Glaciers Melting at an Alarming Rate

[Ed Mahmoud]

But it isn't a slam dunk "everybody agrees' kind of consensus. Considering what appears to be a fair amount of pressure to conform (again I cite Dr. Cullen's demand that the AMS certification be stripped of all mets who don't promote AGW as fact), 40 isn't a bad number.


BTW, how many people are working as professional climatologists? I frankly have no idea.

[x-y-no]

But it isn't a slam dunk "everybody agrees' kind of consensus. Considering what appears to be a fair amount of pressure to conform (again I cite Dr. Cullen's demand that the AMS certification be stripped of all mets who don't promote AGW as fact), 40 isn't a bad number.

We have no way of knowing how many of those who signed did so because the opposed Kyoto but still believe AGW is a serious problem.

And so what if Dr. Cullen shot her mouth off? As far as I know, she's just an employee of TWC, not some person in authority at AMS. Isn't she free to voice her opinion?

[Ed Mahmoud]

But it isn't a slam dunk "everybody agrees' kind of consensus. Considering what appears to be a fair amount of pressure to conform (again I cite Dr. Cullen's demand that the AMS certification be stripped of all mets who don't promote AGW as fact), 40 isn't a bad number.

We have no way of knowing how many of those who signed did so because the opposed Kyoto but still believe AGW is a serious problem.

And so what if Dr. Cullen shot her mouth off? As far as I know, she's just an employee of TWC, not some person in authority at AMS. Isn't she free to voice her opinion?

She is free to voice her opinion, but if we believe she is typical of the AGW as fact proponents, than it might be a reasonable assumption that many in the climate/atmospheric sciences who also support AGW as fact also seek to punish members of the community to don't conform to the 'conventional wisdom'.

I'd assume AMS certification is similar to what engineers have, the 'professional engineer' designation. Senior level undergraduate engineers must first pass a fairly difficult engineering basic exam given to all engineering students, than work several years under the supervision of a professional engineer, than pass an exam in their area of specialization called the 'principles and practices' exam to be certified as a professional engineer. Texas law requires that a professional engineer approve certain engineering plans and affix their stamp, only professonal engineers may hang out a shingle as a consultant, and only a professional engineer may offer 'expert' testimony in a court case. I believe most states are similar. If there was a litmus test on a still unconfirmed theory in engineering that all engineers had to agree with to remain certified and continue to work, then most engineers would publically agree or at least remain silent.

[x-y-no]

She is free to voice her opinion, but if we believe she is typical of the AGW as fact proponents, than it might be a reasonable assumption that many in the climate/atmospheric sciences who also support AGW as fact also seek to punish members of the community to don't conform to the 'conventional wisdom'.

Well there's our difficulty right there. I categorically deny that. I've known a lot of people working in the field over the years and the vast majority are as non-confrontational and open minded as one could hope for. Can you find anecdotal examples against that? Of course. But anecdotes can just as well show the exception as the rule.

[wbug1]

Anybody ever been to Iceland? Familiar with Bahrain's history? Richtig.

"Permanent human settlement greatly disturbed the isolated ecosystem of thin, volcanic soils and limited species diversity. The forests were heavily exploited over the centuries for firewood and timber. Deforestation caused a loss of critical topsoil due to erosion, greatly reducing the ability of birches to grow back. Today, only a few small birch stands exist in isolated reserves. The planting of new forests has increased the number of trees, but does not compare to the original forests. Some of the planted forests include new foreign species."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland


Velut Arbor Aevo. UNEP.

[Sanibel]

Penguins range purely in the southern hemisphere. They're far less likely to lose habitat that the Polar Bears are.

I saw something on TV saying that slight warming of the near-shore antarctic will cause some kind of starfish or some other sea creature kept away by frigid cold to come in and devour the food cycle the penguins depend on.

Funny how some of the people arguing that AGW proponents are emotional and politically motivated make some arguments that appear to be somewhat obviously based on the same. To me it's like tobacco companies arguing that strict proof doesn't exist that cigarettes cause cancer.

[Ed Mahmoud]

Penguins range purely in the southern hemisphere. They're far less likely to lose habitat that the Polar Bears are.

I saw something on TV saying that slight warming of the near-shore antarctic will cause some kind of starfish or some other sea creature kept away by frigid cold to come in and devour the food cycle the penguins depend on.

