Man Based Global Warming....

[Shawn Clark]

Originally Posted by TimBikes

No - I'll let you (and others) judge for themselves whether the antarctic is gaining or losing ice mass.

Area measurements aren't particularly heplful. Give me volume, then we have something reasonable to start with. The Rio Grande can be quite wide and a few inches deep...but I wouldnt compare it to rivers equally as wide and many feet deep.

What really matters is the total system energy change (global). I expect cold weather pushing south (northern hemisphere) to actually warm the upper latitudes for example if it cools the southern latitudes. Getting an accurate energy balance between the ocean, surface, air temps, as well as vapor loads, seems rather non-trivial to me over short time spans.

I'm at a disadvantage in that I don't know the calculated enthalpy differences due to various global factors in the course of a normal/average year or normal variation in a given year. That makes it difficult for me to make qualitative judgments in short (annual) time horizons.

[dbermanmd]

Originally Posted by hyo silver

Learning requires listening, d berman. I don't believe you're genuinely interested in getting an education.

you are truly mistaken my friend. there is obviously a herd mentality when it comes to man based global warming - cult like.

i have always been suspicious of cults and herds .... i usually assume that they are wrong and that other things in life it mimics a pendulum that corrects over time finding a middle ground.

i believe in the 1970's time magazine and lots of others were worried about global cooling,,, now a few short decades later,,, global warming....

i find it hard to believe that we can accurately predict the climate or the effects man or CO2 has on it when we consider how complex this planet is,,, how many facts we do not understand have to have major impact on our climate,,,,

i find it hard to believe that even the most sophisticated companies that try to design metals and other conductive substances that can control the environment of their experiments to the Nth degree have trouble creating superconductive substances,,, and yet we can create math models that predict the environmental impact of mankind on a plant of this size.

yes, color me a skeptic,,, but do NOT color my mind closed. you have yet to convince me that we are the basis of global warming. and for sure,,, i am not ready to support measures that will cause tremendous economic dislocations to supposedly fix an issue i believe is "man-made" [excuse the pun].

[Fibb222]

Originally Posted by dbermanmd

you are truly mistaken my friend. there is obviously a herd mentality when it comes to man based global warming - cult like.

i have always been suspicious of cults and herds .... i usually assume that they are wrong and that other things in life it mimics a pendulum that corrects over time finding a middle ground.

i believe in the 1970's time magazine and lots of others were worried about global cooling,,, now a few short decades later,,, global warming....

i find it hard to believe that we can accurately predict the climate or the effects man or CO2 has on it when we consider how complex this planet is,,, how many facts we do not understand have to have major impact on our climate,,,,

i find it hard to believe that even the most sophisticated companies that try to design metals and other conductive substances that can control the environment of their experiments to the Nth degree have trouble creating superconductive substances,,, and yet we can create math models that predict the environmental impact of mankind on a plant of this size.

yes, color me a skeptic,,, but do NOT color my mind closed. you have yet to convince me that we are the basis of global warming. and for sure,,, i am not ready to support measures that will cause tremendous economic dislocations to supposedly fix an issue i believe is "man-made" [excuse the pun].

There are certainly a number of cult like herds out there (Christians for example). This is as far away from that as you can get - WHY? because scientific data has the ultimate say as to what we "believe" about the AGW hypothesis. We aren't relying on some charismatic emperor expert with empty words.

[MegansPrius]

Originally Posted by Alric

Yes. Doran is the author of the paper you cite. The author explains how his data was misinterpreted here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/op...oran.html?_r=1

"In a rebuttal in The Providence Journal, in Rhode Island, the lead author of the Science paper and I explained that our studies offered no evidence that the earth was cooling. But the misinterpretation had already become legend, and in the four and half years since, it has only grown."

As usual when a paper is presented by a contrarian as evidence against AGW it is a misrepresentation.

"In the meantime, I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming. I know my coauthors would as well."

oops...I guess another one of the papers you presented can be removed from the list. I have the feeling that just like the entire hockey stick section and this paper, all the papers cited by your source actually do not argue against AGW at all.

Doran also has a full page on his web site detailing the distortion of his data. It makes for interesting reading.
Peter T. Doran | Dr. Peter Doran, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago

But I was most amused by his conclusion:

1. It has always amazed me that skeptics of climate warming are quite ready to distrust 99% of the scientific community, but they immediately trust me only because I wrote a paper they "thought" supported their argument.

