Climate Change

[cheesehead]

BTW: Save The Whales.

"Whales, Like Trees, Slow Warming"

http://news.discovery.com/earth/whal...te-change.html

It's their parting gift to the world: Each dying whale carries tons of carbon to the sea floor as its massive body sinks, storing it there for centuries where it can't harm the climate.

In this way, whales are like the world's forests, sucking climate-changing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere over their lifetime and socking it away. And according to new research, repopulating the oceans with whales could be as good for battling climate change as planting trees.

"If you think about whales and fish in terms of their carbon, there is a potential for using carbon offset credits as an additional incentive for rebuilding this population," said Andrew Pershing of the University of Maine School of Marine Science and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute who presented his results yesterday at a meeting of ocean scientists convened by the American Geophysical Union in Portland, Ore.

. . .

Pershing estimates that whaling released around 105 million tons of carbon over the last 100 years -- as much carbon as burning most of Oregon's forests, or driving 128,000 Hummers for 100 years -- although these calculations carry several uncertainties.

While the amount of carbon possibly released by whaling over the last 100 years is small compared with the amount that is released annually worldwide -- 7 billion tons -- the amount is comparable to some of the proposed strategies for combating warming, like many reforestation projects or seeding the ocean with iron to increase CO2 uptake by phytoplankton, Pershing said.

. . .

"One key difference between whales and forests is what happens when you've reached your steady state, your maximum population size," Pershing said.

At some point, the forest reaches its maximum density where dying trees are balanced by new growth, and the forest can no longer store any additional carbon, he said. "Marine systems are unique in that the animals and plant life in the surface waters of the ocean, when they die, they can take that carbon with them down to the bottom. A fully populated whale stock will continue to export carbon through sinking of dead whales."

And Pershing notes that other large top predators like bluefin tuna and sharks can have the same effect.
"These guys are huge. They don't have predators. When they die they are very likely to sink and take their biomass to the bottom of the ocean."

Hmmm ... there are questions to be answered here. Do whale/tuna/shark carcasses just rest unchanged on the bottom? Wouldn't scavengers consume them, transferring the carbon to their own body masses?

As long as the carbon-containing ocean creatures' bodies are left in the ocean, rather than being taken out for human consumption, the carbon would just stay in the ocean, in some form or other ... or would it?

Some of it would be excreted as CO₂, to be dissolved in the deep water. Some of that would be captured by shell-building creatures as calcium carbonate, and much of that is eventually (on long timescales) subsumed into the earth's mantle by subduction of tectonic plates. But as the oceans are turned more and more acidic by increased CO₂, it becomes more difficult for organisms to form shells with calcium carbonate.

So ... hmmm ... ?

Just ... Save The Whales ... for other reasons. We'll work out the rest later.

[cheesehead]

Some links to climate pages at NASA's Earth Observatory (I've no time right now for comments.)

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"Temperature Trackers Watch Our Watery World"

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/New...&src=eoa-nnews

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"Cold Snaps Plus Global Warming Do Add Up"

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/New...&src=eoa-nnews

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"Missing 'Ice Arches' Contributed to 2007 Arctic Ice Loss"

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/New...&src=eoa-nnews

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"Road Transportation Emerges as Key Driver of Warming in New Analysis from NASA"

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/New...&src=eoa-nnews

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"NASA Scientist Nadine Unger Discusses Which Sectors of the Economy Impact the Climate"

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/New...&src=eoa-nnews

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

"Cold Snaps Plus Global Warming Do Add Up"

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/New...&src=eoa-nnews

The article is correct, but the confirmation-bias problem is still in play - the last line reads:

• These cold spells, and other weather changes that are a result of naturally occurring patterns, are still consistent with a globally warming world.

The bias is in the wording "still consistent", whereas "not inconsistent" is more accurate when discussing cold snaps. Similarly, spells of unusually warm weather are also seen as "consistent with" or downright "indicative of" GW, rather than also (when taken in isolation or on statistically short time scales) merely "not inconsistent with". It's great when pretty much *any* "unusual" weather anywhere in the world is "consistent with" one's favored hypothesis, ain't it? [This is not so much a dig at this article, rather at the mainstream media].

Brief notes about the other recent posts:

--------------------

The methane-release feedback is the same kind of thing that is now believed to have played a key role in the transitions out of (and presumably back into) the ice ages. That was, however, the result of "slow" dynamics with small isolation-change forcing. (The eventual "flip" into warm or cold mode was quite rapid compared to the time scales of the Milankovitch forcing,however).

---------------------

Regarding the story about the whales - I suspect the organic carbon transport by whale carcasses is dwarfed by the overall downward flux of smaller dead things, all the way down to diatomaceous matter. I recall reading that much of the resulting sediment does end up getting subducted into the earth's mantle, but don't recall if there were any credible studies containing total-flux estimates.

