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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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A mysterious, centuries-long cool spell, dubbed the Little Ice Age, appears to have been caused by a series of volcanic eruptions and sustained by sea ice, a new study indicates.
The research, which looked at chemical clues preserved in Arctic vegetation as well as other data, also pinpointed the start of the Little Ice Age to the end of the 13th century.
During the cool spell, which lasted into the late 19th century, advancing glaciers destroyed northern European towns and froze the Thames River in London and canals in the Netherlands, places that are now ice-free. There is also evidence it affected other continents.
"This is the first time anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age," said Gifford Miller, a geological sciences professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the lead study researcher. "We also have provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time."
The cause appears to have been massive tropical volcanic eruptions, which spewed tiny particles called aerosols into the atmosphere. While suspended in the air, the aerosols reflect solar radiation back into space, cooling the planet below.
The cooling was sustained after the aerosols had left the atmosphere by a sea-ice feedback in the North Atlantic Ocean, the researchers believe. Expanding sea ice would have melted into the North Atlantic Ocean, interfering with the normal mixing between surface and deeper waters. This meant the water flowing back to the Arctic was colder, helping to sustain large areas of sea ice, which, in turn, reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere. The result was a self-sustaining feedback loop.
Miller and colleagues came to these conclusions by looking at radiocarbon dates — based on how much of the radioactive form of carbon they contain — from dead plants revealed by melting ice on Baffin Island, in the Canadian Arctic. Their analysis found that many plants at both high and low altitudes died between A.D. 1275 and A.D. 1300 — evidence that Baffin Island froze over suddenly. Many plants also appeared to have died at around A.D. 1450, an indication of a second major cooling.
These periods coincide with two of the most volcanically active half centuries in the past millennium, according to the researchers. [History's Biggest Volcanic Eruptions]
They also found that the annual layers in sediment cores from a glacial lake linked with an ice cap in Iceland suddenly became thicker, indicating increased erosion caused by the expansion of the ice cap in the late 13th century and in the 15th century .
"This gave us a great deal more confidence that there was a major perturbation to the Northern Hemisphere climate near the end of the 13th century," Miller said.
Simulations using a climate model showed that several large, closely spaced eruptions could have cooled the Northern Hemisphere enough to spark sea-ice growth and the subsequent feedback loop.
It's unlikely decreased solar radiation, a separate theory to explain the Little Ice Age, played a role, according to the researchers.
The research will appear Tuesday (Jan. 31) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
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61 Comments
Add CommentOr maybe it was both?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not a requirement to rule out one factor in favor of another. To that end I invite anyone that disputes this to investigate something called root cause analysis. In the end major shifts in systems are almost never due to just one issue.
Case in point: was it the climate change induced by the breakup of the supercontinent that killed the dinosaurs, or the late Cretaceous volcanism or maybe the impact of a 6 mile chunk of space debris?
Could it be that they are inter-related in the causality?
Just a thought.
So the spewing of enormous amounts of CO2 did not overcome the decrease in surface solar energy due to particulates?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounds like another correction in the global warming models is needed.
The warmists are always consistent in their confusion. Just a few weeks ago in a different article it was declared that volcanism could not possibly affect the climate in a way to cause a drastic change in climate. The warmists insist only humans spewing CO2 can accomplish such dramatic climate changes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will guess they need to adjust their climate models yet again to show this loss of heat came from the deep ocean somehow.
Kenlbear: Why are you people so obsessed with Carbon dioxide? If you are truly interested in the survival of the species you ought to turn your attention to population and religion, the primary causes of all human problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter the Homo sapien disappears from the planet the carbon cycle will be restored and all will be well on planet earth.
It seems that we get more volcanic and earthquake activity during high sunspot activity. But if we experienced a lack of sunspots and volcanoes in just the right order order that would be a feedback loop not studied very well and may well be something to consider.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am waiting for Yellowstone which is overdue and also Cascadia to unleash their events. Yellowstone is overdue but Cascadia is probably 100 to 200 years away. But with the new solar max coming I think everything is up for grabs. Oooooooooh it is 2012.
