What happened to Global Warming?
When I put my first above ground pool in around the late 90's we were able to open it in April and start swimming in May.
Now my pool is just opened and still not warm enough to swim in
I'd like some global warming back...
Yes, I read the paper obviously (as much as wasn't behind a paywall anyway):
"These observations, together with transient global climate model simulations, support the conclusion that an antiphased hemispheric temperature response to ocean circulation changes superimposed on globally in-phase warming driven by increasing CO2 concentrations is an explanation for much of the temperature change at the end of the most recent ice age."
You asked for an example and I gave you one. I don't think CO2 explains deglaciation or temperature increases alone anyway.
There is what I think is a better paper (full version) that explains it in more detail:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/06/1116619109.full.pdf+html
My understanding of it is that orbital changes, ocean current changes, and released greenhouse gases caused local deglaciation which led to more GHG release which amplifies temperature increases in turn - positive feedback loops. I think you're pretty misinformed as far as things like "where are the corresponding current temperature changes?". It's already been done to death - it isn't just about surface temperature changes...the IPCC report summarizes all of this but I don't think you've read it.
As lay people we can read a book on quantum mechanics, string theory, or climate science and understand and explain the basics of it afterwards but that is very different from being able to understand it on the level of people actually publishing, peer reviewing, and critiquing the research on any of those topics as their career. Some of us may have had a few more Sex Ed classes than others, but we're all basically virgins talking about sex after watching a porno. I have absolutely no problem with people taking issue with the level of certainty of aspects of AGW though. I think it's fair to say we're all on a spectrum with agreement in some areas and maybe not so much in others.
Speak for yourself....
Are you saying you're a published scientist, a porn star, or both?
Just a published porn star.
I seriously doubt that the ocean plays a significant role in this.
There's less solubility at higher temperatures, but when significant amounts of CO2 are released then the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere rises, which prevents further loss of CO2 from the oceans. And since partial pressure dominates the CO2 balance in the ocean, the temperature effect is actually pretty small - it's there, but it's just not nearly as much as you'd think. (Check Henrey's law if you don't believe it).
But temperature does influence weathering - hotter weather decreases capture of CO2 by weathering of rocks if I remember correctly.
And sea level changes control the burial sites of carbon. If sea level is stable, then burial sites can be very productive. If there's a lot of variation in sea level, then burial of CO2 by plants is much harder.
However I don't know how life in the oceans respond to rising temperatures. I would think they become more productive. But what happens to the vertical mixing of oxygen in the oceans (if there's lots of oxygen deep down, then carbon decomposes), and how does life respond to acidity... I don't know exactly.
I think an important part of the carbon "cycle" is the continuous input of CO2 from volcanoes. On a very very long timescale this might be part of a cycle too - after all oceanic crust (containing carbonates) is recycled by the earth at subduction zones. I wouldn't be suprised if much of those carbonates are turned into mushy goo by the heat and return to the surface.
This production should be in balance with the permanent burial of CO2 under ground... but of course it isn't, there's a kind of tug of war between the two. Whenever climate gets nice and warm, plants take the opportunity to grow and grow and grow ... and on longer term bury all that carbon again under ground.
That's my 2 cents on the topic.
Well said.
But there's nothing wrong with critic sometimes, because researchers can suffer from tunnel vision.
Ekko, endless appeals to authority do not make for a compelling argument.
If CO2, which is the focus of AGW advocstes, was a measure able driver of global temperature, then all you would need to show are historical resdings showing CO2 going up and then temperature going up and then CO2 going down followed by temperature going down.
Instead, we are told that it's more complex than that. That we just don't understand and that we need to just listen to the "experts". Perhaps it is the AGW activists who need to listen more to the experts. The IPCC report just concludes that humans are probably affecting global climate. I agree With them. But our CO2 production is unlikely a major contributor.
Better start burning firewood, Brad. We may need you to start contributing to greenhouse gas accumulation again (if AGW proponents are correct).
I'm not making an argument from authority. I'm not telling you to not think about it and just accept what the experts are saying. I am saying it is much more complex than you would like it to be though. Neither of those things are incompatible with each other. I am linking to evidence to support and have been throughout. And it isn't a fallacious argument to assume experts in their field are probably going to have a better grasp of the topic than laymen. Of course they can still come to wrong or dishonest conclusions sometimes - but when there is consensus amongst experts that makes that probability vanishingly smaller.
