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TLP
climber
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Sep 22, 2017 - 12:10pm PT
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NWO, both terms "global warming" and "climate change" are used in science depending on what the main subject matter is. For example, if rainfall in a particular spot is much higher or lower as a consequence of a change in temperature, one would reasonably talk about climate change: the fact that the pattern is different is much more important than the number of degrees of warming planet-wide. If the subject is melting of ice in many places all at once, it would make sense for the terminology to be global warming.
Both are unequivocally happening. This was all discussed clearly in a National Academy of Sciences report in the late 1970s. Nothing new.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Sep 24, 2017 - 08:33am PT
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Yesterday, whilst I awaited my pot to boil, I wondered whether anybody has computed how much energy and how much global warming has been caused by people putting too much water in their pot. Surely it is considerable and, surely in angst-ridden Europe, can a carbon tax on over-filling yer teapot be far behind?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Sep 24, 2017 - 09:22am PT
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Reilly...I'm holding you and your full teapot personally responsible for the increasing number of red klister days...!
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Sep 24, 2017 - 09:32am PT
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To get a full pot, I always add a cup of water to the coffee dripper after the brewing starts to make up for "the angels' share" lost in the grounds.
F the goddamn angels. Let them brew their own coffee.
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yosemite 5.9
climber
santa cruz
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Sep 27, 2017 - 06:35pm PT
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Ed Hartouni explained to me a few years ago how carbon molecules absorb solar energy and emit it into the atmosphere, rather than letting it pass to the ground. What I recently learned is that, while water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas in terms of %'s, changes in carbon molecules have more effect as a secondary greenhouse gas than changes in water vapor. My understanding now is that a carbon molecule absorbs and emits solar energy more than a water molecule. So a change in carbon levels has a disproportionally larger effect than the %'s indicate. I can see that this make sense since carbon is black and water is clear. Black objects absorb more light. Let me know if I am track, Ed.
I have been waiting for solar cycles to begin cooling the earth. But this was supposed to begin around 2013. It doesn't seem to have happened. The change is solar cycles may not be enough to offset increases in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere at this time, it appears to me for now.
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monolith
climber
state of being
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Sep 27, 2017 - 07:57pm PT
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5.9, it's more like co2 causes the atmosphere to warm, thus it has more capacity to hold more water vapour which amplifies the warming. That's why co2 is called the driver. We don't blame the mass of the car when it is involved in an accident, we blame the driver.
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Sep 28, 2017 - 11:09am PT
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Carbon black is soot, a solid, not CO2 gas. It is not a primary cause of warming. Soot on the ground does increase temperatures especially in snowy areas, since it absorbs heat and melts snow/ice. Soot in the air it may sometimes act like volcanic dust, and cause temporary cooling.
The carbon you're talking about is in the form of CO2 (invisible to humans) as Malemute said.
Although water vapor is a big greenhouse gas, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is actually a dependent, passive variable. The CO2 (and other gases like methane) are the cause, and water vapor is a feedback.
First the greenhouse effect of added CO2 and methane cause a certain amount of temperature rise.
Then due to that temperature rise, more water evaporates into the air,
and that causes even more warming.
So the greenhouse effect of the additional water vapor is actually caused by fossil fuels - the CO2 & methane.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/025202?fromSearchPage=true
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/025207/meta
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/025210
Solar activity cycles every ~11 years, but are not a significant factor in recent long term warming. When it peaks, more heat reaches the Earth. But then each cycle falls back down to the low. The average irradiance stays the same over the last 67 years. So solar activity is not the cause of the long term global warming. http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/sorce/files/2011/09/TIM_TSI_Reconstruction-1.png
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Sep 28, 2017 - 11:14am PT
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We don't blame the mass of the car when it is involved in an accident, we blame the driver.
Blaming humans for being human is a human specialty. So is climate change. We might not be able to fix the latter until we fix the former.
When a computer is driving the car, are we gonna blame the computer? Maybe a computer already is driving the car, and we need to reverse engineer it's programming, and fix it.
IMHO, there's a very small minority of people on either side who have a well researched well reasoned belief about climate change, one way or the other. I'm not one of them. Then there's the huge majority of us humans with our wacky belief processes (I'm a democrat so I believe in climate change, or whatever) who believe whatever it is that we believe for the reasons that we believe them. And mostly we don't understand those reasons.
IMHO, climate science is the easy part. Getting people to believe it is the hard part.
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monolith
climber
state of being
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Sep 28, 2017 - 12:25pm PT
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When a computer is driving the car, are we gonna blame the computer
Of course, if the computer caused the accident.
And yeah, the human started up the computer.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Sep 28, 2017 - 12:28pm PT
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Thanks. Good point.
Who started up the human? How does that human thing that started up the computer thing work?
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monolith
climber
state of being
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Sep 28, 2017 - 12:30pm PT
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Sorry, I kept editing.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Sep 28, 2017 - 12:31pm PT
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Yea I'm human too. Thanks! :-)
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yosemite 5.9
climber
santa cruz
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Sep 28, 2017 - 07:59pm PT
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Thanks Malemute.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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The Sun emits light at roughly 6000 K while the Earth does around 300 K,
The fraction of the spectrum absorbed by CO2, water vapor, etc, is higher at 300 K than at 6000 K, so the atmospheric CO2 lets a large fraction of the sunlight in and absorbs that the light radiated by the Earth.