Funny how some of the people arguing that AGW proponents are emotional and politically motivated make some arguments that appear to be somewhat obviously based on the same. To me it's like tobacco companies arguing that strict proof doesn't exist that cigarettes cause cancer.

There are several thousand apparently qualified scientists of various disciplines, several hundred in the atmospheric sciences (look back at page 1 of this thread) who aren't convinced AGW is a proven fact. I doubt you'll get a similar percentage of doctors and other health care workers to put their names on a petition that there is no proven link between smoking and cancer.


IIRC, about 80% of all lung cancers occur in cigarette smokers or the spouses of smokers. That, all by itself, seems to suggest a link between smoking and cancer.

The Earth has been warming for the last two hundred years, since the end of the Little Ice Age, and the beginning of the warming may have preceded the significant increase in CO2 concurrent with the Industrial Revolution. AGW may be adding to that warming, but that hasn't been proven to the satisfaction of all scientists of apparently good faith. And to carefully side step politics on an issue that has become political, it hasn't been proven, in my opinion, to the degree that warrants actions that will seriously hurt the US economy, especially when it is likely some of the biggest polluters (China comes to mind) will probably not follow suit.

[HURAKAN]

About Global Warming. Every time you burn carbon, like fossil fuels, carbon reacts with the oxygen in the air to form CO2. It happens every time, doesn't matter the amount. We know, not believe, that water vapor (H2O[g]), methane, and CO2 are the main gases behind the Greenhouse Effect. No discussion here, OK?

Therefore, we can conclude, not expeculate or believe, that an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, billions of gallons each year, will cause the planet to warm. The discussion shouldn't be if GW exists or not, because it exists, and thanks to GW we can survive in a warm planet, and not in an ice box.

The discussion should be about what would happen in a warmer world and how fast will the temperature increase. I think this is where most scientist disagree. Still as the planet gradually warms, we should see some changes in the weather patterns and major changes in the poles, like they are happening today. This will affect our current way of life and the life of future generations.

The difference between how the tropics can handle a warmer world and the poles is in the moisture content. If it gets warmer in the tropics, we get more convection. But in the poles the temperature doesn't allow the atmosphere to hold a lot of moisture, and therefore, it can't respond in the same way. Also, ice has a very high albedo, while water has a very low albedo, which allows water to retain a lot of heat, compared to ice which allows the solar rays to bounce back into the atmosphere. Furthermore, as the north pole continues to have less ice every summer, the ocean water will become warmer, which in turn will melt more ice. Like we're seeing today, the ice season in the north pole is starting after the normal date and the ice is melting before normal.

Humans need to understand that actions have consequences and after centuries of exploiting the natural resources to their limits, something gotta give. You can expand the rubber band until a certain point, but afterwards, it will always brake. We are not sure of what will happen because we have never experienced something similar in our history. Our effects have always been local until the discovery of oil. Oil changed our lives and the way humans interact, exploit resources, and the future.

[Ed Mahmoud]

Hurakan

First two paragraphs true, to a point. But the relative importance of the gases, and whether any natural sinks, etc., would compensate seems to be an important element.

I am not a met or climatologist, but I am an engineer, and have a science background.

First, water as a greenhouse gas. As a vapor, yes. As thin cirrus ice crystals, possibly (apparently very thin cirrus lets most sunlight through, but then blocks radiation back out), but as ice/water droplets in thicker clouds, decreases insolation. A warming planet may also reach an equilibrium, where the increased radiation due to warming compensates for the increased reflection due to greenhouse factors. I believe an assumption is warmer oceans will have less dissolved CO2, but it seems intuitive that the layer that would warm the most, near the surface, might also have increased biological activity, which might consume CO2

If AGW is real, it is almost certainly imposed on what would have been a natural warming cycle anyway, based on lags between warming and estimated atmospheric carbon dioxide graphs I have seen, and most pro-AGW people seemed happy to assume the rate of warming was entirely a man-made result. Until the rate of increase of temperature increase sharply decreased, maybe even stalled, after 1998. Now, they re-jigger the equations to produce a steady rise with a ten year level period, the result of a natural cooling cycle apparently masking the inexorable rise.

So, AGW may be much smaller than people imagine, (maybe even almost background noise to natural cycles), or maybe doomsday scenarios of methane tipping points and ice free poles in less than 25 years are true.


But making major changes that will make the US and the Western democracies/Japan less competitive, when reasonable people still have doubts, seems a bad idea.