It's not unusual that people would see this as a refutation of the current theories on global warming even though there is no mention anywhere in the article that it does. When studies in the 70's were conducted that questioned whether or not the particulates released through pollution were causing a greater cooling effect then the already known effects of CO2 and other greenhouse gases it was and is still said that "scientists said we were heading for an ice age!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease correct if I am wrong, but the aerosols put into the atmosphere by the volcanoes reflect sunlight. The sunlight would have to be absorbed by the Earth and transferred into infrared radiation and then be trapped by GHG's. If the aerosols were reflected there would be less energy for the Earth to absorb, hence.......cooling. Basic greenhouse effect understanding.....no?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell one reason I am obsessed with it is that the Australian government has put a massive TAX on it. That makes it personal. Socialists & Leftists just love tax. It is an aphrodisiac to them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgreed, the lower solar activity during the Maunder Minimum could have made the Earth more susceptible to the ice-sheet feedback loop. The magnitude of the climate change stepped over one of those feedback loop thresholds and the cooler climate persisted for much longer because there was more ice reflecting sunlight.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToo bad we are in a fairly quiet period as far as volcanic activity is concerned and global temperatures are the highest in recorded history DESPITE a temporary lull in solar activity. I'm not saying that the Yellowstone Supervolcano won't blow tomorrow, but hoping that something like that will rescue us from the peril our carbon emissions are putting us in is totally irresponsible.
If expanding ice sheets can cause global cooling for centuries, imagine what their current disintegration is causing today! What invisible climate thresholds are we currently racing towards with reckless abandon? It's time to stop being lazy. It's time to stop passing the buck to future generations. It's time to clean up our act!
Right-wingers love to tax as well, except they hide their taxes by gutting the social safety net and calling it "reform". Or they slash regulations and people suffer from unsafe products and financial scams. It's all an effort to redistribute wealth to the richest people in society, and if you look at the trends since 1980, they've been wildly successful in their efforts!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's because humans release 100x the CO2 that volcanoes have over the past few decades. Even the Siberian Traps, the greatest period of volcanic activity in the Phanerozoic Eon, took 200,000 years to double CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. We're causing that level of change 1000x faster! Does that sound safe to you, especially since the resulting disruption to the biosphere was the greatest mass-extinction in the geologic record? Do we even want to go ANYWHERE NEAR recreating the "Great Dying" that killed over %80 of the species living at the time?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf carbon emissions are the culprit, why has the increased rate of temperature increase ceased. It ceased 15 years ago as your beloved NASSA & the Hadley institute announced last week. Did atmospheric CO2 rate of increase also cease 15 years ago?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTemperature increases have reverted to the long term average since the last ice age. Yes there has been a steady increase since the last ice age & so naturally, each succeeding period on average is hotter than the previous.
Please link to where "NASSA" said global warming stopped in 1998...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToo bad it didn't:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm
If you think the temperature increases have returned to the long term average since the last "ice age", whyt aren't we almost as hot as Venus right now? I mean, the current trend is +0.155C per decade since 1998, so 1000 decades after the end of the "Ice Age" would make the Earth's average temperature 170C!
I'm not entirely sold on this hypothesis, but if an albedo flip was enough to enhance and sustain a volcanic aerosol cooling effect, I'm thinking the flip in the opposite direction that is currently happening would have an enhancing effect on the CO2-induced warming we are currently experiencing. That is not a new idea, but maybe this paper can help quantify how much of an enhancement (feedback) to expect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate science is ahead of you. Just on CO2 forcing alone, the Earth should be 1C warmer than preindustrial times when its concentration doubles, aka Climate Sensitivity. However, there are numerous powerful positive feedbacks that push that initial 1C warming to 3C by the time they kick in. Methane from melting permafrost and clathrates, lower albedo due to melting ice and slower absorption of CO2 into the oceans as temperatures rise are some of the most powerful feedbacks. Cloud feedbacks warm and cool, mostly cancelling each other out, but recent studies suggest that the cloud feedback is positive too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime to stop screwing around with the only planet we've got and clean up our act!
