Global Warming 2.0 (thread reopened; let's keep it civil)

[Moonwalker]

We can know in which range the temperatures are, and this range is no guess work.

Who knows all the temperature changes since there is an earth atmosphere? How was the global climate lets say 335170311 years to 335172536 years ago for example?

 

[Urwumpe]

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

Give me a few hours more and I also state you the scientific paper of the reconstruction with error bars.

 

[Omhra]

@ Omhra

tree rings, rocks, ice and such things, by far do not enable us to know the rather old Earths climate history in detail (less than ever does it include details of potential universal influences to weather and climate, still less understood than anything else). Our limited methods just cover minor local periods. If you take a local record somewhere, you can't say you have found out huge details about the Earths global climate history. Even one million years still wouldn't be enough.

Our few methods can't explain why the climate changes, and what causes ice ages, although politicians, scientists and other people feel able enough to make utterances like "our models are right, it's the real world that's wrong". That's typical human behaviour. Try to know and to control almost everything. But if there is the next hurricane, flooding, earthquake and so on, all we can do is to look a proper Charlie and try to hide like rats, if still possible. But that still does not scrape at our megalomania, which is to think to be the big boss, the center of almost everything around us.

And if we can't stop global warming because we don't like the ideas global warming generates in some people minds, well, then we simply will colonize the whole universe and escape sometime in the future. Because there is no doubt that we insignificant creatures can do everything...

Tree rings give you a very accurate year per year idea of short term 50-1000 years trend, depending on the length of the life of this tree and/or when the remains were found.

Rocks and Ice and such things are not the same things...

Rocks are made under many different conditions... a basalt is not the same as sedimentary rock for instance. A basalt will under proper interrogation take you back to several hundred million years when it emerged from its parent volcano/lava flow. IT and where it is (what other "such things" surrounds it) begins to tell the story of how IT got there. A basalt in mud means it got carried there lets say.
Sedimentary rock is like a million little rocks all packed together with all this information. Like; what compounds and how much of them. What chemistry have these been exposed to... What reactions occurred... AND its Half life... How long have they been in this "present" form. Every atom has a half life... It obviously takes volumes to explain, so I will summarize to this: If you have a bunch of like atoms they will decay at very well established patterns. This decay, incidentally, keeps the mantle of the Earth molten Which in bulk resets the properties of individual compounds.

In other words (very succinct words) once a compound surfaces its half life clock begins to tick.

With this info we can tell when a geode was made. And what reactions it has undergone.
As this sediment accrues there will be pollutants that are not of "rock" origin... such as shells, bones, aunt sally, and assorted biomass...
So its all CORRELATION.... What is where with whom and for how long?... That is the story told from Rocks and their "such".
NOW.
ICE... water evaporates, drifts and becomes to cold to remain air free and so it freezes and agregates... as it does this it traps in its blocky cells gas (and dust [little little rocks]) present at the time it froze. Gases and dust are elements/compunds and they too suffer from half life... but that not being enough the ice behaves similar to all sedimentary formations... And it creates layers...

These two methods alone allowes us to see several million years back with very high presicion and 10s of millions years back with a considerable (means you have to be careful not to over or under estimate) marign of error and100s of millions back with some worth of measure.

So I guess for some this means that we know NOTHING because we don't know EVERYTHING... but those two terms are impossible to equate...

NOTHING is not the same as EVERYTHING and that is why your argument falls apart Moon walker.

 

[Moonwalker]

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

Such largely inaccurate graphs do not show that the current temperature change of ~0,6°C within about 100 years is unusual in Earths history, nor does it answer what I asked for. It's 600 million years compressed on a few centimeters

 

[Omhra]

Some questions...
Can we sustain world population growth without economic growth?
Are we aware of the NO answer implications?

To your first question; I think yes. But it will be responsible growth.
It is estimated hat to bring the current population to 1st world standards would require 3 Earths. So our economic methods must change... Change to what is a serious question that must be carefully considered and one that I suspect will meet much controversy.

