Global Warming is really starting to run out of gas

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(banjoman @ Oct 24 2007, 07:12 PM) [snapback]530002[/snapback]</div>

First of all, it was not I who was saying it. I was quoting an article attributing the explanation to a scientist, Dr. Peter Noerdlinger, a professor at St. Mary's University in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Secondly, Dr. Noerdlinger wrote that salt water is heavier than fresh water.

Thirdly, ice, does expand. Since it is fresh water (frozen precipitation), it that much lighter than the salt water it displaces when it floats on top of it.

Click on the link in my earlier post to view the photos of the glass filled with salt water and ice, before and after it melted. It should help you understand why the level of the salt water in the glass rises when the floating ice melts.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Oct 24 2007, 06:31 PM) [snapback]529980[/snapback]</div>

Wrong. Read Dr. Noerdlinger's explanation linked in my earlier post.

Wrong again. The ice shelf is receding in Antarctica. In addition, what about all the melting glaciers in Alaska and Greenland?

 

Melting glaciers and land-based ice sheets also contribute to rising sea levels, threatening low-lying areas around the globe with beach erosion, coastal flooding, and contamination of freshwater supplies. (Sea level is not affected when floating sea ice melts.) At particular risk are island nations like the Maldives; over half of that nation's populated islands lie less than 6 feet above sea level. Even major cities like Shanghai and Lagos would face similar problems, as they also lie just six feet above present water levels.

Rising seas would severely impact the United States as well. Scientists project as much as a 3-foot sea-level rise by 2100. According to a 2001 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study, this increase would inundate some 22,400 square miles of land along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, primarily in Louisiana, Texas, Florida and North Carolina.

A warmer Arctic will also affect weather patterns and thus food production around the world. Wheat farming in Kansas, for example, would be profoundly affected by the loss of ice cover in the Arctic. According to a NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies computer model, Kansas would be 4 degrees warmer in the winter without Arctic ice, which normally creates cold air masses that frequently slide southward into the United States. Warmer winters are bad news for wheat farmers, who need freezing temperatures to grow winter wheat. And in summer, warmer days would rob Kansas soil of 10 percent of its moisture, drying out valuable cropland...

Answers to questions about the Arctic's shrinking ice cap and its global significance

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(banjoman @ Oct 24 2007, 08:12 PM) [snapback]530002[/snapback]</div>

It expands considerably when it freezes but it also expands when it warms, though not nearly as much. Still, it is quite measureable.

 

I find these posts very amusing. Someone with no scientific training posts an article written by a journalist and claims that the thousands upon thousands of scientists are wrong about global warming. Only to get shot down because they don't understand even the basics of chemistry, oceanography, climatology, biology etc.

Since I've argued these points with the same same before I am not going to waste time doing it again. They never seem to listen or learn.

 

It's too bad that the consequences of our actions in this arena will affect everyone. Wouldn't it be nice if those who do believe that global warming exists and take actions to slow or halt it could reap the benefits of their actions, while those who don't believe it exists and don't do anything to slow or halt it could reap the benefits of their actions?

Sadly, we only have one planet - and our action or inaction will affect us all.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Oct 24 2007, 01:50 PM) [snapback]529829[/snapback]</div>

What I find interesting about global warming is that a sector of the public, typically identified by party or ideology and not scientific background, works hard to try to debunk the science through a series of ad hominem attacks (e.g. Al Gore uses to much electricity to say anything true about the environment), invalid or only partially scientific observations and half-truths. Ironically the conclusions of science typically have nothing to do with politics, or at least this is my observation after 25 years of science. It took decades for anthropogenic to become widely accepted by the atmospheric science community, just as did plate tectonics. Do you wish to argue that also, since nobody has ever proven that a specific convective plume in Earth's mantle has been shown to cause a specific motion in the Earth's crust?

While those people will still gladly exploit science, even trust their lives when it comes to swallowing a pill for a longer-lasting erection, or traveling in an airplane, they still for some reason cannot wrap their heads around evolution and global warming. They become experts of the fields they wish, as it fits their politics, on a casual basis and turn to talk radio for expert opinion. Perhaps because the conclusions are so dire they cannot bring themselves to find themselves mutually at fault for such a large problem.

If you are going to reject global warming, let's see some of your valid arguments in the literature. In the mean time, the scientific arguments presented so far are about as conclusive as it gets. Although, if you read peer-reviewed publications you'd already know that.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Oct 25 2007, 06:05 AM) [snapback]530179[/snapback]</div>

Find a post where I was wrong. I dare you. No my friend, I think if we were to count up the amount of posts where either of us was wrong you would end up with high score.