Sault,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think you misunderstand. Present day CO2 forcing is well established, as well the net feedback effects being positive. The study behind this article does not appear to say anything against that. It's merely saying that the LIA can be explained better with a combination of increased volcanic aerosols combined with positive feedback of lowered albedo than it can be with lower solar output. Today, solar is not changing much (in the last ~60 years) and neither is volcanic aerosol output; CO2 is changing, of course. However, the positive feedback effect of albedo changes would remain.
I suspect those that favor the solar explanation for the LIA have not yet given up their position. So, I'm withholding judgement until more information is available. However, which caused the LIA does not matter in relation to what is causing climate change today.
Obviously, a lower albedo means the earth absorbs more energy, but how much is probably a bit harder to quantify, starting with the question of, we know the average albedo is changing, but not by how much. Add in that the timing of the albedo changes relative to solar input affect what the net effect is, and it gets fuzzier still.
For instance, Antarctic sea ice is growing slightly on
average, but the summer minimum still bottoms out near zero. The maximum over the winter is the part that is growing. Albedo changes have more of an effect when the sun is shining most hours of the day than when it is shining few hours of the day. The Arctic is the opposite; winter max is only shrinking a little, and summer min is shrinking a lot. Then there are the changes on land, spring melt, which is coming earlier, and foliage growth, likewise.
Oh, for any that may not know, a positive feedback means that the initial forcing, whether cooling or warming, is enhanced. A negative feedback means that the initial forcing is reduced. Feedbacks work in both directions; a positive feedback does not always mean a + on temperature increase. If CO2 were reduced, there would be a cool forcing, and the cooling effect would be made larger by the positive feedbacks.
*Correction: Arctic sea ice winter maximum is also in rapid decline. Maybe not quite as rapid as the summer minimum.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe should probably look for an asteroid hit during this time that may explain the discrepancy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, Carlyle, you say that global warming has stopped for 15 years, and then you say it is proceeding from the LIA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is the mechanism that stopped the LIA recovery warming at 1998?
Can you provide a graph showing a continuous warming from the LIA? And perhaps some causal relationship between the warming since then and some attribute of the physical world?
Because, if you are arguing against CO2 warming the planet because there has been a (non-significant) pause, why would your mystery mechanism not also be refuted by the same argument?
Every temperature record or proxy that exists shows warming accelerating over the last 60 years, and I would tend to think that if there were a mechanism driving warming from the little ice age, it would tend to taper off over time, not accelerate.
David,
Carlyle is the one who has not thought through the problem; Sault is by and large correct.
Basically, yes. Not all aerosols are created equal (they do not all have the same reflectance), but yes, typically we see a few years of cooling after a major eruption. But then, also, the temperatures typically rebound once the aerosols settle out. The LIA has various starting and end points, depending on who you ask, but the duration is generally considered to be much longer than a for years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat the authors of this study have done is attempt to demonstrate that a series of eruptions can push the climate into a semi-stable, lower temperature state.
I'm not entirely sold on the idea because we have records of dips and rapid returns from major eruptions, and because the sea ice has been changing rapidly lately, which would argue against the idea that it could perpetuate a lower temperature for a sustained amount of time.
Kenibear was just saying what the warmists repeat adnausiam.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are to have carbon taxes imposed on us because of this CO2 stuff, due to the panic induced in the Politicians.
Carlye, It appears they did not approve of my comments about Sault or what ever he goes by. Anyway he has no idea who he picked a fight with you ornery Aussie. BTW my Australian side of the family is a David Russell, I think they are from the Sidney area. You know I think we can do better things with C like synthetic diamonds, graphine, C60, nanotubes and composites and I believe in twenty years we will be using C, Fe, N, O2, and H2 to do most of our energy and processing and use Si for building roads, cement and glass. I hope I am here to see if I am right. As gasoline approaches $5.00 per gallon the USA will cry for a better answer and when they see that the oil we either harvest or process is sold to China we may start to see what a farce we have been sold. Nuclear still needs to have an answer regarding storage and I fear that lack of security would come back to hurt us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen BP announced that part of their disaster plan for the Gulf of Mexico dealt with protecting walruses you have to scratch your head.