In addition to the study links I posted earlier, there is also this summary: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-change.html
Other than the appeals to anti-authority that many have used throughout this thread, are there good reasons to discredit these sources?
Interesting article. Let's hope they're right.
But it seems very strange to me that small changes in the sun can have such dramatic effects on the climate. After all, the sun is a very quiet and stable star and its variations in solar irradiance are small, about 0.1%, resulting in changes in global temperatures of the earth by a mere 0.1 degrees or so. That seems hardly noticeable compared to other influences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle
This article shows the cosmic ray intensity.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3341045/
We're now in a low, at intensity "1". In the past it's been higher, up to "1.6".
But I don't think that means that the sun was 60% hotter at the time. I think it only indicates how many sunspots there were, because those release flares with high-energy radiation (the normal spectrum of the sun doesn't contain any significant high-frequency radiation).
And an article like this claims that it's the other way around...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/22/correlation-demonstrated-bewteen-cosmic-rays-and-temperature-of-the-stratosphere/
I think that it's up for debate.
Cosmic ray emission intensity is only one aspect of the sun's activity. A sustained increase in the sun's warming radiation of as 'little' as 0.1% would seem likely have much more impact than you seem willing to accept - the 'baseline' is pretty damn large so 0.1% can be a pretty impressive absolute number.
It's possible to calculate this with a pocket calculator.
A 0.1% increase = a factor 1.001
Temperature = root(root(Irradiance)).
Temperature_New = root(root(1.001 * Irradiance)) = root(root(1.001)) * root(root(Irradiance)) = root(root(1.001)) * Temperature_Original.
The new temperature is then very roughly: root(root(1.001)) * 300 Kelvin = 300.075 Kelvin (not counting a water vapor feedback).
I've read in CO2 studies that water vapor feedback is a factor 2 to 3 for a certain temperature rise - but that feedback is only controlled by temperature, it isn't anything specific to CO2. So the total temperature increase is roughly between 0.15 and 0.20 degrees.
This is an excellent quick read on communicating about climate change:
http://blogs.plos.org/models/nine-lessons-and-carols-in-communicating-climate-uncertainty/
That's the same chart I posted earlier in the thread. Temperature goes up, CO2 goes up. Temperature comes back down, then CO2 comes down.
I'm not discrediting your source, we're using the same source.
I'm not sure how posting a graph that clearly shows CO2 trailing temperature increases somehow boosts your argument.
To recap:
1) I absolutely believe that CO2 and temperature correlate.
2) I believe that temperature increases cause CO2 levels to rise.
3) The temperature / CO2 record gives credence to this belief.
4) AGW alarmists argue that we need to reduce our carbon output (usually through schemes that enrich statists) because they believe it will increase temperature
5) They have their causation backwards.
JUST TO BE EXTRA SPECIAL CLEAR: THIS GRAPH IS FROM YOUR SOURCE:
IF the blue line was CO2 and the red line was temp, then voila, I'd be a believer. But it's not. It's the other way around.
Higher temperatures release a lot of trapped CO2 into the atmosphere. As temperatures decline, the CO2 levels eventually decline as well.
You cannot look at that graph and argue that CO2 levels are what are driving the temperatures.
GeomanNL - I would think twice about using Grant Foster as a source. Here is but one misdeed: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/01/mcintyre-charges-grant-foster-aka-tamino-with-plagiarism-in-a-dot-earth-discussion/
Even members of the "Team" are embarrassed by his lack of ethics and professionalism.
Anything can be marketed. With the exception of the betamax format (and certainly others), most of the time the better 'product' wins out.
Like I've said before - it's a positive feedback loop - not a simple cause and effect. You're surely not arguing that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas with zero effect on temperature right? Temperature can rise due to other reasons of course and this rise releases CO2, which then in turn amplifies rising temperatures further.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-intermediate.htm
Edit: With respect to the historical graph above, most of that timeline does not involve humans and the CO2 concentrations are much lower - the carbon cycle is working unperturbed by humans. From the point where human emissions start to skyrocket, you can see how temperature and CO2 increase becomes coupled more closely as the CO2 levels increase well beyond any past natural fluctuations. Besides the emissions, we've also reduced the planet's ability to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. So while CO2 may not have been as important a driver of pre-industrial temperature increases, it's modern unnaturally higher levels have made it more so.
