Climate Change

[akruppa]

Originally Posted by __HRB__

P.S. The game's not over until xilman loses all contenounce and resorts to silencing dissidents by banning them to virtual gulags.

For your (belated) elucidation, xilman never loses his "contenounce" (sic!) or silences dissidents. I do.

Alex

[em99010pepe]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

13) Do you remember being taught about the three methods by which heat travels: radiation, conduction and convection? (I ask because of your apparent difficulties in understanding heat flow in oceans.)

By his ignorant comments he did not read Incropera or any other heat transfer book.

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by akruppa

For your (belated) elucidation, xilman never loses his "contenounce" (sic!) or silences dissidents. I do.

Man, those foreign words are a bastard to spell. I'm sorry to hear you have to wear diapers.

P.S. Three boxes left: ballot, jury, ammo.

[rogue]

Someone could have at least spelled warming correctly in the new title. I must admit, though, that it is pretty cool.

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by rogue

Someone could have at least spelled warming correctly in the new title. I must admit, though, that it is pretty cool.

The original tread had 'warring' in the title, so it should actually 'ƃu_!ɹɹɐʍ'. The someone should also put a presupposition back in to emphasize the highly objective nature of the general topic.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Max,

Some past questions that have not yet been answered, as far as I can tell:

1) You admitted that the writers at skepticalscience.com have not ignored sunspots.

a) Do you have any evidence that any other mainstream climatologists have ignored sunspots?

b) If you don't have any evidence that any other mainstream climatologists have ignored sunspots, will you retract your slur on them ("in this case, when sunspot cycles obviously affect the Earth's temperature so much, to ignore that when researching global warming would be irresponsible. Unless, that is, you're deliberately trying to prove anthropogenic global warming.")?

Okay, let me clarify a bit. It's not that they've ignored sunspots entirely. However, the skepticalscience.com article that discussed susnpots and their effect on global warming (link) has one key weakness: its data only goes up to 2000, which was right before we started potentially seeing the effects of the recent decrease in sunspot activity on our climate. Also, prior to about 1955-1960 or so, we didn't even have the capability to accurately measure a global average surface temperature. If you thus throw out the temperature data prior to 1955 as unreliable, you see that the whole recent warming trend started right about 10 years after the beginning of an overall higher-activity sunspot phase, which reached its peak around 1945. The article completely ignores this.

2) Sunspots occur in 11-year cycles.

If sunspots were causing global warming, why isn't there a noticeable 11-year cycle in that warming, beyond the 11-year cycle that was already evident before global warming started?

As explained above, it would seem that there's more than just 11-year cycles affecting sunspots. That much is obvious from the graph on the skepticalscience.com article: the 11-year cycles can be clearly seen, but on top of that, you see that sun radiation has been at an overall higher level since 1945 or so than it was before that.

3) You presented the Spiegel article to us by writing:

"Here's an example of one article presenting some convincing anti-global-warming evidence that had the amazing fortune of being allowed to surface:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...662092,00.html"

By saying that, you endorsed the content of the article as being a good-enough representation of "convincing" "evidence".

You presented the article as containing evidence, not just a journalist's perhaps-mistaken interpretation of evidence. Do you wish to make a change in your endorsement?

The evidence presented within was that sunspots potentially have a significant enough effect on global warming to have made it plateau in recent years. If 11-year cycles (which is what the Spiegel article was saying had caused the plateau--it didn't refer to 11-year cycles by name, but that seems to be what it was talking about given the timeframes referred to within), which are relatively smallish blips in the overall solar picture anyway, can have that much effect on global warming, then it would seem logical that the much larger and more magnitudinous trends I described above would be enough to have caused at least a significant part of the overall global warming trend.

So, no, I do not change my endorsement.

4) You wrote, "but rather that debate is still continuing in earnest between well-respected scientists."

Do you equate "well-respected" to "competent and knowledgable in climatology"?

Obviously they know a lot more about climatology than either you or I do. They clearly are competent and knowledgeable enough to have been given prestigious positions at big, respected climate laboratories. I would think that if they of all people are still in hot debate about the cause of global warming, then it's not exactly wise for us laymen to jump to the conclusion that mankind is causing it just yet.

5) Do you deny the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide?

Of course not. Clearly any emittance of CO₂ will have some greenhouse effect. The question is how much of an effect it will have. The amounts of CO₂ being emitted by mankind hardly seems big enough to affect Earth's climate on anywhere as grand a scale as is being claimed.

6) Do you deny that the atmosphere's carbon dioxide content has been increasing for over a century?

No. See #5: nobody denies that it is increasing, just that it has enough of an effect on overall climate to cause the warming trends we're seeing.

7) Do you deny that the carbon dioxide increase matches anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions plus natural emissions minus known carbon dioxide sinks, as far as is known?

Nope. See #5 and #6.