Regarding nuclear we were ready to bring back up a reactor in FL and discovered new cracks and the subscribers are being held hostage to fix it. So I am afraid we will continue our difference there but that is why we discuss.
The coming nuclear war will produce another ice age, especially since the destruction of the ruminants and the internal combustion engine happens at the same time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI did not say it had stopped. I said the increased rate of temperature increase had stopped. I have already posted the link several times re the NASSA & Hadley report that points this out & also the fact that their results are derived from thousands of reporting stations. You people only hear what you want to hear, regardless of who is saying it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes David. We do not have to agree to discuss. I am humble enough to admit I am sometimes wrong. I remember getting my colours wrong in kindergarten. Turns out I was colorblind :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, if there's a lull in solar activity like during the Maunder minimum, along with a few, massive eruptions in the tropics over this period, and then sea ice starts growing, a new, semi-stable equilibrium at a lower temperature can be established until the forcings on the system change substantially.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the same reasoning, albeit in the warmer direction, as to why we need to cut CO2 emissions rapidly. These feedback "thresholds" are somehwere in the climate system, and once we cross them, our initial forcing is going to be magnified (3x for a doubling of CO2), making our climate misery much worse. We have a rough idea of where these thresholds are, but we don't know exactly at which temperature they start kicking in and how they will play out exactly. Climate Change deniers seize upon this and use it as an excuse to do nothing. However, Rational People know enough to understand that we shouldn't go looking for these climate tripwires and that we're guaranteed to stumble over them in a business-as-usual emissions scenario.
I find it funny that this article relies on proxy plant data to make it's case. If these massive volcanoes were responsible, why not look at the massive ash clouds that they would have generated directly? Date the ash layers. Date the plant material above the ash layers using carbon 14. Date the plant material below using carbon -14. This article seems bogus. There are many far more reliable ways to directly measure this issue. Why use indirect proxy data?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnless of course, direct evidence contradicts the CO2 story and points to a sunspot cause to the Little Ice Age, then by all means use proxy data. Wouldn't want anyone to think that that massive ball of buring gas in the sky does anything would we?
It's all about C02 eco-Lysenkoism after all.
And I said that, if we're back to the "long term trend" in "recovery" from the last Ice Age, then, given the CURRENT trend of 0.155C since 1998, the Earth's average temperature should be somewhere around 170C. In case you didn't catch what I meant, I was trying to show that even since your cherry-picked 1998, the increase is still unprecedented! If you zoom out to the 30-year trend like you're supposed to (unless your agenda is to spread doubt about climate science), the trend is even greater!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook at this temperature anomaly graph:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
Isn't the current plateau in temperature rise we are in similar to the same temporary stoppage around 1950, or 1970, or any of the other temporary dips? Didn't the temperature increase pick up once again after a few years every single time? What makes you think this time is different?
Oh, sorry, also missed the issue that the computer model said that sunspots were irrelevant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI keep forgeting that computer models are far more reliable than actual data collected by real people over hundreds.
And that computer models of volcano eruptions make collecting any samples of the eruptions superfluous to confirm the hypothesis.
Silly me.
Seriously, though, I were on this person's Ph.D committee, they would have been sent back to the drawing board.
The article said NOTHING about CO2 from the volcanos. If anything, the CO2 would have eventually counteracted the cooling, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It's all about CO2 denial-Lysenkoism after all, right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToo bad the DID do radiocarbon dataing:
"Miller and colleagues came to these conclusions by looking at radiocarbon dates..."
But nobody expects science deniers like you to ACTUALLY READ the article you spew on about, am I correct? I mean, what would happen if all those pesky facts got in the way of your faith in your preexisting beliefs? Heresy, I do say!