Also - to be clear about that graph - it's measurements based on Antarctica and it only goes up to 300 ppm. Here is a more recent time period graph where we're now around 393 ppm:
http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/global-temp-and-co2-1880-2009.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/indicators/&h=606&w=800&sz=50&tbnid=JtV-D6NDz_U1bM:&tbnh=95&tbnw=125&zoom=1&usg=__YiNGj8xycPLnqptT6r1WyZO3cW4=&docid=x_Jw_l7EdICcSM&sa=X&ei=b16jUpvEMMfZoASW3YCoCg&ved=0CEMQ9QEwBQ
The effect of warming temperatures on CO2 levels is pretty complicated. On the one hand temp increases warm soil to release more CO2, melt ice to reduce reflectivity and reveal more warmth absorbing soil and warm oceans to release more CO2. On the other, warm temperatures speed up weathering effects and chemical reactions that return CO2 to the ocean. In the past this has been more in balance - the thermostat of the carbon cycle - but our contributions have reached levels where it is clogging this up. The reason CO2 gets so much attention is because of the abundant amount we are producing, its effect as a GHG, and because it lasts so long in the atmosphere compared to other GHGs.
The most comprehensive explanation about the Ice Age CO2 and temperature measurements vs. our current situation I could find starts here: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12782&page=183
If you are actually sincere about the topic, it's the best total coverage of all of these topics I've found.
But... he had a good point about the baseline and he used year-averages, which make for a more robust comparison of data sets.
You've to take care when reading things about the ocean and CO2 on the internet. This article for example is wrong:
http://notrickszone.com/2013/10/08/carbon-dioxide-and-the-ocean-temperature-is-driving-co2-and-not-vice-versa/
takes the solubility of CO2 in water, then calculates a CO2 release. They use a solubility factor that is valid at a certain temperature and at a certain partial pressure of CO2. This is fine, if we would have an infinite atmosphere and the partial pressure of CO2 would not change because of the CO2 that was added to the atmosphere.
However, we don't have an infinite atmosphere and when CO2 is added to the atmosphere, the partical pressure of CO2 increases. This article fails to include that the solubility also depends on the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere. And as a matter of fact, partial pressure has a far more powerful influence on the solubility so this is a very, very big oversight.
Because: if you increase the pressure of a gas above the ocean, then the extra gas has only 1 escape left: into the ocean, until the partial pressure in the ocean balances the pressure above it.
This article has a better plot of CO2 content of the oceans.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCarbon/
Especially this plot: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCarbon/images/henrys_law_CO2_rt.gif
The plot shows the oceanic CO2 content as a function of temperature, but at different CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
If you'd assume a constant partical pressure, you would follow the curve of CO2/Temperature down, as the CO2 goes down with temperature.
But if you take into account that a release would increase the partial pressure, then you'd have to leave the original CO2/temp curve you were on, and jump to a higher curve of CO2/T that is representative of a higher pressure.
This illustrates that only taking temperature into account is misleading.
So while it may be true that huge amounts of CO2 are transferred from warm to cold ocean waters, this process occurs at a stable partial pressure because it's a matter of regional differences, it's not a global effect. This is purely temperature dependent. You cannot and should not use this as "proof" that oceans are able to significanly increase the CO2 content of the atmosphere on a global scale by temperature alone.
These articles offers an interesting mechanism for CO2 releases from the oceans:
http://oilprice.com/The-Environment/Global-Warming/New-Research-On-The-Oceans-And-Carbon-Dioxide-Release.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ocean-circulation-may-have-released-co2-at-end-of-ice-ages
http://phys.org/news98033767.html
A bottom ocean layer that's chock full of CO2 from decay of organic material (which can be considered as having a very high partial pressure equivalent), is transported towards the surface and is confronted with the very low partial pressure of the atmosphere. Naturally, significant amounts of carbon are then released.
This article gives a very nice summary of all the cycles involving CO2 and oceans:
http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/ocean_co2control.html
I do plenty, i live in a country that obtains its electricity for 99% from non CO2 emitting methods. And i use a huge amount of it (it being so cheap) , so relatively i produce much less CO2 then an equivalent energy waster in another nation.
Perhaps we can add a few "personal" more pages to this topic by these questions:
1. What is your personal experience with global warming?
2a. What would convince you that global warming is real?
