HUMAN CONSEQUENCES Top Left: Palma de Mallorca, Spain, Feb. 4, 2012: Unexpected snow on the warm island of Majorca.
Top Right: Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 2010: The “snowmageddon” blizzard shut down the federal government for nearly a week.
Bottom Left: Carligu Mic, Romania, Feb. 11, 2012: Some 35,000 people in the region were isolated from food and water. Sixteen people in the area died over two days.
Bottom Right: Constanta, Romania, on the Black Sea, Feb. 1, 2012: Temperatures inland dropped to −34 degrees Celsius.
Image: DANIEL MIHAILESCU Getty Images, JAMIE REINA Getty Images; PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVALS AP Photo
In Brief
- Global warming has increased the loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, which has altered atmospheric conditions that influence winter weather in the U.S. and Europe.
- The changes lead to invasions of Arctic air into the middle latitudes, increasing the likelihood of severe winter outbreaks, which occurred in the eastern U.S. and northern Europe in 2010 and 2011 and in eastern Europe in January 2012.
- The deck may be stacked for harsh outbreaks during the 2012–2013 winter in North America and Europe.
More In This Article
Editor's Note (11/13/12): This article was edited after original publication in the print edition to include several corrections and clarifications.
The past three winters in parts of North America and Europe were unusual. First, during the winters of 2009–2011, the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and western and northern Europe endured a series of exceptionally cold and snowy storms—including the February 2010 “snowmageddon” storm in Washington, D.C., that shut down the federal government for nearly a week. Later that year, in October, the NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC) forecasted a mild 2010–2011 winter for the eastern U.S., based on a La Niña pattern of cooler than usual ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific. But even with La Niña's moderating effects, very low temperatures and record snowfalls hit New York City and Philadelphia in January 2011, catching the CPC and other forecasters by surprise.
This article was originally published with the title The Winters of Our Discontent.
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63 Comments
Add CommentScience is based on observations. The scientist observes, categorizes, hypothesizes, tests, theorizes, tests again and creates a law.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith climatology we may still be at the hypothesizing stage and testing may not have been done satisfactorily.
Business might be expected to spend a lot of money not based on law or theory but based on hypotheses. The climatologists act like they have a law. But I am suspicious with their causal conclusions.
I am not 100% comfortable with my suspicions and I do not have the climatologists background to know where the actual climatolgist are in terms of hypotheses versus laws. But people can understand my reluctance to accept something that may be scientifically unproven. Worse than that I feel I could be intentionally mislead because of my poor climatology education.
There is little 'science' in so-called climate science. There may or may not be validity but the actual scientific methodolgy wouldn't pass a junior high science class.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEducated speculation is not science. Hunches are not science. International get togethers are not science. Climatologists need to regroup, do some navel gazing and return to non-agenda driven studies.
Using words like extreme, warning, danger, etc. may have their place in social media but they are not part of science. Science is about non-judgemental observations and conclusions.
I'm not exactly sure why anyone can think they can explain unrelated extreme weather events using some common denominator. There has been extreme weather since the beginning of the Earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs the above posters wisely point out, some scientific perspective is much needed.
So now the alarmist message is: If we don't stop global warming... we will all freeze to death. No mention of Antarctic record high ice extent, nor the normally open water that was subsequently frozen over there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGlobal warming causes all. GK
@G. Karst, you have been pointed to the science regarding the Antarctic so your continued misrepresentation of the issue is a deliberate act of fraud. Once again, this tells us more about your low moral character than about climate science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScienceproofreader is an established liar. He has nothing of value to contribute to this conversation.
@jayjacobus, "hypotheses versus laws" that statement implies a tremendous lack of scientific literacy. My advice, until you actually understand something, it's better to listen and learn, rather than sharing your ignorance with everyone.
@Fitandready, "I'm not exactly sure why anyone can think they can explain unrelated extreme weather events using some common denominator." it takes an extremely ignorant person to make such an asinine comment. The planet's climate is by its very definition the common denominator of the planet's weather. Are you really that dense? The one requiring the scientific perspective is yourself. You can start by trying to understand what science is.