At 32yrs of age I have seen quite a bit and have studied much more than the aervage person on these subjects. I never argued for or against the article posted in this thread. I simply made reference to it and how the uneducated like to cherry pick non-peer reviewed articles to support their case. As a student of ecology it is my job to understand context and hidden connections. One can never take something for face value. You attack my education? What is it you are studying again? Where do your credentials lie?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Oct 25 2007, 06:05 AM) [snapback]530179[/snapback]</div>

Have you ever thought about the simple fact that when a big scare occurs that efforts are undertaken to limit or reduce the effects of said scare? Nah, that could never play a part in the big events not occuring. One must also take a look at who is doing the scaring. Is it a scientific consensus or does the media grab a hold of some new study and blow it out of proportion? I'm thinking that the historic trend will show it to be the later.

I urge you to look up all of the data regarding the issues you brought up (global stavation, overpopulation, oil etc.). They are indeed getting worse by the year. You can only live off the principle for so long before you end up bankrupt.

 

For discussion of the facts of global warming by climatologists and atmospheric physicists see http://realclimate.org

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(richard schumacher @ Oct 25 2007, 06:49 AM) [snapback]530203[/snapback]</div>

The skeptics on this site will not relenquish their position based on anything found on that site. We've tried that route many times before. They also refuse to read quality peer-reviewed scientific journals as well.

I must state that Tim Bikes, as a skeptic, does read (journals) and produce the most compelling arguements so I do not wish to lump him in with the others.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Oct 24 2007, 12:12 PM) [snapback]529759[/snapback]</div>

I finally read the article today. Wasn't too hard to see that the pumping groundwater was a big issue, in fact the subheading says "The land is sinking, too, and experts say the city of 10-million will go under in 20 years." Then most of the article is talking about groundwater issues with a side topic of mangrove loss which causes beach erosion (and worsened the effects of the 2004 tsunami in many places). Southern Louisiana is having a similar problem with loss of protective swampland. You had to search the article to find those phrases about global warming. The headline was probably not written by the article's author, I've seen headlines that do all but contradict the entire article because some editor wanted something dramatic-sounding on that page.

or at all

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(F8L @ Oct 25 2007, 06:54 AM) [snapback]530207[/snapback]</div>

Well thank you, F8L. <_<

Although I will admit I am simply a layperson, like many others, dabbling in something I know relatively little about.

Two comments / critiques regarding Real Climate though - and I don't want to discount that there is some great content and discussion there - but...

First, I have come across numerous comments on other websites in which people have complained that their very reasonable, non-offensive "skeptical" comments and arguments are frequently edited and /or deleted from RC by the moderators.

Secondly, RC is run / edited in part by Mann and Schmidt. Mann as you know is the one who promulgated and has vehemently tried to defend the now much disputed "hockey stick" temperature graph. Schmidt is a NASA spokesperson, and in recent (and quite warranted and well supported) critiques of NASA US temperature datasets he was extremely defensive. In my opinion, these guys are a little too close to the topic on a personal level be unbiased moderators and from what I have read, their actions reflect this.

I am not saying there is no value in RC or that one shouldn't read it - just be aware that RC may not be the unbiased source of info it is thought to be.

Cheers!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Oct 25 2007, 08:05 AM) [snapback]530179[/snapback]</div>

The headline was written that way. You need to get past the headlines. The article states Bangkok could be facing serious problems in 15-20 years, and this could be a preview of the problems eventually facing other coastal cities, but it doesn't give a timeline for those cities.

Kind of like the White House editing a report by the CDC of the health effects of global warming. Like the administration knows better than the CDC. From the NY Times: "The White House made deep cuts in written testimony given to a Senate committee this week by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on health risks posed by global warming,"

You don't see the problem because it's hidden from us. Our news shows us every little crime in our own city, the lives of celebrites, sports and weather forecast, and that's it. It doesn't show what's happening in various countries affected by long-term drought (like Sudan/Darfur), how overpopulation is affecting the global fisheries, and deforestation. How people are only being fed because of the miracle of petroleum used as fertilizer and for cheap transport of food. Credible reports are that peak oil is occurring now (or even sometime in 2006), if we didn't have the oil embargoes in the 70's we would have been driving 15mpg vehicles all the time and little insulation in our oil-warmed houses and it would be 6 years ago that peak oil occurred. Nuclear winter obviously comes from a nuclear attack which luckily hasn't happened. 1984 - well, G.Bush is pushing hard for that, what with his warrantless eavesdropping and all, and we aren't patriotic if we would refuse that! There are more - ozone layer depletion, which caused industry to take a hard change in direction but looks like it might be working; acid rain, which didn't go away just because media coverage did, in fact just last month a lawsuit was settled by a powerplant accused of going over the clean air regulations and contributing to acid rain in the NE states. There are more problems, which got a attention (sometimes nauseatingly so), but we worked on them and they got better. AGW is the next big one, and probably the biggest one (other than possibly peak oil) that we need to attack.