The no answer implication is dire... but Earth will recover... no question. Will humans make it as a grand civilization? I think not...


-----Post Added-----


Nothing is not Everything... nor the other way around...
And between something attainable and Everything unattainable I will take something. But to bury my head and cover my eyes in the face of the chasm that is humankind's ignorance? Never.

 

[Omhra]

reminds me of a movie... "how to get ahead in advertising" the scene where they are discussing an article about some one's arrest.. "the bag may have contained [drugs]"
also funny how they say "green house warming" as if they were aware that there are two forces at work...
But if you understand anything about pendulums and oscillations in general (or apoapsis/periapsis) you now that to ad energy on the "resting" period will be grossly amplified on the down swing... comforting, hu.

 

[Moonwalker]

Old news. We'll have to wait and watch now

 

[atuhalpa]

Uh, what happens in a glass of water if it has an ice cube in it? The ice cube melts as the temperature of the water and the air rises. The ice "absorbs" the increase in temperature and changes state. To some hypothetical entity in the glass the environment in the glass would appear to be cooling, and the entity could claim that there is no warming trend, it is a cooling trend, when in fact after all the ice melts the water in the glass will definitely heat up. Is there any parallel in this scenario to our situation on earth?

 

[Omhra]

Uh, what happens in a glass of water if it has an ice cube in it? The ice cube melts as the temperature of the water and the air rises. The ice "absorbs" the increase in temperature and changes state. To some hypothetical entity in the glass the environment in the glass would appear to be cooling, and the entity could claim that there is no warming trend, it is a cooling trend, when in fact after all the ice melts the water in the glass will definitely heat up. Is there any parallel in this scenario to our situation on earth?

That is exactly so.

 

[Kurt M. Weber]

Of course. But, and this is a big but: What if the negative effects outweigh the positive effects?

Well, I'm getting to that. Don't jump ahead here

Would you agree that, conceptually, whether climate change is a net positive or a net negative is determined by whether the total utility enjoyed by all individuals worldwide is greater with or without the total effects of climate change?

 

[simonpro]

What makes you think that you know better than the overwhelming majority of scientists? Have you studied the subject? Have you performed any experiments in the field? Have you published any papers regarding your thoughts? Have you read, in full and including all supplementary materials, the IPCC report? Have you constructed an alternate hypothesis as to why the Earth is currently undergoing warming, or - instead - have you constructed a theory as to why all our data is wrong and that the Earth is not currently warming?

Note: Saying everyone is arrogant and that things were different in the past is not an answer.

 

[Torgo]

I wonder if this has anything to do with the complete lack of sunspots?...:dry:

http://www.spaceweather.com/
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpmenu/forecasts/SRS.html

You mean, the energy output of the Sun is the determining factor of how much energy the Earth receives, and therefore warms or cools?

Balderdash! Cavemen driving their SUVs ended the Ice Age about 12,000 years ago. There were white and European and wrecked the environment!

The preceedeing message brought to you by the HR Clinton Re-Education Camp at Guantanamo Bay.

 

[Urwumpe]

You mean, the energy output of the Sun is the determining factor of how much energy the Earth receives, and therefore warms or cools?

No, you also have the albedo of Earth, as well as the thermal radiation which leaves Earth - the hotter Earth gets, the more thermal radiation leaves it, but also, the albedo of Earth can change, for example less snow means more radiation is caught instead of being reflected.

 

[Linguofreak]

Basically, your argument is this: There's a cat in a box. We injected a gas which has been proven to have the capability to kill cats. The cat died. You're saying that the fact the cat died is just coincidence, that it was going to be dying then anyway, and since you cannot prove that it wasn't going to be dying anyway.....yeah.