Should we be surprised that the cadre of deniers that rear their ugly heads time and time again to spout the same B.S. are a collection of frauds, pathological liars and halfwits? All the deniers need to do is provide one link to incontrovertible science that shows AGW to be impossible and the debate will be over. Well they haven't done that. And not only have they failed to provide one rational argument to disprove AGW they don't even have one rational person to represent their position.
It is interesting that those that fear additional atmospheric CO2 are now the ones who have reduced to unscientific name calling of individuals when they have no actual science to support their conclusions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRobert Schmidt is an example. He writes a lot of name calling and no actual science.
@Sicko, thanks for once again showing that the denier policy is to simply lie. There are mountains of evidence, much of it available here at sciam, and I have frequently provided links to actual science, not opinion pieces. None of you or your denier cadre have done that. Besides, I am not the one saying the scientists are all wrong, you are. You are the one that needs to prove your hypothesis. The fact that you are willfully unaware of the science only demonstrates that you are not interesting in knowing the truth, only in advancing your ideology. It's not my job to educate you. As I've pointed out before, the issue here has nothing to do with science only the low moral character of people such as yourself who fraudulently misrepresent the science in order to advance a fanatic right wing agenda.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRSchmidt, it is the lack of warming which causes cooling. I know this threatens your ideological hopes and aspirations, but you must face up to that fact. There is probably a lot more of it coming, over the next decade or so. Will we be ready? Probably not due to the misdirection of CO2 demonizing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is an action, that can be prudently executed by UN and individual nations. The world stockpiling of grain and non-perishable food-stocks, for the inevitable food disruptions, that natural climate change eventually brings.
You see anything, like that, happening now?! Do you hear warmist calling for such "precautionary" principled actions? Even the ancient Egyptians realized they couldn't continue with "just on time delivery", with their food pantry. Wisdom is not temporal. Climates are always shifting. GK
@G. Karst, "it is the lack of warming which causes cooling. I know this threatens your ideological hopes and aspirations" serious dude you sound schizophrenic. If you are in fact suffering from a mental illness please forgive my callousness. First off, not sure what you mean but if you are suggesting there has been a lack of warming then you are just demonstrating your own ignorance. Please see:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
If you have a better source that shows different results I would like to see it.
"You see anything, like that, happening now?!", first off, most nations do already stockpile food stuffs for emergencies. But stockpiling only helps as a stop gap measure to deal with a natural disaster or similar event. Stockpiling will not resolve food shortages caused by desertification.
..but I really need to address the nature of the comment itself, the implication is that your observations about "what is going on" somehow gives you insights into the issue of climate change that are more correct, more valid than the world's scientists and policymakers. This seems to be a, "delusion of grandeur". The rambling nature of your various posts, the nonsense, the paranoid delusions, unfortunately lead me to believe you are suffering from some sort of cognitive disorder.
If you aren't I would high suggest you take a few moments to understand logic and the scientific method. Your thoughts are not coherent.
Perhaps what is needed is the formula for temperature on Earth. With a formula it will be possible to see the independent variables that cause the temperature on Earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps the temperature of the sun causes the most fluctuations. Or maybe the distance from the sun is most important.
Or maybe random fluctuations are important.
The relative stability of the average temperatures could actually be quite unusual on other planets and thus, is peculiar (and unexplained) on Earth.
If there is a high correlation between amount of CO2 and temperature I have not seen it. This could be because nobody has calculated it or it could be that the coefficient of correlation is low. But the correlation of the sun temperature to temperature should be high.
Scientific study and analysis will eventually lead to some conclusions.
Name calling won't.