No, the models said that several tropical volcanic eruptions were enough to cause the observed changes. Solar output was low, but it could not have caused the changes by itself. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good story, right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI actually respect the people I cross swords with on this site but you are beneath contempt as I am sure both sides of this debate will agree.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo not let grubs like the one who abused you put you off mate. Vigorous debate is one thing, the comments he made are disgusting. He has been banned from other sites I believe & should be banned here too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou could well be right about some or even most of your claims but for me there are still many unanswered questions. The link which I have posted below again, indicates a very large discrepancy between the predicted & the measured. I have read a possible explanation from one of the scientists involved but it does not answer the question.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
My other problem is that so many people that support your point of view also support solutions that can never work. This devalues your judgment in my opinion.
@sault
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been searching for a link you posted recently that explained why a particular graph or chart was wrong. Unfortunately I have not re found it yet. When I went to the site, it explained why you could not simply use the recorded figures. You had to include this & exclude that. You had to massage the figures. One of the adjustments had to do with ocean warming. Strange.
I will do my best to find your link. You may know the one I am referring to.
Eureka!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998-intermediate.htm
Just look at the gymnastic involved in explaining how you manage to get a continuous warming trend. Talk about cherrypicking. Only in an AGW world can this make sence.
If you have a large vessel full of liquid, it can be heated at various points generating convection currents with varying temperatures. These currents can develop in aparently random ways, changing the temperature at various points in the vessel. This does not alter the average temperature or total contained heat. How does an El Nino or La Nina change the average global temperature?
This passage seemed interesting:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That's a lot.
Willis says some of this water is apparently coming from a recent increase in the melting rate of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.
"But in fact there's a little bit of a mystery. We can't account for all of the sea level increase we've seen over the last three or four years," he says.
One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys."
When you say, "My other problem is that so many people that support your point of view also support solutions that can never work. This devalues your judgment in my opinion.", you aren't thinking things through properly.
What solutions people endorse have NOTHING to do with the validity of AGW. Either you are convinced by the evidence or you endorse a competing theory that explains ALL the observed data more effectively than the existing theory.
Your hypothesis is: "Human CO2 emissions have a smaller effect on climate than currently believed." However, to make testable predictions, your hypothesis needs to incorporate some numbers. The easiest hypothesis to test would be "The Earth's climate sensitivity is below 1C or 1.5C" and then we could calculate whether to accept or reject it based on the evidence. So, what climate sensitivity do you use to form your opinions on this debate? Let's test your hypothesis right here!
Also, your statement is a logical fallacy. Just because people disagree with one of your arguments does not necessarily make them incorrect in another area:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_cause_and_consequence
People can disagree about the merits of nuclear power and renewable energy without making them incorrect on climate change.
In this country being color blind could be a blessing. People are all too aware of each others color and I have never seen so much hate over something that is strictly based to which side of the equator you are located in December. I am happy dogs sniff each others butts before deciding if they should get along.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this:)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSault, I do give you full credit for your encyclopaedic knowledge on the subject. Also, there is nothing wrong with scientists or laymen speculating or theorising about the anomalies. At least they are acknowledging that there are anomalies. What is wrong is for scientists to manipulate data or hide contra evidence to suit their preferred models.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith reference to judgment, a corollary is if someone is debating or promoting some scientific point of view & at the same time was promoting creationism, it is bound to colour your assessment of everything that person says.
Carlyle you may be interested to know that our congress is currently debating the merits of Fracking and they have decided to remove all scientist, documentary makers and anybody else except lobbyist for the Gas companies out of the hearings. I guess down under your scientist still get a say. Up here it really is follow the money.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBe glad you are down under. Even if we screw up the Northern Hemisphere your Southern Hemisphere is not always affected. But I worry when the people in charge are strong creationist and really believe the world is only 6,500 years old.
Anyway I saw this last night and thought you may get a chuckle at how little we really do trust our scientist.
That is sad. Unfortunately both sides in issues like this employ scientists to reflect their viewpoint. Makes it difficult for the poor old layman & it is sad also that there are so many scientists willing to oblige.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe old German saying comes to mind: Whos bread I eat, his song I sing.