[davieddy]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

Breathe heavily on it, wipe it on your penguin suit, and replace it on the table.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPrAuF2f_oI

I was trying to provide a suitable musical footnote to
an exchange from Ernst (some diatribe on pollution)
to RDS (where is Tom Lehrer when you need him?)
to Paul (Drinking the water and breathing the air)

This post was inspired by a close encounter of the fourth kind
with an alien named Blipp.

David

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

The methane-release feedback is the same kind of thing that is now believed to have played a key role in the transitions out of (and presumably back into) the ice ages. That was, however, the result of "slow" dynamics with small isolation-change forcing. (The eventual "flip" into warm or cold mode was quite rapid compared to the time scales of the Milankovitch forcing,however).

An even bigger reservoir of methane is that trapped in ice-like methane hydrates (a.k.a. clathrate ices) under the sea ... large-scale sublimation of these (either due to ocean warming or large-scale physical disturbance of the clathrates ... think earthquakes or undersea landslides) is believed to be responsible for some major historic warming "spikes". Due to the much-greater GG potency of methane vs CO2, this actually makes GG mitigation by way of harvesting and combusting the clathrates into less-GG-potency CO2 and H20 an interesting possibility:

Natural gas crystals: Energy under the sea

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It looks like ice -- but this ice could one day be used to heat your home.

It's actually not ice at all, but crystallized natural gas, and if scientists can figure out how to harvest it cheaply enough, it could become a vast new source of energy available in just about every country in the world.

The big advantage to these crystals, known as methane hydrates, are their abundance. They are found beneath the sea floor off every continent, and under the arctic tundra.

Plus, they're estimated to hold twice as much carbon as all the known reserves of oil, coal and natural gas combined.
...
The crystals are formed when methane gas, which results from the natural decomposition of animals and plants, comes into contact with water at just the right temperature and pressure.

Finding that sweet spot is actually much much more common than finding the conditions needed for the formation of conventional gas and oil, which require very specific geology. This is why oil is found in some places but not others.

Crystal gas forms almost any place there's low temperature, high pressure and water, making the organism-rich continental slopes ideal spots.

The gas crystals are usually found between a few hundred feet to several thousand feet below the ocean floor and require deep drilling to bring them to the surface. They're most prevalent in water over 1,000 feet deep, and up to about 200 miles offshore.

Although they've been known about since the early 1980s, only in the last 10 years has significant work gone into studying them and figuring out how to extract them.

The U.S. government currently runs a multi-agency research project with scientists from the Department of Energy, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Minerals Management Service, among others. They've partnered with a few corporations, including BP at a site in Alaska's North Slope and Chevron in the Gulf of Mexico.

Harvesting

Just because a huge amount of the gas exists doesn't mean it all can be collected.

No one has figured out how much gas can be recovered using current technology, said Timothy Collett, a research geologist at the USGS.

But at the BP site in Alaska, Collett said using current technology to go after crystal gas would effectively double the known gas reserves there.

"We're chipping away at the technical issue," he said. "We just have to get at the economics."

And it's the economics that really hold this up.

There are several ways to bring crystal gas to the surface. But the most efficient seems to be to drill a well, like a conventional oil or natural gas well, then decrease the pressure inside. The decreased pressure will cause the crystals to revert to gas and flow out of the well.

But depressurizing a well requires creating a vacuum by continuously pumping the water out of it. That's an expensive proposition.

Collett said in the Arctic, the cheapest place to extract this gas, costs vary. It can be just as expensive as it is now to produce conventional natural gas, to twice that amount. Going offshore gets even more expensive.

Furthermore, with all the gas currently coming online in the United States from the vast shale reserves, it's doubtful crystal gas is going to see much investment in the near term.
...
Yet once the shale gas begins to run out, or if there's a significant increase in demand for cleaner burning natural gas plants, it may be nice to know this resource is available.

@Garo (below): Hey, if you don't think much of the pie-in-the-sky "may be nice" aspects, there's always the "warming oceans will lead to a catastrophic release of methane from the hydrates! The end is nigh!!" angle.

[garo]

Rubbish article. The usual - it may be nice; if this happens that might be attractive; blah blah blah.

There is so much gas available right now that the chances of crystal meth-ane being drilled are minimal for at least a decade.

[only_human]

Woolly mammoths resurfacing in Siberia
Los Angeles Times - ‎Mar 2, 2010‎

The bones and tusks of the ancient creatures are becoming more prevalent as permafrost thaws. Now entire villages are surviving on the trade in mammoth bones.

The mammoth finds have been growing steadily over the last three decades as Russia's vast sea of permafrost slowly thaws.