You have a near religious fervor for this topic. Your frustration with non-believers is beyond scientific. You risk being seen as a fanatic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"If there is a high correlation between amount of CO2 and temperature I have not seen it."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe this will help. Are you mentally impaired, or have you insinuated that you, personally, have not "seen it"? Have you been hiding under a rock?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-change.html
You have the equation for temperature on Earth? Is CO2 the only factor?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour source relies heavily on Hansen's work. For some people nothing he says or does could possibly be wrong no matter how he distorts the data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA refresher is in order. Back in the eighties Hansen & many of his colleagues were claiming that the earths average temperature was 15C. Later they changed this figure to an average of 14C. Result? Instant leap in global warming.
This is a common tactic. Distort the old data like Mann did with his hockey stick & instantly you make the present look extreme.
Claiming falsely that the warming period only occurred in the northern hemisphere is another tactic.
Here is a paper with background information:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.tos.org/oceanography/archive/25-2_greene.html
Summary: Higher Arctic temperatures are weakening and disrupting Arctic weather patterns, allowing more cold and humid air to travel to southern latitudes, which in turn causes massive snowfalls in Europe and North America.
The Earth is incredibly resilient & has many feedback loops that help to maintain a relatively stable climate. The AGW argument proposes harmful feedback when in fact the reverse is true. If the information in your post & in this article proves to be valid it will be a stabilising influence. Massive snow areas in lower latitudes will reflect more radiation back into space than the same area in higher latitudes because in winter the higher latitudes very little radiation from sunlight to be reflected whereas the lower latitudes receive much more. This swing of the pendulum will help to restore equilibrium.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you also have a hurricane model? Did it predict Sandy and Katrina BEFORE they occurred?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe eagerness to attack anything on the pages of Scientific American that references the science of climate change is amazing. Somebody must be paying you guys well, and feeding you with lots of stuff to spit out there that maybe sounds a little scientific. Do you really think you're convincing anybody that your version of science is real, because it's very difficult reading what you write to imagine that even you believe it!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRSchmidt's fervor is for science as distinguished from deception. The massive deception that greets any story about climate change, bordering on a religious fervor of its own, speaks volumes for where it's coming from. And that fervor gets even louder when it's uncovered.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for the link.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore snow cover in lower latitudes could reflect more sunlight back into space. However, don't forget that during the summer season, high latitudes receive quite a bit of sunlight, and a massive loss of ice cover in these regions may overwhelm the additional snow in lower latitudes. Also, that snow in lower latitudes does not last long, whereas Arctic sea ice has been there 24-7 for all 12 months of the year, year after year. I suspect that it would take an awful lot of additional snow in lower latitudes to offset the loss of the north polar ice cap if that happens.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that it would would not totally mitigate the loss of the arctic ice cap but it will still help to restore the balance. The same type of feedback balancing could be occuring via increased cloud from extra evaporation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe frustration of unbiased people comes from the poor quality of the arguments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf there is a model, is it stable or does it change every year? Has it been tested for sensitivity to independent variables? How sensitive is the model to CO2 changes? Has it been successful in predicting temperatures in the past?
Are there competing models? Have the models been accepted independent statisticians?
Hurricane models demonstrate the cost of a storm IF it hits a metropolitan area but does not predict when and where a huricane will hit.
They are arguments that will be convincing. Name calling is not.
And it is also possible that the extra evaporation, rather than increasing cloud cover, will simply increase the greenhouse effect and worsen the positive feedback.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI trust that the professionals doing the independent research for a living will ask those questions about models. I don't trust the folks running websites of questionable motivation to provide legitimate questions. There are too many well-endowed interests who would love to see doubt manufactured, and who have a history of doing it before very successfully. So unless you do climate research for a living, I am sorry but I cannot trust your judgement.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd you could trust any other professionals that you want. But trust is not a scientific method.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf there was positive feedback occuring, global temperatures would have reflected it. Instead we have global temperatures that do not match the CO2 predicted rate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrue, trust comes from common sense, and it's not part of the scientific method. Common sense tells me not to trust someone who may have a vested interest in the answer coming out a certain way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe globe is very big with massive oceans of water with tremendously huge capacity to absorb heat energy. I would not be too surprised if the impacts of positive feedback were absorbed by the oceans and were not immediately apparent in atmospheric temperature increases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, which means that any temperature increases we are now experiencing could be because of heat being released from the oceans that was originally stored decades, centuries or thousands of years ago. We certainly do not know enough to blame CO2. from the present era.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, we do know enough to blame CO2 in the current atmosphere. The people doing the research, who spent years in training and have spent years studying the atmosphere and oceans, they know this. Their agenda is to understand how the world works, not to manufacture a crisis to secure research funding. There are plenty of others whose agenda is clearly to manufacture uncertainty so as to avoid any regulations which might hurt their bottom line.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost businesses will not spend exceptional amounts of money without a cost-benefit analysis. Yet I have not seen this analysis for any one company or for all companies as a whole.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome Climatologists may say that cost-benefit is not important to them or even to the population in general. If they were absorbing the costs, a cost benefit analysis would be mandatory.