This absorption heats the atmosphere, and that, in turn, increases the water content, which increases the absorption and the temperature.
If you removed the CO2 the water vapor would eventually condense and rain out and the atmosphere would cool.
This mechanism has been known since the mid 1890s and is used in many simple planetary atmosphere models without controversy, although the atmospheric gases may be different on those other planets. The light frequency dependent absorption of atmospheric gases are used to calculate the energy balance.
While some have speculated that the Sun is cycling into a state which might be like the Maunder Minimum (which coincided with the Little Ice Age), the only observations we have are the number of Sun spots. It isn't at all clear how to relate the Sun spots to solar output, and in any case, we don't have a solar model that predicts the Sun's behavior well enough to understand its irradiance at a precision required to predict climate changes.
The solar sun spot cycle is on the order of a decade and the there is no evidence of it in the climate data.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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CO2 absorbs then almost immediately reemits radiation in all directions in a narrow frequency band. At best, it slightly impedes the escape to space of that narrow bandwidth. There has never been an experiment that adequately reproduces the complexities of earth's atmosphere that establishes conclusively the level of impedance and resultant atmospheric heating. Also, the theorized positive feedback of increased atmospheric water content as a result of CO2 radiative impedance has failed to materialize as the steadily decreasing estimates of transient and equalized climate sensitivity indicates.
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monolith
climber
state of being
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Sumner is a greenhouse gas effect denier. They are not allowed on WattsUpWithThat because it's too absurd, even for them.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Rick doesn't usually post unless I post to these climate threads, he sees himself as some sort of "fair and balanced" voice, and he affects a scientific tone even though he has no science background, and has not read widely in the scientific literature. In general he does not provide a cogent quantitative argument on any of his points, he does not provide citations to the sources of the arguments he makes, and he is firmly entrenched in his beliefs, which are largely political.
Even more odd, he believes in meritocracy but is suspicious of intellectual elites, who, when you think of it, have demonstrated their abilities in a meritocracy... but that particular paradox is a trait of various parts of American politics.
CO2 absorbs then almost immediately reemits radiation in all directions in a narrow frequency band. At best, it slightly impedes the escape to space of that narrow bandwidth.
Rick is a longtime skeptic and while he makes scientific sounding statements he actually just parrots what he reads. This part of the energy balance of the atmosphere is well understood and has been a part of all atmospheric models for a very long time.
There has never been an experiment that adequately reproduces the complexities of earth's atmosphere that establishes conclusively the level of impedance and resultant atmospheric heating.
The predictability of the current atmospheric models is a very good indication that those models contain the correct science. What experiment would Rick do to demonstrate this?
He has no idea.
Also, the theorized positive feedback of increased atmospheric water content as a result of CO2 radiative impedance has failed to materialize as the steadily decreasing estimates of transient and equalized climate sensitivity indicates.
This last statement is an indication of his confusion, where he reduces the entire process to a single parameter "climate sensitivity" yet in his previous sentence states that the atmosphere is to complex to simplify.
Rick is confused largely because he puts his desired conclusion in front of any scientific arguments, and searches for those web sources that claim to support them.
In a letter I just received from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) there is this sentence:
"We must move beyond debating that climate chance is real and human induced."
see the latest public statement: http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/06282016.pdf
June 28, 2016
Dear Members of Congress,
We, as leaders of major scientific organizations, write to remind you of the consensus scientific view of climate change.
Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research concludes that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. This conclusion is based on multiple independent lines of evidence and the vast body of peer-reviewed science.
There is strong evidence that ongoing climate change is having broad negative impacts on society, including the global economy, natural resources, and human health. For the United States, climate change impacts include greater threats of extreme weather events, sea level rise, and increased risk of regional water scarcity, heat waves, wildfires, and the disturbance of biological systems. The severity of climate change impacts is increasing and is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades.1
To reduce the risk of the most severe impacts of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions must be substantially reduced. In addition, adaptation is necessary to address unavoidable consequences for human health and safety, food security, water availability, and national security, among others.
We, in the scientific community, are prepared to work with you on the scientific issues important to your deliberations as you seek to address the challenges of our changing climate.
American Association for the Advancement of Science American Chemical Society
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Meteorological Society
American Public Health Association
American Society of Agronomy
American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists American Society of Naturalists
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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An interesting fact: The US is 16 on the list of CO2 per capita.
Australia and Luxembourg are ahead of us.
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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What part of America First is America missing?
And I really dig the patient, articulate skewering of Sumner's tired old pullstring doll womitage. Fine work, Hartouni.
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Fine work, Hartouni.
Man, boy howdy! I have to thank Ed for his contributions and for the micro-bits of knowledge I have gained on the subject of climate/physics. I have spent a few hours(or days) following his links and doing my own research to educate myself on the subject. His ability to articulate what can be hard to understand in the lit, is much appreciated.
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