Carbon Tax Credits and Trade. Emissions tax. Money, basically going to the government.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTell us, what exactly (as in verb) are you going to *do* with the money that fix the CO2 problem? How much money do you *really* want? And, will it work? Are you sure? What is your fall-back plan when you are out of tax money and it's still getting warm?
Pie in the sky, pick a number: Say, $9 Trillion? Is that enough? More?
What's missing from the argument is what you plan to do? Maybe rent the Terraforming Platform from Aliens?
Instead of preaching doom and gloom, how about some positive; "Here's what we're going to do" stuff?
:) You have a good heart and mind thanks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the only philosophers I learned to respect was William James the father of pragmatic truth. He nailed it with the story of the squirrel and the tree and if the squirrel was really going around the tree. His answer was the truth lay in how you framed the question. The bottom line is something is true as long as it works. I have a feeling you are very familiar with this man.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid you have cost me a couple of hours of enjoyable reading. I had not read any of William James work. Certainly good brain food. Still digesting it. I must say I am innately wary of any ism & do not consider myself constrained or my views encapsulated by one. My views have been mostly formed by life experiences.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI once had a mystifying problem to solve that had me baffled. It seemed to defy reason yet eventually it turned out to have a simple solution involving a parameter I had missed. Experiences like that made me very suspicious of those in any discipline who express certainty that they have covered every pertinent factor in their predictions. I needed a simple device that would react to minor temperature differentials. I will not describe the actual device as I became quite famous as a result of it & wish to keep my anonymity. Imagine you had a ‘U’ shaped glass tube with mercury resting in the middle of the ‘U’ then take two metal tubes, attach one to each leg of the ‘U’ & at ambient temperature & atmospheric pressure, seal the ends. Now grasp one tube & the warmth of your hand will cause air expansion to push the mercury slightly up the opposing tube. The conundrum was that after a time, with the whole device exposed to the same temperature & other outside influences, the mercury became out of balance. How can this be? The discrepancy was only slight but defeated the purpose for which it was built. There were no leaks or exterior influences causing the discrepancy though it took a long time to rule those factors out. No reaction between the mercury & air, in fact no chemical reaction of any kind. What could be the cause? Further confounding us was that it did not happen with every instrument. I will withhold the solution for now. Some people with a technical background on the sidelines may wish to offer suggestions. I will only answer the correct one. It does show how an apparently minor oversight can cause major discrepancies & that glossing over real world anomalies is simply not good enough. Predicting the future global temperature is equally fraught with our present knowledge.
By the way, the components were all kept in the same stable thermal environment prior to assembly & temperature anomalies through handling etc was not a factor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, as I pointed out previously you are only considering the degassing of the magma and not the ensuing coal and forest fires which released in the neighborhood of 1200 years of mankinds emissions almost instantly (at least by my somewhat crude computation which is probably pessimistic in terms of CO2 volume).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe way I come to this is simple: estimate how much surface area was covered and then I used the recently published values for emissions of CO2 from forest fires (buring and decay) and that is the forest fire contribution. Then add in the amount of CO2 released in the coal fires (also recently published) and I arrive at my figure.
This is ultimately indicative of the problem. The AGW people will look only at one part of the story (which fits their arguement) and then deny that anything other contrary point of view.
This reminds me of an article I read a while back about some islands in the Indian Ocean being submerged by rising sea-level. The AGW people said 'see these poor people are losing their home because we are evil and causing sea-level rise', however, in the end it turns out that subsidence was causing the islands to submerge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs to the equations supporting the limate forcing: I see a lot of constants in those equations which are knobs used to get those equations to fit the observations. The problem is that the observations are not fitting the current flattening of the temperature trend so I ask: why?
I would state that using empirical equations to curve fit a natural system is fraught with peril and therefore the curve fitting needs to be continually recalibrated. This leads me to the conclusion that the curve fitters (GCMs) cannot reliably tell us anything about the distant future of Earth's temperature and therefore there is something very wrong with setting policy based solely upon those results.