Climate scientists, for the most part, would be concerned with how the climate system works. And they could tell you the most likely ways that we could reduce the severity of future climate changes. Some might also be able to help with an estimate of costs of future climate disruptions. But someone else would have to do the cost analysis and make the policy decisions involved for actions to reduce CO2 emissions and reduce deforestation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut if some people have no money in the pot, can we trust them to give a practical answer?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn fact, they can seek outrageous solutions because cost is not their concern.
In corporate planning, it is silly to fix your plans on the actions of people you don't control if you don't have their support. But this is exactly what climatologists are doing.
Instead, they should focus on what they can do with the support they have. A workable marketing plan would be a good place to start.
I don't know what you are trying to say, and I would like to understand. Who do you mean when you use the word "climatologist?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe you are saying we should not trust climate scientists to propose solutions to the climate crisis since they have no reason to worry about costs versus benefits.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would agree that climate scientists are not the ones who alone should make decisions about how our country, for example, might limit CO2 emissions. They should be the ones describing the technical options, but the society as a whole, led by its leaders, needs to make the decisions on what actually is done.
Climate policy is for political leaders to decide. Climate science is for climate scientists to discover and explain. It's when particular stakeholders try to win the policy debate by sowing confusion about the science that things get ugly. And that is where we have been for the past decade at least.
There is very little doubt remaining that CO2 and deforestation is causing global warming, that the CO2 is from our burning of fossil fuels, that the climate changes that will result from global warming are potentially very dangerous and extremely costly to human society over the long term. Some areas will be hit harder than others, and we don't know all the details about that. We also don't know exactly how bad it will get and how soon. Yes, there are many unknowns and uncertainties. But what is happening and why it is happening is very clear, and the combination of the likelihood of bad things happening and the severity of those bad things strongly suggest we do what we can to limit climate change.
What exactly we do of course has to undergo some sort of cost-benefit analysis, but this needs to be done understanding that there are many unknowns that could go either way, that is, it could not be as bad as some prediction, or it could be worse than some prediction.
And as the tobacco industry proved years ago, it is all too easy to mislead and confuse, all in the name of "sound science," when what they were really about was simply sowing doubt with stuff that "sounds like science" but really distorted the science. They did a tremendous disservice to democracy by undermining the general public's faith in science, which we are reaping today with the cynical opinion many have of scientists.
But I digress.
Well then, why is the result predicted years ago not apparent? Just look at the graphs of what was predicted & check it against the reality. Find them yourself by the way. anything I or any other sceptic puts up is automatically discounted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInconvenient Truth: Sea Level Rise has Decelerated 44% since 2005
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDespite alarmist claims to the contrary, the rate of sea level rise has been decelerating for the past 8000 years. The rate of sea level rise decreased in the latter half of the 20th century, despite an exponential increase in CO2 levels. A further 60% deceleration since 2005 was noted by a paper published in 2009 in Ocean Science and based on satellite data as of June 2008. I have updated the graph from this paper with the latest available data from the University of Colorado (seasonal signal removed, inverse barometer applied): http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2010/09/inconvenient-truth-sea-level-rise-has.html
You may have a good feel for perspectives other than your own when you wrote:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"What exactly we do of course has to undergo some sort of cost-benefit analysis, but this needs to be done understanding that there are many unknowns that could go either way, that is, it could not be as bad as some prediction, or it could be worse than some prediction."