Russian scientists disagree over whether global warming is responsible. Some say yes, others are skeptical. But nobody argues that the permafrost is dwindling -- and they're glad to have the bones and tusks, especially when the increased yields coincide with bans on elephant ivory.

[xilman]

The BBC has an interview with Lovelock: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today...00/8594561.stm


Paul

[cheesehead]

There are three independent British inquiries into "Climategate". Here's the report (PDF file) from the first to be completed:

"House of Commons

Science and Technology Committee

The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia"

http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta...s%20report.pdf

A couple of passages:

60.
Critics of CRU have suggested that Professor Jones’s use of the word “trick” is evidence that he was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not fit his view that recent global warming is predominately caused by human activity. The balance of evidence patently fails to support this view. It appears to be a colloquialism for a “neat” method of handling data.

... just as I explained earlier.

66.
Critics of CRU have suggested that Professor Jones’s use of the words “hide the decline” is evidence that he was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not fit his view that recent global warming is predominantly caused by human activity. That he has published papers—including a paper in Nature—dealing with this aspect of the science clearly refutes this allegation. In our view, it was shorthand for the practice of discarding data known to be erroneous. We expect that this is a matter the Scientific Appraisal Panel will address.

The "hide" was not an attempt to mislead; it was the opposite -- an attempt to avoid misleading by setting aside data that was known to be erroneous.

But I don't suppose that any great number of the critics who gleefully jumped on the taken-out-of-context "trick" and "hide" to accuse the climate scientists of wrongdoing will actually publicly apologize ... because all too many of those critics aren't really interested in determining the scientific truth, and don't really practice the high ethical standards they accused the climatologists of lacking.

Besides, their handlers at Big Coal and Big Oil got what they paid for: sabotaging the Copenhagen meeting. An expertly-conducted campaign.

Come on, guys: Weren't you the least teeny-tiny bit suspicious of that so-convenient e-mail leak timing?

Another inquiry, in progress:

The Independent Climate Change Email Review is being conducted by a team, led by Sir Muir Russell. According to the Review’s website the team has more than 100 years’ collective expertise of scientific research methodology and a wide range of scientific backgrounds. None have any links to the Climatic Research Unit, or the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The third inquiry, getting started:

In its evidence to us the Independent Climate Change Email Review stated that its remit does not invite it to re-appraise the scientific work of CRU. That re-appraisal is being separately commissioned by UEA, with the assistance of the Royal Society. In a statement released on 11 February UEA said that:

The Royal Society will assist the University in identifying assessors with the requisite expertise, standing and independence. “Published papers from CRU have gone through the rigorous and intensive peer review process which is the keystone for maintaining the integrity of scientific research,” said Professor Trevor Davies, the University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Enterprise and Engagement. “That process and the findings of our researchers have been the subject of significant debate in recent months. Colleagues in CRU have strenuously defended their conduct and the published work and we believe it is in the interests of all concerned that there should be an additional assessment considering the science itself.”

The independent reassessment will complement Sir Muir Russell’s Review of the key allegations about the handling of data arising from the publication of a series of e-mails hacked from CRU. Sir Muir’s Review is expected to announce its finding in Spring 2010.

The reassessment of CRU’s key publications will be completed at the earliest date the assessors can manage. The findings will be made public.

[Batalov]

"But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people. Thank you.^{[[URL="http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3930"]22[/URL]]}"

"...later stated that he believed the agreed-upon definition of sexual relations excluded ..."

Now, "hide" actually means to put in view. "trick" means "neat"... yeah, yeah. "A thought once uttered is untrue." We know, we know.

"That he has published papers—including a paper in Nature—dealing with this aspect of the science clearly refutes this allegation." Of course! Nature is the Bible. I had never seen anything wrong published in Nature, ooh, never. (Well, except I was once on a paper in Nature and then is Science that argued that there were at least 60,000 genes in the mouse genome ...but what the heck. It wasn't retracted. So it must be true. Define gene. Define sexual relationships. Define trick. Now, re-define them.)

[cheesehead]

I notice, Batalov, that you refer to "hide" and "trick" as single words out of context.

It has long been well known that by taking words out of context, one can twist around the meaning of what the person who originally wrote/spoke them had in mind.

Can you show us that you abandon this well-known rhetorical distortion?

If you are _really_ interested in the truth, you don't accuse people of bad things based on words taken out of context.

In the full context of Professor Jones’s e-mail where he used “trick”, he did so as a colloquialism for a “neat” method of handling data. There was no deception involved.

In the full context of Professor Jones’s e-mail where he used the phrase “hide the decline”, he did so as an non-deceptive shorthand for the practice of discarding data known to be erroneous.

Are you claiming that he should have used data known to be erroneous? Wouldn't that have been deceptive? Is that what you want him to have done: be deceptive instead of being honest as he was?