I am going to say this very clearly: if the GCMs cannot match the current temperature 'anomaly' then they are in error. It is that simple because what you can determine is that if the model constructed in the past does not fit the current measurements then it is in error and has failed the blind test. The concept of the blind test is pretty interesting and I use it all the time to determine the relavance of my models. The problem with GCMs is that you have only one atmosphere and in order to test the ability of the model you have to wait until you get more data, which may be too late to do any remdial actions to correct. This is, in a nut shell, my issue with the state of the science around the AGW debate. We may be doing something terrible but the GCMs do not prove, nor disprove that, and if the parties building the models are unable/unwilling to state that fact then they are just snake oil salesmen.
I forgot: is the sea-level data from the satellite altimetry? I am going to assume so and then my question is: what is the reference? The concept that there is a single reference value for sea-level is somewhat interesting. Land erodes and subsides and emerges so the reference is in a continual state of flux. Then there are tidal effects, etc. So I can understand that there is an average (or mean) sea-level for a given point on the shore line that assumes that the land that the tidal change in sea-level is referenced against assumes that the position (elevation) of the land is constant. However as volume is added and subtracted from the ocean basin this also influences sea-level. I am going to do some reading on the relative flux of ocean basin volume as I am now interested.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI checked it out and it would appear that only maybe 2/10,000,000 inches per year of seal level rise should expected due to sedmient deposit from river systems (assuming no other changes in sea-level). Even with mass wasting and new volcanic volume it is clearly not the volume change of the basin that is causing the rise. Althought now I have anew thought: what about isostatic rebound of the northern hemisphere. If the seafloor is rebounding then the water has to go somewhere else. Yet another thing to discover.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCreationism is pure hokum while AGW has a lot of evidence behind it, so your analogy does not really apply here. If you are referencing "climategate", then there really isn't any smoking gun there, either. Please look at this video and tell me what you think:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54?feature=g-all-a#p/c/A4F0994AFB057BB8/5/7nnVQ2fROOg
Watching #7 in the series is a good idea too. There's no story there. And subsequent investigations cleared climate scientists of all wrongdoing too:
http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/11/23/375268/the-real-climategate-scandals-are-piling-up/
Please tell me what you think of the information in these links.
$20 / ton of CO2 charged at the wellhead, mine or port of entry with %85 of the money returned to valid social security numbers via lowering the payroll tax. This would generate $120B according to the 2011 numbers:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/usinventoryreport.html
The $20 / ton would generate more than half of the emissions reductions necessary by 2050 and supply a long-term price signal that reduces uncertainty for the business community. Returning %85 back to the people would limit the pain of increased energy prices. In fact, the bottom %50 of income earners would come out ahead in this scenario because they use proportionally less energy compared to their income. Using the %15 left over to spur a massive investment in energy efficiency and low carbon energy necessary to get most of the rest of the reductions. We could get to zero net carbon or even negative carbon by 2050, like the science requires, by changing our consumption patterns a little and limiting wasteful development patterns.
If we don't act, all the people that hate "Big Government" are going to be REALLY upset as all sorts of draconian programs will have to be enacted to keep some semblance of order. So act now, or face getting government involved in way more aspects of your life than it is now.
Exactly, burning coal and causing massive forest fires are bad too. The thing is, ANY massive release of stored carbon has been bad for the biosphere. We're releasing it 1000x faster than it can be sequestered. The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased %40 in the past 150 years, so maybe this is faster than the Siberian Traps, maybe not. What we are sure of is rapid changes in ANY important knob on the climate like this are associated with mass extinctions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith how wild the climate has been shown to swing in the past, it is reckless to say that we don't know enough to act to reduce our emissions. Fossil fuels are running out anyway and are increasingly in the hands of tyrants and extremists. Oil money funds ALL our headaches in the Middle East and makes Russia a much harder country to deal with. Fossil fuels poison our environment and our bodies too.
So let's mandate the best pollution control technology available, like the Clean Air Act says, instead of delaying and watering down the law due to industry pressure. That pollution has a cost and it's unfair to ask society as a whole to pay that cost when a small group of companies (firms operating old coal power plants and industrial boilers) get a free pass.