This is true. People, because of their circumstances, may take extreme perspectives. But observers cannot tell who is an extremist and who is a centrist without doing their own independent science. This can leave the fair observer frustrated when he tries to understand.
I am hardly an expert on sea level. The article you refer to indicates the rate of sea level rise decreased since 2005. Just as it is unwise to draw conclusions from atmospheric temperature trends for short time periods (say, 1998 to present), it is also unwise to draw conclusions from changes to sea level rise rates from 2005 to 2010. You can't just go skimming the abstracts of scientific publications and picking and pulling tidbits that confirm your desires. I've been reading about findings in atmospheric science since I was a graduate student in the late 1970s. I was skeptical of the significance of climate change long before I became concerned about it. I've weighed the evidence for years, and based on what I've seen over the past decade or so, global warming is quite real and climate change is happening. A single report of a slowing in the rate at which sea level continues to rise does not persuade me that the hundreds of other pieces of evidence I've read about over the past dozen years are all wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are many reports, including from actual carved in rock tide gauges from the 1880s, that is EIGHTEEN EIGHTIES that do not show above long term trend. Why chose to reject this hard data. Satelite data is not as reliable as many give it credit. There are many variables that are calculated before satelite measurements are reported due to many variables. Recently it was reported that a new satelite was needed to sort out existing errors. It is not simply a matter of taking a simple measurment. Carved in rock tide gauges are much simpler & more reliable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, I was impressed that the report you first referenced was satellite data. Coastal measurements sea level are subject to error due to the land rising and sinking. In fact, melting ice sheets can cause nearby land areas to rise in response to the decreased mass pushing them down, it's called isostatic rebound. So I am not impressed with 1880s-era rock gauges, in and of themselves. Without knowing details of the rising or sinking of the land those gauges are on, I could not venture a guess how accurate they are as long-term measures of sea level.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust finished reading a paper in Science magazine about a group of 47 leading glacier scientists coming together to combine their respective studies of Greenland and Antarctica ice sheet melting. They conclude, based on results from four independent methods to measure ice sheet volume, that Greenland and Antarctica are now losing about 344 billion tons of ice per year from 2005 through 2010. That net loss already accounts for snowfall adding fresh ice to those ice sheets. Their calculations indicate that this amount of ice loss added 0.6mm per year to global sea levels. The remaining sea level rise (reported as totaling about 3mm per year for that period) came from expansion of ocean waters as those waters warmed, and from melting mountain glaciers.
Australia is the most geologically stable land mass of its size on earth. As I said, satellite measurements have to be calculated rather than the direct measurements being used. For example a satellites orbit is affected by variations in the earths gravity. When you are trying to measure variations of a fraction of a millimetre from space, many variables have to be taken into account. Many judgments also have to be made. No criticism of those involved. They only have to be off by a tiny factor to give an incorrect value.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThings like the Earths tidal bulge. The centre of gravity for the Earth Moon system, all complicate measurements as well as local & continental rise or fall.
So much of the climate change claims are based on shaky & unprovable assumptions. For example what exactly is radiative forcing. Please read the full article:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor all of its faults, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) lays out their idea of the climate paradigm pretty clearly. A fundamental part of this paradigm is that the long-term change in global average surface temperature is a linear function of the long-term change in what is called the “radiative forcing”. Today I found myself contemplating the concept of radiative forcing, usually referred to just as “forcing”.
The article concludes:
I don’t have any particular conclusions in this post, other than this is a heck of a way to run a railroad, using imaginary values that can never be measured or verified.
The article is not too complex for the lay person & it demonstrates again why we must question assumptions based on so fundamentally flawed foundations.