Hah, optimum temperature. Doberman was baiting us on that one. Obviously that changes over time, but right now it's what civilization has adapted to. Change that temperature and civilization must adapt. It's only relevant to our civilization (and biodiversity, which is also helpful to civilization in various ways), nature doesn't care about us.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 24 2007, 03:44 PM) [snapback]529824[/snapback]</div>

Thats easy. The optimum average temperature range under which human civilization developed is the optimum average temperature range for the continued existence of human civilization as we know it.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(F8L @ Oct 25 2007, 04:47 AM) [snapback]530159[/snapback]</div>

I totally agree with you. Except I don't find these posts so much amusing as sad. I don't understand how people can be so skeptical of the scientific process, to such a fault. They are so desperate and entrenched in their "belief" they constantly look for any scrap of mis-information that they can use to support their twisted logic.

Part of the problem is the perception in the media. News outlets have been so irresponsible on this issue. News stories have repeatedly given the 5 or 6 so-called climate "experts" that deny global warming equal time in news reports against the findings of thousands of real scientists. Even though the so-called experts are funded by companies like Exxon, haven't published a peer reviewed journal article in years, and are known to have also done PR work for Tobacco companies in denying that smoking causes cancer.

To see more on this, watch this documentary news report from CBC's Fifth Estate.

The science of global warming is very strong, has been strong for decades and is getting stronger everyday. There have been hundreds of peer-reviewed studies over the last 15 years and not one cast doubt on the idea that humans are causing global warming. See Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias
Creating controversy where science finds consensus http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1978

The latest research shows that global warming is occurring at a faster rate than predicted.

And years ago, in 2002, even the Bush administration admitted that global warming was a problem and that humans were the cause. See "Humans Cause of Global Warming, US Admits"

What more needs to be said? So to the deniers out there I say get over yourselves! It's time to act and do your part to make the situation better.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Oct 25 2007, 12:38 PM) [snapback]530333[/snapback]</div>

Wth!?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Fibb222 @ Oct 25 2007, 01:08 PM) [snapback]530304[/snapback]</div>

I totally agree with this.

As far as the original post goes, viking31 is confusing bad journalism and science. He makes the error of thinking the existence of this article in some way supports his views regarding AGW. The fact that some random journalist writes a bad article has nothing whatsoever to do with AGW. The bad journalism is irrelevent to anything but journalism.

Other examples of this kind of flawed logic include the constant refrain of blaming the messenger (Al Gore). Pointless. I don't care if Al Gore lives in 15 mansions and leaves every light on in everyone of them all the time. Al Gores actions have no influence on facts regarding global climate, whatever they may be.

viking31, when you resort to this type of flawed thinking and seem to believe it is significant, I am lead to conclude your views on AGW are probably based on similarly flawed logic.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Oct 24 2007, 01:50 PM) [snapback]529829[/snapback]</div>

Didn't see this response earlier.

You cannot glean global impacts from a representative example of one city. It's statistically useless.

Also, as the atmosphere (and ocean) warms and sea level rises it will not, in fact, affect each coastal region in the same way. This is because of things like very complex tides and unequal temperatures. "Sea level" is not a simple number. For that matter, agreeing on an average sea level is also not trivial. But this doesn't not mean that growing amounts of coastal areas won't be increasingly inundated because many places will. If you don't believe that, write it down on a piece of paper with your signature, tape it to your wall, then look at that in 20 years. It is simply impossible for the amount of melting we see in Antarctica and Greenland to NOT increase sea level by significant amounts. Do you disbelieve that these ice sheets are melting? Or do you think the "liberal media" is twisting the data reported? One example, do you have any idea how old the Larson ice shelf _was_? Now that most of that is gone, there is nothing to keep the glacial flows from accelerating above the former shelf. The ice in Antarctica is up to 9,000' thick. You can do a back of the envelope calculation of how much the sea level will rise if a continent the size of Antarctica with an average of about a mile thick of ice all melts into the sea. With global temperatures continually increasing, all of that ice will eventually melt. That may take 100 years, it may take 500 years, but it's going to happen if rising temperatures aren't reversed.

The amount of warming that has already occurred simply has not been enough to expand the ocean and melt enough land-locked ice to raise the ocean enough to affect many places. Although Tuvalu may have a different opinion.

1/10" per year is nothing in one year, but a huge issue in 30 years. Again, if you're not convinced all you have to do is watch, or read the relevant scientific literature.