Of course, since climate has been changing on a series of cycles of different magnitudes imposed on each other for a very long time (which I knew studying Cretaceous rock outcrops in Austin, where rock sequences repeated, the result of constantly changing sea levels based on natural climate change), what is the appropriate temperature we should be aiming for. Should we try to turn back the clock to the 'Little Ice Age'. (Not that we could, even if we tried) Is the climate perfect right now? Any reasonable change in climate, in any direction, would probably improve living conditions in some parts of the globe, and degrade them in others.


If you want to really get philisophical, getting to polar bears on ice caps (apparently Alaska has an increasing polar bear population, but I digress) species have been going extinct, and new species evolving, for eons. Now, the rate of species extinction has increased in the modern era, there is definitely some anthropogenic effect, but some species would have disappeared anyway. If I understand correctly, there may have been some temporal overlap between human activity and the extinction of the saber toothed tiger. Did humans cause that extinction? Is the loss of the s-t-t offeset by the thousands of human children no doubt not eaten as a result of the s-t-t?

OK, enough philosophy. And, reasonable actions to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources that have a side benefit of lower potential greenhouse gas emissions, like more wind turbines in West Texas, more nuclear power plants, that seems a good thing. Build enough electrical generating capacity, then hydrogen fuel cell vehicles might become practical. (Hydrogen doesn't exist in useful quantities in its useable form, but has a bad habit of being already oxidized). I'm all for that, before I went to college to be a petroleum engineer, I was a NEC 3383, enlisted surface ship reactor operator in the Navy, so I'd be ok if we replace coal and hydrocarbons with nuclear as a primary electrical source.

[Sanibel]

I think what is obviously being missed here is the possibility that a mild natural warming phase has just happened to coincide with a huge AGW input. I've been around long enough to know when people are using hopeful thinking to guide something the way they want it to go. Our economy is a very big motivator. Those who doubt AGW say it themselves. I can tell when persons with alterior interests are trying to load all the data on that natural phase pony. They are doing exactly what they accuse AGW proponents of doing. Right now the field of variables is deep and wide as the atmosphere itself and can easily hide broadly differring interpretations in its vastness, but the main numbers are holding true and signs are pointing towards AGW verifying. You can't claim that billions of tons of man-made CO2 has no scientific/physical affect. Our atmosphere is experiencing the quickest jump in CO2 it ever experienced in ice core samples. That's too much for the pony to carry...

But making major changes that will make the US and the Western democracies/Japan less competitive, when reasonable people still have doubts, seems a bad idea.

I'm sorry but this seems like the argument that was made about humanity angering the gods and causing mankind's downfall because we were starting to think maybe the earth revolved around the sun instead of vice versa. There's huge economic potential in developing new technologies.

[Ed Mahmoud]

I'm sorry but this seems like the argument that was made about humanity angering the gods and causing mankind's downfall because we were starting to think maybe the earth revolved around the sun instead of vice versa. There's huge economic potential in developing new technologies.

One can't mandate new technologies. On the other hand, if some of those most concerned about AGW weren't also opposed to more nuclear plant contruction, and wind farms that might affect the view for boaters offshore, and electricity could be generated at competitive prices from non-carbon producing sources, than some of the sounds good but really isn't solutions, electric cars and fuel cell cars, might actually work.

The new CAFE standards will help, but from what I understand, the engineering probably won't catch up with the standards in time to keep the main means of compliance the shrinking of cars. Smaller Euro-box cars of today are safer than similar sized cars of years past, but are still less safe than larger cars.

BTW, the Peoples Republic of China that is willing to kill protestors in Tibet and Tianmen Square, that supports the regime in Burma, that supports the genocidal regime in Sudan in return for oil exploration rights, that ships weapons to Mugabe in Zimbabwe so he can put down any attempts to enforce the results of the elections he lost, probably will never agree with or comply to any treaty that restricts the use of coal, the worst of the CO2 producing fossil fuels. To think strict government caps on CO2 emissions by only some of the nations in the world that will act to make fuel much more expensive won't give them an advantage is somewhat naive.



As far as the economy being a great motivator, compare and contrast the two Koreas. Similar natural resources. One does not have widescale starvation, one faces almost constant shortages of food. Why do Central Americans, among others, seek to enter this country by means legal and otherwise. The economy, mainly (although things like free speech, democracy, all that stuff, doesn't hurt). A good economy means most/all eat well, and live in comfortable homes, have at least some minimum standard of medical care, and have some measure of leisure time, a bad economy, like the Dust Bowl days of the Great Depression, or North Korea, means involuntary dislocation and starvation. Which is why I don't think hearing both sides, looking at AGW for a few more years, is a bad idea as compared to just assuming new technology will magically save the day if the government imposes CO2 caps that would otherwise effectively set the economy back a few decades.