With reference to the experts reviewing Antarctic Ice, an equally or greater body contradicts their finding.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisICESAT Data Shows Mass Gains of the Antarctic Ice Sheet Exceed Losses. http://vimeo.com/46429608
Also read: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/10/icesat-data-shows-mass-gains-of-the-antarctic-ice-sheet-exceed-losses/
Sorry. Missed link in post 44: http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRegarding the ice mass losses and gains in Greenland and Antarctica, the article I referenced is in Science, 30 November, 2012, Vol.338, pages 1183-1189, with a summary on page 1138 of the same issue. The title of the article is "A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe same H. Jay Zwally, author of the report you refer to above, is a co-author on this later report, which uses the same ICESat data discussed by Zwally in the earlier study.
There have been different results of ice mass estimates lately, and I quote from the summary of the later study, "In the end, reconciling the diverse ice-loss estimates proved to be more straightforward than had been feared. It turned out that gains and losses of ice can vary greatly from season to season and from place to place. So surveys made over different, albeit overlapping, time periods and regions yielded rather different loss rates. Once the data were adjusted to uniform regions and periods and a few other modifications were made, 'there's no reason to believe the data sets are saying different things at all,' Shepherd says. 'They're showing the same thing.'"
Shepherd is lead author of the later study. This is the one I reference in post #42 that estimates a net loss of ice mass from 2005-2010 from Greenland of 263 billion tons per year, and from Antarctica a net loss of 81 billion tons per year. They report that the very large East Antarctic ice sheet registered a small increase in ice mass that was more than offset by losses in West Antarctica and the adjacent Antarctic Peninsula.
PART ONE :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRadiative forcing can be a confusing term. The concept is all about the movement of energy, in this case, radiation energy. Energy can move by convection (hot air rises), conduction (touching a hot surface), and radiation (the movement of electromagnetic radiation, eg., sunlight, infrared radiation, radio waves, etc.).
Earth's greenhouse effect is all about the planet's energy balance, that is, the balance between energy coming to the Earth and energy leaving the Earth. The only way for significant amounts of energy to enter or leave Earth is via radiation. Incoming energy is sunlight, which is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) in the visible wavelengths (plus a little ultraviolet). Outgoing energy from Earth to space is also electromagnetic radiation, but the wavelengths are in the infrared region of EMR. Infrared radiation is invisible to us, but you can feel it if you hold your hand up very close to but not touching your face. The warmth you feel is infrared radiation emanating from your face.
All objects radiate electromagnetic radiation, but the wavelengths change according to the object's temperature. The Sun is obviously very hot and radiates in the visible wavelengths. Earth and all objects on it (including the oceans, the air molecules in the atmosphere, the soil on the surface, and you and me) are relatively cool and radiate in the infrared wavelengths.
CO2 and water vapor are two gases that, as gases, are transparent to those visible wavelengths from the Sun, but are not transparent to infrared wavelengths coming up from Earth. These "greenhouse" gases absorb infrared radiation, and get warmer as a result. Clouds and ice, being very reflective, do not absorb much visible sunlight, instead reflecting it back into space before it has a chance to warm the Earth.
Oh, forgot one detail, the visible wavelengths of sunlight warm any objects on the planet that absorb them, like soil, water, trees, people, asphalt, etc. The warmer these objects become, the more infrared radiation they emit.
PART TWO :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, the Earth's greenhouse effect is all about the balance of incoming and outgoing electromagnetic radiation. Anything which affects this balance is called a radiative forcing, since it is forcing the balance of electromagnetic radiation to move one way or the other.
For example, clouds are a radiative forcing since they reflect sunlight radiation back to space before it has a chance to warm anything on the planet. Clouds thus reduce the incoming electromagnetic radiation to Earth.
CO2 and water vapor absorb outgoing infrared radiation coming up from the surface of the planet towards space, thus preventing this escape of electromagnetic radiation energy from the planet, so CO2 and water vapor are radiative forcings as well.
The balance of radiative forcings indicates the status of the Earth's greenhouse effect. Without any greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, Earth would lose outgoing electromagnetic infrared radiation much faster than it does, and our average planetary temperature would be 60 degrees F cooler, brrr. So we are happy we have a health greenhouse effect. The concern with increasing CO2 is an enhanced greenhouse effect, an energy balance tipped towards a much warmer planet, with all sorts of climate and other impacts that could prove very unpleasant for us and many of our fellow passengers on spaceship Earth.
