[dcolton]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,131943,00.html

This peeks my interest because, although I am far from the enviromentalist type, I think nature fights back. IIRC, there was a theory that global warming would result in global colling or what not. I know there are some envriromentalists here, can someone please explain?

No enviromentalist wacko stuff from the other side. I would like to learn about this phenomon so I can make my own decision.

It's been a disappointing summer for global warming alarmists.

Hollywood, Mother Nature and the media just haven't cooperated. Even with the unusual situation of two successive hurricanes pounding Florida and another bearing down imminently, global warming hysteria seems to be on ice for now

[Spoogepieces]

Global warming is a hoax.

How hot was the Earth hundreds of millions of years ago?

[placebo1969]

*Bets that someone will discount link because it's from Fox.*

[Scientist]

Originally posted by dcolton:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,131943,00.html

This peeks my interest because, although I am far from the enviromentalist type, I think nature fights back. IIRC, there was a theory that global warming would result in global colling or what not. I know there are some envriromentalists here, can someone please explain?

No enviromentalist wacko stuff from the other side. I would like to learn about this phenomon so I can make my own decision.

You have to look at the long term trend. That is what matters.

Also, this article is nothing but an unreasoned piece of propaganda.

[Scientist]

Originally posted by placebo1969:
*Bets that someone will discount link because it's from Fox.*

It's probably more appropriate to discount it because the author works for Cato.

[Dakar]

One summer does not a global weather trend make.

[BlackGriffen]

Originally posted by dcolton:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,131943,00.html

This peeks my interest because, although I am far from the enviromentalist type, I think nature fights back. IIRC, there was a theory that global warming would result in global colling or what not. I know there are some envriromentalists here, can someone please explain?

No enviromentalist wacko stuff from the other side. I would like to learn about this phenomon so I can make my own decision.

Okay, here's how it works (note: I have not RTFA ). In general, the weather is a chaotic system. What that means is that it can be both sensitive and insensitive to small changes, depending on what the present state of the system is. The idea is that we are presently in a stable spot - small changes don't do much. The worry is that we may be approaching a boarder to the stable region. The tricky thing about the borders to such regions in chaotic systems is that they are extremely complex - in fact infinitely so. They tend to be fractals, like the edge of the Mandlebrot set. In other words, if we push the climate into a border region, we cannot predict where it will end up no matter how much data we have nor how accurate our models are.

That said, there is another effect that has been identified specifically. The thing you need to understand is that the climate isn't just about the atmosphere - the ocean (and land), too, plays a very large role. In fact, even though the ocean moves much more slowly that the air, it carries far more energy. An example of how large a role it plays is el niño. One such ocean system that you've probably heard about is the gulf stream. It carries warm water up the Atlantic coast and over to Europe. Part of this system is that the water sinks down after cooling, and then it goes south to recycle. An important part of that water's ability to sink is how much salt it contains. If a large amount of fresh water is dumped into the gulf stream, it cannot sink (not dense enough). If it cannot sink, it stops carrying water up to Europe, and Europe freezes (compare the latitude of Europe to similar regions in Canada - the gulf stream is the reason their weather isn't similar). There is some evidence that this has happened in the past, when the ice age was ending and ice was melting rapidly.

Please note that such would not be global cooling - it would primarily effect Europe and Canada.

If you want an explanation of how greenhouse gasses work, please feel free to ask.

BlackGriffen

P.S. Interesting side note - there's an interesting wrinkle in our weather models. They have a tendency to slip into a frozen world model where much of the heat from the sun is reflected out into space. Whether this is a problem with the models or is really possible is not known, but generally such results are ruled out out of hand, which is why you usually won't hear of them.

[BlackGriffen]

Originally posted by Scientist:
You have to look at the long term trend. That is what matters.

Also an important issue. The sun itself plays a non-constant role in the weather. The sun actually goes through a cycle that takes about 11 years (NASA link). Right now, IIRC, we're still in a low point of the cycle - which means that we are literally getting less energy from the sun, but we also have to worry less about solar flares causing problems with our electronics.

Long story short, in order to say anything about the climate, you have to average over at least 11 years to average out the sun's cyclic effect.

BlackGriffen

[dcolton]

Originally posted by BlackGriffen:
[B]
Please note that such would not be global cooling - it would primarily effect Europe and Canada.

What is the effect then if it isn't global cooling?

If you want an explanation of how greenhouse gasses work, please feel free to ask.

tell me

[Spliffdaddy]

Global Warming Myth...brought to you by Dow Chemical


From Tom Brockman <tbrock@frontiernet.net 12-26-99

Hello Mike,

In the 70's I worked for a chemical recycling company (Waste Research, Inc, Eau Claire, WI). We were paid a large sum of money by Dow Chemical (the patent holder of freon FC113 and others (plus the holder I believe of the freon trademark) to complete a detailed survey of our freon recycling activity. Since we wanted the money and had no notion of any hidden agenda we took the money and ran. Dow was trying to determine how much freon FC113 and other variants were out there in the market place and out of their control, since recycled freon products were exempt from patent limits being considered not virgin at that point.

