Global Warming

[Warthaug]

With great respect, Bryan, given the sum total of what we do not yet know regarding the atmosphere on this planet and the manner in which its myriad variables (known and not yet known) interact with one another, the more alarmist conclusions being trumpeted in the media regarding predicted outcomes of climate change sound positively Malthusian.

Which is why I ignore the media, who's interest is selling subscriptions and advertising, and read what the scientists who work in the area have to say. I've worked as a scientist for over a decade, and have been a victim of media ignorance of science on two occasions, so I'm more then aware of just how badly they screw things up.

Which is why I rely on the reports coming out of the climatology field to make up my mind. And the simple reality is that the vast majority of the climatology field agrees that the world is warming, and that emission of CO2 is partially at fault.

You can cherry pick all the studies you want, quote all the anti-warming web pages you want, but at the end of the day there are two or three climatologists, in a field of hundreds of thousands, who actively believe and promote the idea humans are not responsible. The remainder actively publish data which says otherwise.

Bryan

 

[mrjimboalaska]

Concensus does not equal facts...... there is more that "2 or 3" scientists that disagree with the "man-made" theory.......lets get back to discussing CONSERVATION and make this a worthwhile thread again......

 

[Warthaug]

I'm sorry, I have to respecfully disagree. CO2 aborbs it's main peak of IR at 15µM in 10 meters of atmosphere. Other bands are absorbed within 300 meters.

Compared to entire blackbody IR spectrum:

I'm sorry, if you don't understand what this means you're going to have to either brush up on your physics or this debate is useless.

That's fairly insulting. Would this be a bad time to point out I'm a scientist by profession and as such am probably for more familiar with scientific methodology and a lot of the fine details then you are.

For example, the amount of energy carried by a photon decreases as its wavelength increases. As such the photons being absorbed by CO2 carry much more energy then do the blackbody photons passed on (depending on the absorption band anywhere from 2x to 10x). So overlaying the spectra of CO2 over the blackbody radiation tells you nothing about the % of energy being absorbed.

All a fancy way of saying that the upper 1/4 of the blackbody curve represents about 2/3rds of the energy being emitted by the earth. So when you graph things properly - energy released vs. wavelength, CO2 overlies peak emission.

And that's what the concern is all about - energy retention in the atmosphere.

By the way do you know what context your numbers came from re: H2O being responsible for 60% of absorbency? The figures differ depending on atmosphere location (troposphere, stratosphere, etc). Most estimates I see of the atmosphere *as a whole*, including clouds (yes, people who want to skew statistics will list "water vapor" absorbency and leave out clouds) show 90% absorbtion by water and 10% CO2.

The values are an average of what most studies have reported, as described by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their most recient report (still in draft stage I believe, but available on their webpage).

And no, they do not ignore clouds. In fact, the role of clouds is quite well understood, and taken into account by most models. Quite depressingly, measurements of the effects of clouds suggest that they aren't going to do much - if anything, to slow down warming.

JMSJ : Vol. 84 (2006) , No. 1 pp.165-185
http://www.lmd.jussieu.fr/~jldufres/publi/2005/Bony.Dufresne-grl-2005.pdf
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0034-4885/68/6/R02/rpp5_6_R02.pdf?request-id=0Fpcl6WA3BGyA6-82wi7Kg
http://www.ipcc.ch/meet/session25/finalreport25.pdf

Bryan

 

[Warthaug]

Concensus does not equal facts......

However, for scientists to agree on anything takes a great deal of facts to support the conclusion. We live on conflict, and take great relish in destroying each others hypotheses. So for us to agree on anything pretty much means that every fact we have points in that direction.

there is more that "2 or 3" scientists that disagree with the "man-made" theory.......

I said "climatologists", and among the actual experts there is only 2 or 3. Yes, there are economists, and statisticians, and political scientists who also disagree, but lets be honest - they're not experts and couldn't hope to have the level of insight and knowledge that the climatologists do.

Bryan

 

[Thalassamania]

Byran,

Your wasting your time. You and I live on data and have learned to never hold a view so dear as to obscure the signal that verifiable data and informed interpretation emit. The conclusion that we hold today may be quite different than one the hold tomorrow if new data or better analysis becomes available. The nonscientists that are posting to this thread in denial of anthropogenic global warming have no such understanding. They are more interested in finding shards of data that, through misinterpretation and misunderstanding may be hammered into their preconceived notions which arise from social, political or economic alliances rather than from any understanding of natural processes.

 

[drbill]

How true, Thal.

I remember my first experience with this back in the mid-60's. I was working with my mentor at Harvard on a project to disprove what was then referred to as continental drift by using a mainframe to analyze distribution data of paleoechinoderms to infer paleo ocean currents and thereby former locations of the poles. This was to suggest polar meandering might be the cause of what the data were suggesting. Of course that view eventually lost out to plate tectonics.

The first chapter of my PhD dissertation provided another example. I had proposed the hypothesis that kelp on Catalina's windward side would be found deeper than on the leeward side due to longer daylength cycles and more direct sunlight there than on the shaded leeward side.

My data indicated the contrary. I had to abandon that hypothesis and accommodate a factor I had ignored... the higher turbidity on the windward side that correlated with the shallower depth distributions there.

A "good" scientist will be open to new data and interpretations of it. A "bad" scientist will dogmatically hold on to theories despite what new data suggests.

 

[Teamcasa]

Not being a scientist, just a guy interested in science, I can not help but wonder why I almost never hear about the added planet population as a significant source of CO2. Is the population factor that insignificant?

 

[Thalassamania]

Not being a scientist, just a guy interested in science, I can not help but wonder why I almost never hear about the added planet population as a significant source of CO2. Is the population factor that insignificant?

Speaking of Malthus. Right you are. Population is a big a problem and must also be addressed, it would be a shame to overcome global warming only to fall victim the density dependent factors that are already reducing life expectancy in many places in the world and will be knocking at our door soon.

 

[Teamcasa]

Malthusian speaks more to the earths ability to feed and sustain its growth. I happen to believe technologies will improve to handle the food issues.

I am speaking specifically about how the population growth mirrors the rising CO2 levels and why the climatologist don’t see or speak of the correlation between the two.

 

[Warthaug]

Not being a scientist, just a guy interested in science, I can not help but wonder why I almost never hear about the added planet population as a significant source of CO2. Is the population factor that insignificant?

Human respiration is a pretty small source of CO2 on the level of human activity. We consume about 0.83kg of O2 and correspondingly exhale about 1.15kg of CO2 per day. That works out to:

1) 420kg/year (0.42 tonnes), or slightly less then 1 US ton per year
2) This is 1-3% the average per capita developed nations output of CO2 (usually quoted as 12-20 metric tonnes per capita)*
3) It is 6% of the world per capita emission average (6.2 tonnes per capita)
4) It is equivalent to driving the average car ~1600km (990mi)

*For the US this is 22.9 tonnes, 24.3 in Canada, 12 in the UK.

So the impact of the average persons metabolism is pretty small compared to the average persons CO2 emissions from other sources. Even in the poorest of nations the metabolic CO2 is only 20-30% the persons annual total.

Bryan