks in the ice. This could be evidence of yet another positive feedback on the warming climate – leading to even faster Arctic warming.

 

The Arctic is home to vast stores of methane – there are billions of tonnes of methane in permafrost alone. It is a potent greenhouse gas, so a major methane release would greatly accelerate climate change. The gas is found in icy crystals called hydrates beneath the shallow seas that flood some areas of the continental crust, as well as in permafrost. It is also being released from Arctic wetlands.

 

 

http://www.newscient...en-climate.html

[Lancewen]

The article from which this excerpt is taken looks like it would fit well with this thread.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.newscient...en-climate.html

 

It sounds very much like a tipping point that we very much don't want to reach. Everyone has been saying that the rising ocean level will be a very slow process. If this article is right and we reach that tipping point the ocean level rise could be a very quick happening indeed.

[Deepwater6]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17803693

 

Getting back to my original thought of spreading something over the ice to reflect the sun a bit, this BBC article (if correct) makes it known that warm water from underneath is doing damage as well. Essay and Alpine also had added some great insight as to why it may not be such a good idea anyway, thanks guys. It seems like almost everyday there is a new news story about this and none of them say the problem is getting better.