Funny how some people in the business were telling me the source behind the funding for much of the freon - ozone hole theory research was Dow Chemical. Even funnier was the fact that Dow's patents were coming due to expire. Much funnier still is the fact that Dow had the major replacements for freon on line and waiting for freon to be outlawed. Yes, very funny indeed!

Also funny was NASA providing color enhanced photo output that just happened to show the areas of LOW ozone as black. Note I said LOW ozone levels, not zero (0) ozone. To the uninitiated public the black looked like a hole, not a reduced level on an innocent color coded photograph; hence the hole was born where no true hole existed. Just like every good story about crime, greed, and conspiracy, "just follow the money" will always lead you to the correct people responsible.

Dow had everything to lose when their freon monopoly was at an end so they helped develop an ozone hole scare to allow them to waltz in their prearranged alternative. Don't ask about what company still makes freon south of the border and how much is still available in the US; at a price of course! Maybe some day you will want to hear about the work we did for GD Searle on aspartame and how we knew 15 years ago that the stuff turned into methanol when we over heated it. We had barrels of the stuff to play with and we had a lot of fun with it. I try not to let too much of it in my children if we can help it.

Keep up the "voice in the wilderness", but don't get too paranoid, or too trusting.

Good Luck!

Tom Brockman

[Spoogepieces]

Weren't greenhouse gases in very high concentration long ago? Yet, today, it's about 15 Celsius.


OMG! WE IS DOOMED.

[chris v]

If you don't already get National Geographic, then pick up the latest issue at a bookstore. There's 70 + pages on global warming in it, and it's pretty reasoned, and not "far-out" Greenpeace, PETA, type stuff.

[djohnson]

How can you judge global warming over just 100 years worth of data?

[placebo1969]

Originally posted by Scientist:
It's probably more appropriate to discount it because the author works for Cato.

I was close.

[chris v]

Originally posted by djohnson:
How can you judge global warming over just 100 years worth of data?

There are several hundred thousad years of data, from ice cores drilled in Greenland and the Antarctic. Like I said above, the latest issue of Natl. Geo. goes in to detail about this in a very reasoned, dispassionate way.

[deedar]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
Global Warming Myth...brought to you by Dow Chemical


From Tom Brockman <tbrock@frontiernet.net 12-26-99

Hello Mike,

In the 70's I worked for a chemical recycling company (Waste Research, Inc, Eau Claire, WI). We were paid a large sum of money by Dow Chemical (the patent holder of freon FC113 and others (plus the holder I believe of the freon trademark) to complete a detailed survey of our freon recycling activity. Since we wanted the money and had no notion of any hidden agenda we took the money and ran. Dow was trying to determine how much freon FC113 and other variants were out there in the market place and out of their control, since recycled freon products were exempt from patent limits being considered not virgin at that point.

Funny how some people in the business were telling me the source behind the funding for much of the freon - ozone hole theory research was Dow Chemical. Even funnier was the fact that Dow's patents were coming due to expire. Much funnier still is the fact that Dow had the major replacements for freon on line and waiting for freon to be outlawed. Yes, very funny indeed!

Also funny was NASA providing color enhanced photo output that just happened to show the areas of LOW ozone as black. Note I said LOW ozone levels, not zero (0) ozone. To the uninitiated public the black looked like a hole, not a reduced level on an innocent color coded photograph; hence the hole was born where no true hole existed. Just like every good story about crime, greed, and conspiracy, "just follow the money" will always lead you to the correct people responsible.

Dow had everything to lose when their freon monopoly was at an end so they helped develop an ozone hole scare to allow them to waltz in their prearranged alternative. Don't ask about what company still makes freon south of the border and how much is still available in the US; at a price of course! Maybe some day you will want to hear about the work we did for GD Searle on aspartame and how we knew 15 years ago that the stuff turned into methanol when we over heated it. We had barrels of the stuff to play with and we had a lot of fun with it. I try not to let too much of it in my children if we can help it.

Keep up the "voice in the wilderness", but don't get too paranoid, or too trusting.

Good Luck!

Tom Brockman

This is a separate phenomenon from global warming. So sorry, find another thread.

[BlackGriffen]

Originally posted by dcolton:
What is the effect then if it isn't global cooling?