[Sanibel]

Looks like we could be looking at that dustbowl sooner or later anyway. If AGW turns out to be false (which looks very unlikely now) and those people thrive on that comfort economy we'll burn it up with consumption anyway in the long run.

[shibumi]

In this day of instant information transmittal....I really don't believe anything I read anymore...or at least I doubt it. Every week someone at work sends an e-mail around purporting something or other...and it is never true-easily debunked....yet there remains a large population belief in what was stated in that e-mail because people don't take any time to try to verify the information.....they would rather believe what they read.

Now the weather is perhaps the most complex system there is....it verges on chaotic......if for no other reason than that the amount of information (boundary for you scientists) is HUGE. A little information is a dangerous thing...and this is multiplied by some huge number when it comes to what we have directly observed in the weather compared to the age of the earth.

I am an engineer....not a MET or a climatologist......but just looking at how data is handled in a very general way I have problems with drawing conclusions based on limited data.

When you do data curve fitting, the more data you have the better fit you get....it should be obvious. That curve fit approximates the data WITHIN the data set given.....that is called interpolation. When that curve is used to "get" a point outside of the data ("before" or "after"), it is called extrapolation. In my experience in engineering, extrapolation can be a very dangerous thing.....especially the further you drift from the data set and the smaller the sample of data the curve was derived from.

Keep in mind that in the realm of weather there is no such thing as "normal".....it does not exist. There is only something we call "average"....and "average" is only defined over the sample interval. Any given event on any given day anywhere on the globe is not "evidence" of anything....the standard deviation for such things is huge. Not only for any given day, but for any given season or even stretch of years.

We have secondary and tertiary evidence of the earths past climate that shows it regularly (and irregularly) undergoes warming and cooling. The climate is ALWAYS changing....and has been for the total of time before man has been able to pump anything but exhaled breath in to the atmosphere. It has been much warmer and much cooler than today.....and these changes have occurred without any intervention from man. Are we suddenly living in a world that has become stagnant and only we can be the cause for change? How egocentric is that if it were true....

Now that there is evidence that the earth has been holding steady or declining in temperature since 1998, suddenly there comes an idea that a short scale natural cooling is masking the warming and will revert shortly. How can you suddenly add a natural forcing and ignore the natural trending of temps for the past hundreds of years since the little ice age, or the last 10,000 years since the last proper ice age? Conversely the short term cooling shouldn't be used to assume that the warming trend we have been undergoing for centuries has stopped or reversed either...

When the short term northern hemisphere models used to forecast the sensible weather from today forward 2 weeks are regularly woefully wrong in terms of hours or days away, how much stock can you put in a global model trying to forecast 50 years away from now?

What about the preponderance of evidence that sun activity is a huge factor in changing the earth's climate? What of the ice caps on other planets melting as well? Is it not possible that they are linked?

If you ask the average person on the street what the biggest greenhouse gas is, how many do you think will get it right? Would they know that the overwhelming answer to that question is water vapor? There are plenty of sites out there (I just googled some) that don't even mention the biggest greenhouse gas in there whole lengthy discussion of greenhouse gases!

I know I am rambling some here...but just felt the need to put some thought on paper. I am at heart a scientist. I believe there is no morality in information......no politics. I think information is noble. what I hear and read about shows me that our society has moved away from honest scientific process and verification into a realm of information used for an end by those who have the power to do so.

Why is there no public debate on climate change? Why are those who have different ideas labeled deniers? It all seems a bit of the mob mentality to me....One day no one eats sushi...now you can find a sushi restaurant on every corner. One day flair pants and jean jackets with baby doll dresses is passe, the next every teenage kid is wearing them.....I am old enough to remember the whole "fuel shortage and oncoming ice age" that was the prevalent way of thinking of that decade....do we think the scientists of that day are really any different than those today?

