Interesting Article on "Anthropogenic Climate Change"

Reid Bryson brings a lot of experience to the table. Out of great respect for him, I should not wish to speculate whether he is viewing objectively the more recent work in this field.

Temperature trends in the Atlantic *are* receiving a lot of attention. Here is something else recent on that subject:

http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf

It is not always in our best interest to rely on popular media sources concerning complex matters such as directional climate change. The primary scientific literature is certainly opaque at times, but that's where the action is.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Jun 21 2007, 09:06 AM) [snapback]465772[/snapback]</div>

Change of current patterns.
Instead of warm water being brought up from the equator area (and, down from the equator area in the southern hemisphere), the cold waters of the polar regions are being drawn down.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Jun 21 2007, 09:11 AM) [snapback]465775[/snapback]</div>

If you take a look at tochatihu's link, you'll see that a) the temperature measurement was for a limited area of the ocean, and b.) the equipment used for the measurement was found to be faulty.

Regions of the oceans have varying temperatures. If a particular area is warming or cooling, other areas may or may not also change. Assuming the tests are performed correctly.

Again, you should look at the link.

 

Colder oceans has to be because of GW remember there are far too many jobs, departments, and gov funding depending upon GW. Becides there are a lot of people who's living depends on keeping the GW debate and the fear tactic going.


Malorn; wait for it....... There will come movie & tv show referals, not to mention other means of proving the GW debate to you..

I really believe its a natural occurence, ie a cycle in life we humans may be adding to the mix a little but from most of the information provided its based on natural progression..... :mellow:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Jun 21 2007, 11:11 AM) [snapback]465775[/snapback]</div>

Lets see...tons of ice melting...nope doesn't make water warmer, least not the last time I had a glass of ice water.

The current is changing due to this influx of colder water. This is not some cover-up like you seem to be implying. Heck, the whole movie "The Day After Tomorrow" was based on this very scenario, albeit sped up to ridiculous Hollywood speeds.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Jun 21 2007, 09:05 AM) [snapback]465693[/snapback]</div>

If you drop an ice cube into a cup of water what will the temperature of the water do?

You know that the polar ice caps are melting into the oceans right? Could that be the reason why the Atlantic Ocean is cooling?

 

Richard Grey at CSU is one of the folks in the States who makes hurricane activity predictions. He's pretty well respected. He's also a AGW skeptic.

That's apples and oranges. Climate models don't model weather. Hurricanes are weather. Weather is very sensitive to initial conditions. Climate models measure/model the deterministic properties of the climate system. Things that are really complex/chaotic that depend heavily on initial conditions are parameterized by the models. At least, that's my understanding of it. Can anybody explain it more accurately/concisely?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Jun 21 2007, 01:02 PM) [snapback]465808[/snapback]</div>

The Arctic ice cap (ice pack) is already in the Arctic Ocean it gets bigger and smaller each year. It has a winter extent and summer extent. This depends on the temperature of the air. If more ice forms in the arctic ocean in winter then the air is colder. If less ice forms in winter then the air is warmer. More arctic ice means colder arctic waters. Less ice means warmer arctic waters.

Here is a question for you all. If all the Artic ice pack were to melt how much would sea level rise?

 

It's like a pan of water stuck on a hob. Can you predict where bubbles are going to form, or the currents in the pan? No, it's chaotic. But you can certainly predict how long it will take to reach boiling. A system that's chaotic on a small timescale can be non-chaotic on a larger timescale.

As it happens, climate models do simulate weather, to quite a fine level of detail. They're basically the same system used to create weather forecasts. After a short while, they will no longer be producing accurate local results, but it doesn't matter - over the long timescale it doesn't really matter which particular day it rains over England - that doesn't affect long-term climate trends. As long as the model simulates the general pattern of weather conditions, you still get a good estimate of long-term climate.

These models have been run and tested both on existing weather records (say, simulating the years 1920-2000) to a good degree of accuracy, and have successfully predicted climate change in the last decade or so (so models designed in 1995, for example, have produced good predictions for the climate up to 2005).

 

You can start here:

http://www.poptech.com/popcasts/PopCasts.aspx?viewcastid=53

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bestmapman @ Jun 21 2007, 01:36 PM) [snapback]465834[/snapback]</div>

If you consider the Arctic ice cap to be only the ice that is already floating in the ocean, then there would be no increase in sea level if that ice melted. It is already displacing all the water it will displace, frozen or melted.

However, the doomsayers usually talk specifically about the land based ice packs on Greenland.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Jun 21 2007, 12:17 PM) [snapback]465821[/snapback]</div>

Let me preface this by saying that I'm not a climatologist. I readily admit that we do not absolutely know everything about global warming nor do we know precisely what its consequences may be

To this question, the answer is, it can be(but not necessarily) to both.

At the equator when the sun heats the ocean, it's reasonable to say, "This sun is heating the ocean." If CO2 and other greenhouse gases can be shown to trap more heat, it's reasonable to say, "Not only is the sun heating the ocean here, but this additional heat is heating the ocean more than usual or at least more than what is scientifically expected."

At the polar caps, it's reasonable to say, "The climatic temperature is warmer than usual, therefore, this is a likely cause that the polar caps are melting. Big chunks of ice are falling into the sea. Where the ice falls into the sea, the ice cools the water."

When the warmer water mixes with the cooler water, perhaps there's more cooler water to cause an average cooling of the atlantic. I don't know I'm not a oceanologist. As someone who's been to both Hawaii and Alaska, it's obvious that water in the same ocean has different temperatures. To hear "the atlantic ocean is cooling" I'd have to hear a little more like how they came to that conclusion and what methods were used to determine this.

Science is not infallible. But like another poster metaphorized, when you see smoke off in the horizon, should you check to see if it's something that can be harmful to you, your family, your town, or just argue about how going out to check this fire and even try putting it out is going to be too much work?

 

Here's a discussion of a set of 1988 predictions:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...88-projections/

That did a pretty good job modelling 1984-2006. There were three scenarios simulated, depending on different levels of CO2 emission - the actual levels were close to his middle scenario B, and the scenario B prediction is as accurate as you could hope for, given the other short-term perturbations like volcanoes.