Hope this makes "radiative forcing" more understandable.
Don't know anything about the relative stability of Australia's coastlines, so I cannot comment on that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMuch of what you wrote is valid but some of it is wide of the mark. See:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight
Sunlight's composition at ground level, per square meter, with the sun at the zenith, is about 527 watts of infrared radiation, 445 watts of visible light, and 32 watts of ultraviolet radiation. At the top of the atmosphere sunlight is about 30% more intense with more than three times the fraction of ultraviolet (UV), with most of the extra UV consisting of biologically-damaging shortwave ultraviolet.
Also your reference to cloud is only part of the story. A simple observation you can make yourself is to note the night time temperature after a sunny day followed by clear night skies & a sunny day followed cloudy night. The cloudy night is much warmer because the infrared radiation is not escaping past the cloud. This happens during the day also. Particularly with patchy cloud. There are other factors too such as altitude of the cloud. It is not a simple matter & is not an area that climate science has properly dealt with.
I am afraid you missed the point about radiative forcing. You really need to read the article I referred to. I can not briefly summarise it.
More about solar.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIPCC AR5 draft leaked, contains game-changing admission of enhanced solar forcing. http://wattsupwiththat.com/
Nothing you said changed or added anything to what I said about radiative forcing! OK, I didn't talk about the atmosphere absorbing some sunlight on the way in, but I don't think that changed anything. I talked about clouds absorbing infrared coming up from the Earth, and of course this happens at night as well as during the daytime. So what was "wide of the mark?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd I hope IPCC AR5 says thousands of scientists have gotten it all wrong over the past couple of decades, and all this global warming is simply the sun getting hotter and it will all go away with the next solar cycle. I really do. I have nothing to gain if global warming is real, and my kids certainly have lots to lose if it happens. But many years as a professional scientist and science educator with particular research emphasis on the atmosphere and air quality lead me to believe we got problems. And the sooner we address them the better. And I don't appreciate advocates pushing an agenda rather than looking objectively at the data, as wattsupwiththat very cleverly and deceptively does.
I believe global warming is real but that the effects & causes are exaggerated. Also that there are many problems facing mankind. I hate fossil fuels being wasted even if there were no other issues involved & see opposition to nuclear as being ill informed. I have worked for seven years in the solar industry plus three years in a uranium mine as well as visiting & studying a nuclear facility. It is the cleanest & safest form of energy. A hidden danger with solar are the melanomas suffered by long exposure to the sun experienced by those in some aspects of the industry. Only last week I had a serious skin cancer removed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI appreciate that you have not been abusive as many are when their views are challenged.
I agree with you and James Hansen that we need to go nuclear big time, at least as a transition to solar and wind. It can be done safely, the wastes can be stored safely, and I would guess that the next generation nuclear plants will be less obnoxious to build. I am only dimly aware of the expense of nuclear, but I am guessing it's worth it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, I'm big on the need for compromise, and going nuclear would represent a compromise of sorts for some in the environmental community. That would be a win-win.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave you seen this report on the SciAm website, about one solution to solar and wind's intermittency problem?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=solution-to-renewable-energy-more-renewable-energy#comments
This argument has been recycled many times in SCIAM in slightly different forms. Check out: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-renewables-power-the-world-ipcc-thinks-so#comments
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy posts 9 & 22 just touch on some of the problems.
That latest article bases its costs on projected alternative energy costs in 2030. Wow. Just the land mass & cost required would be mind boggling now let alone in 2030. Maintenance? How do you clean hundreds of square miles of solar collectors in desert regions with limited water? Just the cost of roads & other services would be astronomical & you still have to run back up.