What is the perfect climate for earth anyway? It has survived vastly different climates than what we see today and life has either adapted or died out. Are we (man and other life) suddenly less capable of change? Shouldn't the impetus be on how to change with it to maximize survival? Do we have any idea how a changing climate (warmer or colder) will affect any particular area of the earth? We will be able to grow fewer crops some places and more others....different crops in different places. Some places will get drier, some will get wetter....do we know which and where? We have plenty of evidence that areas of the earth now bone dry were lush before, and visa versa.....are we to believe this won't happen again with no regards to man? I don't know....but what I do know is that none of this is a foregone conclusion....and I resent it being treated as such. We can all point to someone of "authority" telling us one thing or another....so we all get on our mighty horses and proclaim one thing to be true or another and call each other names if we are not in the "right" camp of thought on it.

That our climate changes with time is a no brainer....that we should be using our resources wisely is also a no brainer....the degree to which our activities are changing our climate, whether it is significant, and whether it can be stopped in any meaningful way of it is significant is highly in doubt.

IMHO

[Ed Mahmoud]

OK, these people seem to think the IPCC forces the data to reach a foregone conclusion, and present a fair amount of what looks to a person with a science background but not in the field, reasonable contrary arguments.

http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf


Figure 10: A more detailed view of the disparity of temperature trends is given in this plot of
trends (in degrees C/decade) versus altitude in the tropics [Douglass et al. 2007]. Models show
an increase in the warming trend with altitude, but balloon and satellite observations do not.

[Ed Mahmoud]

Global warming effecting Jupiter


First news that Mars seems to be warming, and now, maybe Jupiter. I wonder what they might have in common?

[wbug1]

Global warming effecting Jupiter


First news that Mars seems to be warming, and now, maybe Jupiter. I wonder what they might have in common?

If you're suggesting the sun's insolation is causing Jupiter to warmup, than there's nothing in that article that says that, not that it would, because the climate change in a planet 300 times as massive as earth is not being driven by some small change in the suns radiative output. The article doesn't say Jupiter is warming.

[wbug1]

OK, these people seem to think the IPCC forces the data to reach a foregone conclusion, and present a fair amount of what looks to a person with a science background but not in the field, reasonable contrary arguments.

http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf


Figure 10: A more detailed view of the disparity of temperature trends is given in this plot of
trends (in degrees C/decade) versus altitude in the tropics [Douglass et al. 2007]. Models show
an increase in the warming trend with altitude, but balloon and satellite observations do not.

NIPCC final was published by the Heartland Institute and edited by S. Fred Singer.
http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf

some stuff on Singer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=41

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/l ... 06,00.html

Interesting stuff.

Definitely good stuff.

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transc ... 777013.htm

It's real good.

http://www.realclimate.org
http://www.realclimate.org/docs/Heartland.pdf

[Ed Mahmoud]

Global warming effecting Jupiter


First news that Mars seems to be warming, and now, maybe Jupiter. I wonder what they might have in common?

If you're suggesting the sun's insolation is causing Jupiter to warmup, than there's nothing in that article that says that, not that it would, because the climate change in a planet 300 times as massive as earth is not being driven by some small change in the suns radiative output. The article doesn't say Jupiter is warming.

What about Mars?



Anyhow, you're right, all global warming denialists are tools of Exxon-Mobil. Exxonsecrets.org says so, and any web site with that name hosted by Greenpeace must be an impecabble authority.


Anyway, even though the issue came to prominence due to a pseudo-documentary with footage borrowed from computer generated images of a global warming scare movie that results in an ice age, and has numerous mistakes and images shown out of context, produced by a former presidential candidate of a particular party, and the aim, whether motivated by purely scientific concerns, people without scientific backgrounds alarmed by a main stream media that makes money by sensationalism and just might have a bias on this issue, I'd go further, but I have been warned via pm not to get political. This paragraph is already verging on the political.

So I can say no more. Just have to accept that certain people in some GW threads freely use the term 'denialist', an obvious allusion to crackpots like Holocaust deniers, or tar any contrary scientific opinion as the product of evil as embodied by Exxon. I'm bringing boxing gloves to a gun fight, but those are the rules.

[wbug1]

Yes, what is it about Mars that is so interesting?

[Ed Mahmoud]

Yes, what is it about Mars that is so interesting?

Read a few places that the ice cap on the South Pole, made of carbon dioxide that freezes/re-gasifies during the cold and warm seasons, is apparently shrinking overall.


BTW, even if your Greenpeace run "ExxonSecrets.org" is right (nad it is obvious that the site referenced above isn't neutral on the subject of global warming) is there anything in their wrong or intentionally misleading, or is the mere mention of Exxon sufficient to discredit it?