2. My favorite argument from global warming critics is "it's been warmer than this in the past" or "temperatures fluctuate all the time". But how do they know this? Because of the scientific evidence. So why do they question everything said by climate scientists concerning modern climate??

[Alric]

Originally Posted by dbermanmd

yes, color me a skeptic,,, but do NOT color my mind closed.

If you choose not to believe the best available information you are being close-minded. Open-minded means accepting the best available information no matter where it takes you.

[hyo silver]

A cult?!!!

You can either accept reality or live in denial. The choice is yours.

[MegansPrius]

More news out today:

Press report (BBC):

New evidence on Antarctic warming
The continent of Antarctica is warming up in step with the rest of the world, according to a new analysis.


Scientists say data from satellites and weather stations indicate a warming of about 0.6C over the last 50 years.

Writing in the journal Nature, they say the trend is "difficult to explain" without the effect of rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, scientists in Antarctica say a major ice shelf is about to break away from the continent.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is said to be "hanging by a thread" from the Antarctic Peninsula, the strip of land pointing from the white continent towards the southern tip of South America.

Source Journal Article: Nature: Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year

[excerpt] An outstanding question in Antarctic climatology has been whether the strong warming of the peninsula has also occurred in continental West Antarctica19. Our results indicate that this is indeed the case, at least over the last 50 years. Moreover, ice-core analyses indicate average warming of West Antarctica over the entire twentieth century27. Although the influence of ozone-related changes in the SAM has been emphasized in recent studies of Antarctic temperature trends, the spatial and seasonal patterns of the observed temperature trends indicate that higher-order modes of atmospheric circulation, associated with regional sea-ice changes, have had a larger role in West Antarctica.

Mean surface temperature trends in both West and East Antarctica are positive for 1957–2006, and the mean continental warming is comparable to that for the Southern Hemisphere as a whole28. This warming trend is difficult to explain without the radiative forcing associated with increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations. However, the future trajectory of Antarctic temperature change also depends on the extent to which changes in atmospheric composition (whether from greenhouse gases or stratospheric ozone) affect Southern Hemisphere sea ice and regional atmospheric circulation patterns. Improved representation in models of coupled atmosphere/sea-ice dynamics will be critical for forecasting Antarctic temperature change.

[malorn]

Originally Posted by MegansPrius

More news out today:

Press report (BBC):

New evidence on Antarctic warming
The continent of Antarctica is warming up in step with the rest of the world, according to a new analysis.


Scientists say data from satellites and weather stations indicate a warming of about 0.6C over the last 50 years.

Writing in the journal Nature, they say the trend is "difficult to explain" without the effect of rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, scientists in Antarctica say a major ice shelf is about to break away from the continent.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is said to be "hanging by a thread" from the Antarctic Peninsula, the strip of land pointing from the white continent towards the southern tip of South America.

Source Journal Article: Nature: Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year

[excerpt] An outstanding question in Antarctic climatology has been whether the strong warming of the peninsula has also occurred in continental West Antarctica19. Our results indicate that this is indeed the case, at least over the last 50 years. Moreover, ice-core analyses indicate average warming of West Antarctica over the entire twentieth century27. Although the influence of ozone-related changes in the SAM has been emphasized in recent studies of Antarctic temperature trends, the spatial and seasonal patterns of the observed temperature trends indicate that higher-order modes of atmospheric circulation, associated with regional sea-ice changes, have had a larger role in West Antarctica.

Mean surface temperature trends in both West and East Antarctica are positive for 1957–2006, and the mean continental warming is comparable to that for the Southern Hemisphere as a whole28. This warming trend is difficult to explain without the radiative forcing associated with increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations. However, the future trajectory of Antarctic temperature change also depends on the extent to which changes in atmospheric composition (whether from greenhouse gases or stratospheric ozone) affect Southern Hemisphere sea ice and regional atmospheric circulation patterns. Improved representation in models of coupled atmosphere/sea-ice dynamics will be critical for forecasting Antarctic temperature change.

Was the satellite data combined with the station data because the satellite data on its own shows cooling over the last 30 years?