2b. What would convince you that it's not real?
My answers are:
1. When I was young, about 30 years ago, there were several winters in which I could skate on the big canal. In the last 20 years that only occured once again, and not as cold and the ice was not as thick. Last few winters had a few cold months with lots of snow, but not cold enough for really thick ice. And I remember that we've had some extremely hot summers between 2003 - 2006 - those were really horrible with all the humidity.
2a. I'm already convinced.
2b. 5 years of cold rainy summers and ice-cold winters like we had 30 years ago.
I'm capable to see the difference between my situation and that of the 'world'. So a few soft winters here or there don't mean much. I see a minor undulation in a gigantic non-linear chaotic system which is of such insignificance compared to other undulations it only is visible due to people actually looking for it. A bit like the ozoneholes. They always were and always will be there but became a 'problem' because someone suddenly saw them and made it a problem.
Hubris is a human condition that is sometimes amusing, and often annoying. First the sun turned around the earth, then the other way around and now the world turns around us. We, the supreme beings obviously have to be at fault. The rulers of the land, the keepers of the earth.
Sometimes one listens to these selfagrandizing idea's and suddenly realizes that Gamers are no different from climatists.
1. in Hungary summers are becoming dryer, more droughts, less and less rain events but more and more intensive ones, winters that are becoming warmer, with shorter snow coverage, when I was a child it used to havesnow every year, but nowadays it is becoming very rare. Very hot summers after 2000 in every year I guess..
2a. I am convinced because what I see around me totally fits this, and the DATA shows this as well, no matter what people want to say how fake or something those data are. Trends are obvious, increasing number of extreme events, hottest years all around and after 2000.. Oh, and btw I won't consider several of my previous university courses to be fake just because some say global warming isn't real, I am more likely to believe my teachers on this.
2b. Because it is not me who collects the data, it has a slight chance denialists are right, and someone cannot just ignore their viewpoint as I have no means to verify all the data collected from the whole world. Though it has 1-5 % chance I think.
It's 5am, so please excuse grammatical and spelling errors.
I think it might be time for a scientist to pop in here and say hello, so hello. As stated before, laymen seem to be able to sort of "understand" string theory and more complex physics discussions, but simple biological topics seem to have far more controversy surrounding them in our daily lives. Why? Because the layman usually thinks he knows more than the individuals that dedicate their lives to researching an idea. The evidence is in the fact that many of you are linking to wordpress sites and blogs.. Those are not evidence, they are not peer-reviewed sources of information and they typically spin things to fit the paper into their little world view. You're not idiots, just misinformed and mislead (doesn't apply to all of you).
Background? I'm a biologist, and I prefer to remain anonymous so that's all you'll get. Take what I have to say with a grain of salt if you wish.
The earth has definitely had temperature changes over the past few billion years, but we've seen almost a full degree increase since 1900. Oh, No! A single degree in one hundred years?!?! Yeah, it's a big deal. You see, the earth's natural flux happens over hundreds of thousands of years.. We've done quite a bit in just one hundred years (as evidenced by Maldives and Venice, to just name two), and the rate of increase per decade just about doubled after the 1970's.
The argument for the past few pages seems to be whether carbon has a significant role in temperature rise, or if it's the other way around. Well, you can believe yourself or you can see that an overwhelming percent (high 90's) of the experts in the field, and related fields, are in agreement that our carbon emissions have had a drastic impact. In the past carbon did not have a large impact on temperature increase because more carbon is released from natural sources as temperature increases and you get a natural feedback loop beginning with temperature increase.. But in the past 100 years we've changed everything. We started releasing carbon like nobody's business and now we've got a feedback loop that started the other way around.
By demolishing the fickle planet that we live on without knowledge of the effects we started down a road that's hard to alter. Now that we've got the knowledge to understand what we're doing, we need to stop arguing about who knows more than those who spend their lives dedicated to researching the subject and understand that we're screwing ourselves and our future generations. Considering the money that fossil fuel industries have put into politics and propaganda, we'll likely never have a consensus in the general population (especially in the United States), but those that actually open their eyes to what's going on may come together and get loud enough for change to happen within our lifetime.
It really is a slippery slope, and the time for change was years ago.
I wonder what denialists will say about this.. To me it seems they don't believe in scientists.
To me IT seems like this thread has run IT's course.
People will believe what they wish to believe.
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