Let's slap a $5 tax on barrels of imported oil to tell the world that we will not have our economy and foreign policy held hostage by a bunch of loonies that don't want to join the 18th Century, let alone the 21st.
Energy efficiency has enormous potential, but regulations, policy and business arrangements are holding it back. Let's maximize that so that our environment is cleaner and our economy is more competitive with the rest of the world.
Finally, renewable energy doesn't pollute like other forms of energy, so maybe we should incentivize it more. At least get rid of all direct subsidies to fossil fuel companies and pour that money into clean energy. To level the playing field, renewables would need the same level of support that fossil fuels have enjoyed for over a century. We just need to make things fair.
If you are an antisism person as I am then you must give Eric Hoffer and his book the 'True Believer' a look. Written in 1951 by a longshoreman he has been one of my favorite teachers. His work has been held up by Science Magazine in the 80's and by Lee Smolin in 'The trouble with Physics' in his hilarious yet correct attack on true believers and group thought and how it has cost science any respect it may have earned since it split with the church after Galileo. He explains how 60% of men need to be told what to do and he touches on the 10% fringe that will kill or die for such a cause.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read the True Believer in 1961 at the ripe age of 8, it was written in 1951 and have found a fear of ism ever since. I wonder if we are related. Good Day my friend.
If you are an antisism person as I am then you must give Eric Hoffer and his book the 'True Believer' a look. Written in 1951 by a longshoreman he has been one of my favorite teachers. His work has been held up by Science Magazine in the 80's and by Lee Smolin in 'The trouble with Physics' in his hilarious yet correct attack on true believers and group thought and how it has cost science any respect it may have earned since it split with the church after Galileo. He explains how 60% of men need to be told what to do and he touches on the 10% fringe that will kill or die for such a cause.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read the True Believer in 1961 at the ripe age of 8, it was written in 1951 and have found a fear of ism ever since. I wonder if we are related. Good Day my friend.
I agree with most of your points but I do not for one second believe that 'clean energy' does not pollute because batteries are environmentally nasty to build, recycle and dispose. Granted, there is not a major CO2 issue with solar or wind but those also have environmental issues of their own.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real problem is not personal transportation but commercial. Trains and tractor trailers will not run on battery power which is a issue to be overcome.
Trains run on electricity now. It is a problem of distribution and storage of electricity. Currently even Hybrids are better than straight burning and a good bridge regarding trucks. They must put out a huge amount of wasted heat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWind power is an issue if you care about the ecological effect of wind farms and migrating birds. But geothermal, tidal, solar and some of the more novel chemistry of custom tipping viruses to create batteries which the military is currently buying are fair alternatives. We have a grid issue but when you were a kid did you ever play electric race cars? Seems like an obvious solution to me.
One thing that should be noted is that an asymmetrical system of any type or non linear system of any type is very fragile to disturbances. They may be earth made, solar, impact related or man made. We have little control over the first three but we sure as hell control the third one (Man Made for the obtuse). While some data may be cooked by scientist on both sides of the argument, non linear math is pretty well established and should be respected.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf by going green and by not adding more CO2 into the atmosphere is something we can and do own we should put resources there. The same applies with the contrails of planes and urban sprawl. In any complex system that is dependent on many feed back systems which in turn are interdependent only a fool would screw around to see what happens if we turn this knob.
The Earth is a very precious place in the universe and without our huge moon and magnetic field and a genetic through back we would probably never see intelligent life so which ever side of the pond you are on it is our water and our boat that we are all in and I prefer that it not sink.
I meant genetic throw back. I say this because we lack muscle mass, canines, hair and are very helpless until puberty. We survive by the skin of our butts and several times the total population of homo sapiens reached levels below 25,000. On a planet this big it is fortunate we found each other again and were able to continue breeding until we became top of the food chain. Speaking of non linear math we are a classic case of it in action.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is interesting that the Economist recently ran an editorial calling for a carbon tax. It would be ridiculous to call the Economist a "liberal" publication.
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