8) Do you deny that we can do anything significant about anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions without using "totalitarian" measures?

Yes. The effect on total carbon emissions generated by voluntarily "green" lifestyles is negligible--a drop in the bucket compared to the emissions of China and other such countries, or even of all those in free countries who aren't voluntarily "green". The only way to make a significant impact on anthropogenic CO₂ emissions is to force the entire population of the world to curb their emissions by a large amount--and even then there's still doubt as to whether that will be anywhere near enough to make a difference.

9) Do you agree that a cyclic factor imposed on a monotonic upward trend can produce a temporary dip or plateau, such as the recent pause in surface temperatures?

Sure. As explained above, that can be easily attributed to the 11-year sunspot cycles.

Do you acknowledge that that possibility means that the recent pause cannot be taken to be any proof that the warming trend has stopped?

Definitely. Its primary significance is in showing just how much effect sunspot cycles have on climate, and that longer-term cycles than the 11-year ones can cause more than just a temporary dip or plateau.

10) In post #447, you wrote, "Note that for all the icecaps that have been melting, others have grown in proportion". This implies that the decrease in some areas is balanced by the increase in other areas. Can you cite data showing that that equality is true? If not, why did you make that assertion?

I do remember reading this in a number of different places, though that was a little while back and I'm afraid I don't have a link. If I come across a link, I'll be sure to post it.

11) Have you ever taken a physics course?

Suffice it to say, I can make sense of all the stuff you've brought up so far.

12) Can you cite any evidence that geological activity has somehow heated up the ocean recently?

No; that was a theory that I postulated in response to your statements about ocean heat content increasing. I'm not saying that's necessarily the cause of the oceans heating up, just that it's one possible explanation that can make sense and which doesn't seem to have been accounted for anywhere.

13) Do you remember being taught about the three methods by which heat travels: radiation, conduction and convection? (I ask because of your apparent difficulties in understanding heat flow in oceans.)

Yes, I understand all of those quite clearly. Radiation is when heat travels by means of electromagnetic (infrared) radiation. Conduction is when heat transfers from a warmer substance to a cooler one. Convection is when a substance moves and takes heat with it.

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by S485122

A few polar bears and some millions of people in Bangla-Desh, Vietnam, islands of the pacific, Egypt, etc* are certainly not worth insulating your home and using energy efficient transport.

Jacob

* Almost all River delta regions would be severely affected by a rise in sea levels. In most developed countries this would not be a life threatening problem but for most poorer countries it would definitely be.

At the rate temperatures are increasing, by the time the sea levels would have risen enough to seriously threaten the populations of the countries you mentioned, surely we'd have developed enough technology to evacuate the people in time if necessary.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by rogue

Someone could have at least spelled warming correctly in the new title. I must admit, though, that it is pretty cool.

˙puɐɯɯoɔ ʎɯ sı ɥsıʍ ɹnoʎ

ןnɐd

[S485122]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

At the rate temperatures are increasing, by the time the sea levels would have risen enough to seriously threaten the populations of the countries you mentioned, surely we'd have developed enough technology to evacuate the people in time if necessary.

In what world do you live ?

First of all you seem to ignore the geography of Bangladesh for instance : 50 % of the country would be flooded it the water levels would raise one meter !

Then about evacuation : you seem to ignore that rich countries are busy building walls to keep people from those countries off their land, so where to would those people be evacuate to ? Anyway you talk about moving people as you would about moving furniture.

And just as a finishing remark : not so long ago there was a small flooding in a country, the evacuation went very bad, was slow and a lot of people died... The country in question was not a poor country, it was not technologically backward, it was in the USA, at New Orleans to be precise.

Jacob

[__HRB__]

Originally Posted by xilman

˙puɐɯɯoɔ ʎɯ sı ɥsıʍ ɹnoʎ

ןnɐd

If it's possible to use subscripts in titles, one could perform a slight beautificationism on the "!".

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by S485122

In what world do you live ?

First of all you seem to ignore the geography of Bangladesh for instance : 50 % of the country would be flooded it the water levels would raise one meter !

Then about evacuation : you seem to ignore that rich countries are busy building walls to keep people from those countries off their land, so where to would those people be evacuate to ? Anyway you talk about moving people as you would about moving furniture.

And just as a finishing remark : not so long ago there was a small flooding in a country, the evacuation went very bad, was slow and a lot of people died... The country in question was not a poor country, it was not technologically backward, it was in the USA, at New Orleans to be precise.

Jacob

There's a key difference between the evacuation of New Orleans, and what an evacuation of a global-warming-threatened country would be. The former happened very quickly, with a hurricane quickly swooping in and overflowing levees that had the city awash quite quickly. Global warming, however, would melt ice much more gradually. If we ever had to evacuate a country such as Bangladesh due to global warming, we'd know of it plenty far in advance to prepare for it adequately.