It would be cooling, yes, the point is that it wouldn't be global cooling. I'm not sure what exact effects it would have on other regions. Two possible effects that spring into mind are: it could make the Caribbean and East coast of Africa warmer because the ocean isn't carrying that energy off. If that region of the ocean gets warmer, you can expect a longer hurricane season, more hurricanes, and stronger hurricanes. This is because hurricanes literally get their energy from evaporating ocean water.

tell me

First a little background. Air is not transparent to all wavelengths of light. Obviously, air lets visible light through, but for many other wavelengths the air is opaque (that is, the air absorbs it and reflects it rather than just letting it pass). Greenhouse gases are gasses that are transparent to visible light, but opaque to a kind of light associated with heat (that is, the motion and jittering of molecules). As you're well aware, when light strikes something opaque, like the ground, it warms up, giving off infrared radiation. What greenhouse gases do is make it harder for such radiation to leave the atmosphere. As you can imagine, infrared light taking longer to leave the air means that the air is literally holding on to more energy, and thus the temperature is higher.

That this is true is pretty well accepted. The controversy is over how much an effect human emissions have. The strongest counterexample provided is how much volcanic eruptions emit (far more than humans in all history, IIRC) with little apparent effect. The reason for that, I think, has to do with the fact that you can put things in the atmosphere that will actually cool things down. Anything opaque to visible light, like dust, will reflect the energy before it can reach the surface, and cool things down. Volcanoes produce a lot of dust alongside their other emissions, and they tend to be sudden. The have had an impact, though. IIRC, there is evidence that the entire planet cooled somewhat for a brief time after a particularly large eruption (Krakatoa? I don't recall the name).

There is also the possibility that a steady emission has a different effect than a sudden dump.

You can find more information here. The only sentence to be careful of is: " Over time, the amount of energy sent from the sun to the Earth’s surface should be about the same as the amount of energy radiated back into space, leaving the temperature of the Earth’s surface roughly constant." While true for the overall planet, what is important in climate is how the energy from the sun is distributed in the atmosphere. So, even though "it all averages out" - the important part is the surface temperature, which does not average out.

BlackGriffen

[tie]

Originally posted by djohnson:
How can you judge global warming over just 100 years worth of data?

And yet the Fox news article dcolton referenced disproved global warming with just one summer's worth of (very selectively picked) data. It goes both ways. And as another poster replied, there is more data than just one hundred years.

The way I look at it is this:

Global climate is obviously a very complex system, which we do not fully understand. Scientists are improving their understanding with computer models. With the current level of understanding, global warming seems to be real. (If it was nothing, then it is unlikely that a broad scientific consensus would have emerged, IMHO.) The economic costs of global warming are so enormous that it makes sense to take out insurance just in case -- increase research while also working to decrease human effects on the climate by decreasing emissions. If we screw up, there might be no second chance.

Humans obviously have some effect. We have increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere by ~50% in the last hundred years and will soon have doubled levels. (Approximate data from memory.) Even if the scientists are not entirely sure, my common sense says that this kind of enormous atmospheric change will mess with the global climate.

For me, the personal costs are as compelling as the economic costs. For example, I love scuba diving and don't want coral reefs to be destroyed. I've been to Alaska a number of times, and don't want the glaciers to disappear. I ski. I also generally feel it isn't right to play with earth's environment on this scale. Morally we should try to leave the world a better place for our children, and religion says we shouldn't destroy this beautiful creation we've been given. Just IMHO, though.

[voyageur]

In 2001 a National Academy of Sciences panel produced a report on global warming. They concluded that it was indeed a real phenomenon, and it was caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases, like CO2, in the atmosphere. There are different ways to measure the warming, but in their report they stated that the earth's mean temperature had risen 0.6 degrees C in the past 100 years, and that at current rates of greenhouse gas production, could be expected to rise another 1-6 degrees C in this century. A study released just this year by the National Climatic Data Center suggests that the rate of warming might actually be accelerating.

In the Alps: Glaciers are rapidly receding, and expected to disappear completely within 50 years.

In Alaska: the permafrost is melting (perma no more!), causing roads and the oil pipeline to buckle.

In the tropics: warmer oceans are killing coral and harming fish ecosystems, as tie mentions above.

So, we know it's real. But why should we care? After all the earth has been warmer before, right? In fact, just this week new research reported the Arctic Ocean was once as warm as the Mediterranean Sea. But that warming was related to a catastrophic release of greenhouse gases which led to massive extinctions. When climate change happens rapidly, animals and particularly plants can't evolve fast enough to adapt, and die. A study released this year estimates that 1/6 to 1/4 of plant and animals species will vanish if the earth warms as predicted.

There is also evidence that insect-born diseases like malaria and dengue fever will spread out of the tropics and infect many more people. Rice yields are expected to drop, which could lead to famine. And here's a personal one for me: ragweed pollen production may explode (gah). Anyway, these are a few of the negative effects we might expect.

Many scientists think that if we reduce our emission of greenhouse gases while at the same time protecting greenhouse gas "sinks" like forests, oceans, and even snow algae, we can slow the rate of warming so that we don't suffer potentially catastrophic events.