It's more like you have a box filled with all sorts of gasses known to be harmful to cats. You put a cat into the box. You then add some more of gas X. There was some gas X already in the box, and there are things inside the box that can contribute to both the production and the drawdown of the various cat-toxic gasses. The cat starts to sicken. People then start to argue about whether the extra gas X that was added was the cause of the cat's sickness, and whether it will kill the cat. This is all rather foolish. The important point is that the cat is getting sick from *something* in the box, and if people value the cat, they will try to get rid of some of those toxic gasses, regardless of whether the amount of gas X injected was the "primary cause" of the cat's sickness or not.


-----Post Added-----

but also, the albedo of Earth can change, for example less snow means more radiation is caught instead of being reflected.

Or more clouds can mean more radiation is being reflected rather than caught.

 

[Urwumpe]

If I had to guess, I'd say your job requires you to sit long hours in a comfy office chair with AC in the summer and heating in the winter, because you obviously haven't noticed the changes to your environment outside the window.

I have also not noticed any changes, but people who spend more time than me with recording the weather have. Amateur meteologists for example managed to measure more extremely hot days in Germany over the last decades. And that usually with weather stations which are hardly in "heat islands" as the arm chair critics often mention.

 

[Andy44]

I think solving this problem will require a crushing world dictatorship. We must MAKE the people see the evils of GW and FORCE them to stop enjoying their extravagant lifestyles. Let's start with a SUV-burning ceremony. Then we can build camps for the unbelievers. I volunteer to bring the bio-fuel for the burning ceremony.

 

[Eagle]

I think solving this problem will require a crushing world dictatorship. We must MAKE the people see the evils of GW and FORCE them to stop enjoying their extravagant lifestyles. Let's start with a SUV-burning ceremony. Then we can build camps for the unbelievers. I volunteer to bring the bio-fuel for the burning ceremony.

Sadly the current political climate is pro-centralization of control.

I detest the solution far more than I deny the problem. I have faith in the people and our system that we won't accept totalitarianism.

 

[Andy44]

Nonsense. I'm sure the Green Dictator will have our best interests at heart! Fear not, join us, and Save Mother Earth!

 

[RisingFury]

I have also not noticed any changes

I personally have. Along with quite a few people here. Granted, I don't know what winters are like in Germany, but when I was a kid, we used to have tons of snow. Snow would be on the ground from end of November through February... sometimes till March.
The last 10 years, we've seen less and less snow.

Temperatures would be low enough for the lakes in my town to freeze... but not anymore.

This year was the first somewhat normal winter in years - and by that, I mean snow on the ground for at least a week before it melted.



Summers are increasingly hot and the effects are beginning to show. We're used to thunder storms in the summer with the occasional hail, but not like this we're not. For the past five years, increasing amount of hail and increasing in size. There was even talk of a tornado this year. And although officially, it's strength wasn't high enough to be rated as such, it leveled square kilometers of forest and destroyed many houses. Slovenia is incredibly hilly, with not many chances for high wind speeds, except in spots where the wind gets channeled by the hills.



It's not just a freak winter or freak summer... and I guess you can't really says it's a freak decade, can you?



It will take various amount of time for the effects to show, depending on the local climate, but in the next 10 to 20 years, nobody on Earth will be able to deny the change. And for the people that felt it first, it'll already be too late.

 

[Eagle]

Earlier in this thread there was some discussion about worst case scenarios.

Realistically you can never be prepared for the worst case situation. In the cold war it wasn't too expensive to build a fallout shelter. But a fallout shelter doesn't protect against the worst case scenario, only against fallout and some blast protection. Flack jackets aren't bulletproof, they just protect vital organs from small shrapnel and handgun caliber bullets at range.

Its fruitless to prepare for worst case GW. Prepare for the common case.

The only reasons I see to even discuss worst case GW is that it is sensational and can be used to scare people. A lot of 'worst case' GW are complete crocks of [animal waste]: If CO2 continues to rise exponentially then our model generated this data which we think represents this kind of situation, we don't understand this part so it could mean nice and balmy or [sensational part that gets reported and repeated].

Even the sensational AGW is slow. Sugessted preperation? Roll with what happens and try to get on the good side of the trend. Note: as a human and a capitalist, your ability to adapt to changes is pretty much unlimited.