An extract from the report you refered to: The study used estimates of technology costs in 2030 without government subsidies, comparing them to costs of fossil fuel generation in wide use today. The cost of fossil fuels includes both the fuel cost itself and the documented external costs such as human health effects caused by power plant air pollution. The projected capital costs for wind and solar in 2030 are about half of today’s wind and solar costs, whereas maintenance costs are projected to be approximately the same.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this“Aiming for 90 percent or more renewable energy in 2030, in order to achieve climate change targets of 80 to 90 percent reduction of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the power sector, leads to economic savings,” the authors observe.
so exactly what figures did they factor in for the projected health efects from burning fossil fuels? how much for the health efects people are claiming from the efects of wind turbines. How much for the effects from the extremely toxic chemicals used in PV manufacture?
While the processes are described as being similar to other manufacturing in the modern world, the sheer scale of what is proposed poses tremendous problems & remember what is propose is only for a fraction of the total generating capacity required for the U.S.
Health and Safety Concerns of Photovoltaic Solar Panels
http://www.oregon.gov/odot/hwy/oipp/docs/life-cyclehealthandsafetyconcerns.pdf
Agreed, the scale of the effort required to "go solar and wind" is daunting. Yet, so are the not unlikely impacts of global warming and climate change. And with solar and wind power you also reduce other air pollution (SO2, NOx, PM, and consequently O3), mercury, and probably also reduce water pollution and deforestation (think mountaintop coal mining and tar sands strip mining). Think of all those jobs created by solar and wind scale-up, should at least replace those lost by coal miners.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read through the link on health and safety concerns of PV, and it looks pretty mild compared to air and water pollution and climate change from mining and burning fossil fuels.
Some scientists are lobbying for change, but they are not able to make changes themselves. They are in the position of being harbingers of doom.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe people who are able to make changes resist the warnings because they don't want to bear the costs of change. They want other people to bear the costs.
Innovations that make change change attractive are sorely needed. In this regard scientists may be able to help.
Innovations will bring the two sides together.
The Arctic has evidently been ice free many times before. Even the UN's IPCC AR5 draft confesses that there has been no further increase in temperature over the past 15 or 16 years. This of course blows all of the computer models projecting AGW. co2 level is at the max (in the past few hundred thousand years)and no temp increase. Obviously the assumption in these models (which is NEVER mentioned by the fawning major news media) that water vapor is the real culprit, provuding a feedback that amplifies the corresponding warming brought on by co2 by a factor of almost 3, is wrong. (In fact, NOBODY has any handle on how feedbacks react, not even whether these are negative rather than positive. The only correlation between co2 and temperature increase is incidental, a short period between (roughly) 1970 and 1998. No correlation since, none before, and BEFORE goes back a very long way. In fact, in geologic terms, it appears that temperature was driving co2 (as part of the carbon cycle) not vice versa.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut, in any event, it has been quite warm for some time (almost as warm as the Medieval Warming Period!) and one would expect some ice melt. When there is no ice melt, or ice buildup, we are entering the next ice age, and that is already overdue by several thousand years.
Um... sorry to pop your balloon, but the UN IPCC (most definitely not "right wing", and with mucho incentive to keep its gravy train) has in its latest AR5 draft admitted - no warming in the past 15 or 16 years, no relationship between other extreme climate events and human activities. However, the AR5 draft is mostly performed by scientists, the summary (ordinarily all that the UN releases) usually manage to obscure such information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are plenty of scientists in this world who disagree with those claiming the recent warming is caused by human activity. Arguing from authority will get you nowhere. It is indeed the so-called authority which is in question.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile there are numerous skeptical scientists out there, it hardly matters, because votes don't count in science.
It's been this warm several times earlier during this interglacial period, the most recent being the Medieval Warming Period (which was global, not "regional"). (In that particular case, if you want to count scientists, there are many more across the world who performed peer-reviewed studies and came to that conclusion than those few who made the bogus claim that the MWP was merely regional.
ALL the computer models continue to produce projections of temperatures that are much too high, when compared to what has actually happened. One likely reason is that they ALL ASSUME that most of the temperature increase is due to water vapor feedback. One cannot make projections, let alone predictions, based on unproven assumptions.