[MegansPrius]

Originally Posted by malorn

Was the satellite data combined with the station data because the satellite data on its own shows cooling over the last 30 years?

This research was conducted, as science often is, in order to try to improve upon past research. It does not contradict the East Antarctic cooling shown during the 30 year period of 1969-2000.

RealClimate:

Our results do not contradict earlier studies suggesting that some regions of Antarctica have cooled. Why? Because those studies were based on shorter records (20-30 years, not 50 years) and because the cooling is limited to the East Antarctic. Our results show this too, as is readily apparent by comparing our results for the full 50 years (1957-2006) with those for 1969-2000 (the dates used in various previous studies), below.
2) Our results do not necessarily contradict the generally-accepted interpretation of recent East Antarctic cooling put forth by David Thompson (Colorado State) and Susan Solomon (NOAA Aeronomy Lab). In an important paper in Science, they presented evidence that this cooling trend is linked to an increasing trend in the strength of the circumpolar westerlies, and that this can be traced to changes in the stratosphere, mostly due to photochemical ozone losses. Substantial ozone losses did not occur until the late 1970s, and it is only after this period that significant cooling begins in East Antarctica.
3) Our paper — by itself — does not address whether Antarctica's recent warming is part of a longer term trend. There is separate evidence from ice cores that Antarctica has been warming for most of the 20th century, but this is complicated by the strong influence of El Niño events in West Antarctica. In our own published work to date (Schneider and Steig, PNAS), we find that the 1940s [edit for clarity: the 1935-1945 decade] were the warmest decade of the 20th century in West Antarctica, due to an exceptionally large warming of the tropical Pacific at that time.
So what do our results show? Essentially, that the big picture of Antarctic climate change in the latter part of the 20th century has been largely overlooked. It is well known that it has been warming on the Antarctic Peninsula, probably for the last 100 years (measurements begin at the sub-Antarctic Island of Orcadas in 1901 and show a nearly monotonic warming trend). And yes, East Antarctica cooled over the 1980s and 1990s (though not, in our results, at a statistically significant rate). But West Antarctica, which no one really has paid much attention to (as far as temperature changes are concerned), has been warming rapidly for at least the last 50 years.

Source paper in Nature:

Recent changes in Antarctic ice-sheet surface temperatures appear enigmatic when compared with global average temperature trends. Although the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most rapidly warming locations on Earth, weather stations on the Antarctic continent generally show insignificant trends in recent decades1. However, all but two of the continuous records from weather stations are near the coast, providing little direct information on conditions in the continental interior. The widely used weather forecast reanalysis data are known to have errors owing to inconsistent assimilation skill in the satellite and pre-satellite eras3.
...

Previous reconstructions of Antarctic near-surface temperatures have yielded inconsistent results, particularly over West Antarctica, where records are few and discontinuous5, 6, 7. We improve upon this earlier work in several ways. We use two independent estimates of the spatial covariance of temperature across the Antarctic ice sheet: surface temperature measurements from satellite thermal infrared (TIR) observations8, and up-to-date automatic weather station (AWS) measurements of near-surface air temperature

[TimBikes]

Originally Posted by Fibb222

I've read that we can't risk going over 500 ppm or carbon cycle feedbacks might go into over drive sending us to 800 ppm and rapid/catastrophic change. 450 is probably the safest realistic maximum we could come back from in our goal towards 350.

Hopefully smart grids, EVs, negawatts, cellulosic ethanol, renewable electricity generation of all kinds and biochar can get us there.

Fair enough. I believe Hansen suggests a doubling of CO2 to pre-industrial levels (~560 ppm) risks "dangerous anthropogenic interference". Of course, this assumes positive feedbacks in the climate system play their supposed role, which to me it is not clear they would (water vapor and aerosols being suspect in particular).

As far as what "gets us there" (below a doubling of CO2), I believe Hansen suggests no less that a complete abandonment of all coal-fired power plants in the U.S. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, for a lot of reasons, something is going to have to replace that output. I haven't seen the data - so if you have it, please share - will "smart grids, EVs, negawatts, cellulosic ethanol, renewable electricity generation of all kinds and biochar" be able to replace 1/2 of all electrical generation?

Then of course, there is the question of China that is building something like one coal-fired plant every couple of weeks I think.