[mike777]

Global warming is in the news alot.

The news say most scientists agree global warming is happening but when I really listen to them it seems they do not even agree on what the definition of global warming is.

If the globe is warmer today than yesterday is that global warming?
If this year or decade or century is warmer than the last one is that global warming?
What is the definition and who decided that is the correct definition?

Ok once we agree on a definition we need to agree on what is causing it, I see no agreement, please do not say greenhouse gases cause all or most of it, I see no proof of that argument.

I understand Greenland is going to lose its ice sheet, the oceans are going to rise 30 feet but Chicago used to be covered by an ice sheet, and that melted. Was that Global warming, too much CO2 in the air? Should I buy real estate in Greenland now? Is this a conspiracy by Denmark to get rich?

Another issue is how much should we care if the rich lose their beach houses and the poor now have new ocean front views? How much should we be worried if southern france and italy learn how to ice fish and hunt seals while canada becomes a tropic zone? Do we really need to spend 100 billion of our tax money to rebuild every city that floods out? If enough cities flood out we might just stop doing that or run out of money.

Anyway I just really wondered what the heck is this global warming the news keeps talking about, it feels colder today than yesterday.

[hrothgar]

I'll be interested to see whether or not Frances decides to weigh in on this one...

Global warming is an extremely complex (and very important issues)

I'm going to refrain from jumping up and down on my soapbox and restrict myself to a few points:

1. The global weather system is non-linear. There are lots of feedback loops built into the system. As an example: Decreases in the size of the ice-caps decreases amount of sunlight that is reflected back into space, further warming the atmosphere and accelerating the rate at which the ice caps melt. Balanced against this, increasing the temperature can increase precipitation and cause more snow to fall, accelrating the rate at which glaciers form. The reason that I mention this is to reiterate that this is VERY complicated stuff.

2. Global warming won't manifest itself uniformly across the global. Many climate models preduct that global warming will cause a significant decrease in temperature in Europe and the Eastern Coast of North America. (The Atlantic Conveyor which fuels the Gulf Stream relies on a specific balance between salt water and fresh water in the North Atlantic. Large scale ice melt could easily shut down the gulf stream)

3. The major danger inherent to global warming is related to the impact of climate change on weather patterns and plant/animal life. In terms of weather, the major dangers are related to widespread drought in Africa as well as increases in the intensity of tropical storms like Hurricanes. On the critter front, the "tame" scenarios involve widespread extinctions when various plants and animals aren't able to adjust quickly enough to rapid changes in the weater patterns: Case in point corals reefs are extremely fragile. There are a number of other issues related to the spread of various nasty critters. The NYT had an interesting article a couple weeks back about the the impact of temperature increases on the range of certain beetles. (There's a very real danger that much of the Candian forests are going to get wiped out) The alarmist scenarios focus on CO2 absorbtion in large bodies of water and subsequent impacts on acidity. If any of these hold true, things are going to get VERY ugly.

As for why "we" (meaning the developed Western world) should care...
If you have to ask, you aren't gonna understand the answer

[Al_U_Card]

hrothgar, on Mar 29 2006, 04:31 PM, said:

3.  The major danger inherent to global warming is related to the impact of climate change on weather patterns and plant/animal life.

I think that the major danger will come from the masses of humanity that want to "share" the land and resources of those already on site in the still viable areas.

Ice cores from the last 850,000 years show consistant and repeating patterns in atmospheric CO2 levels and global average temperature. We are now at a CO2 level that exceeds that level that preceeded every other ice age during this almost million year period during which there were dozens of ice ages.

The mini-ice age in 1300-1500 was felt to be the "natural" ice age arrival, but it was stopped short by the accumulation of CO2 etc. from human farming activity over the previous 5000 years.

Acidification of ocean water will kill diatoms which will totally alter the food chains in the oceans. Fresh water from the poles will not only extinguish the gulf stream causing continental Europe to show its true climatological heritage but will allow heat to accumulate in the tropics causing more and more powerful hurricanes. The data is coming in re: the Gulf stream and the Greenland cold water elevators and it shows them both shutting down.

Who knows how the earth will react to this unprecedented situation but while it may remain to eventually return to balance, we the human scourge that infects its skin will hopefully be scoured away clean.

[DrTodd13]

1. The earth's cycles of warming and cooling have happened over and over again throughout time and seem to happen at regular intervals. This would indicate they are related to orbital differences, sun cycles, precession, etc.
2. We can't predict weather reasonably well 2 weeks in advance and yet claim that we know that a certain level of carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming?
3. Water vapor is a much more effective greenhouse gas then carbon dioxide. So what causes increased cloud cover? As in #2, I'm not sure they can claim to know all the factors that relate to the amount of cloud cover.
4. As I recall from looking at this before, volcanos and oceans annually release orders of magnitude more greenhouse gases than humans do. How can they be so sure that the relatively tiny amount we create is making such a difference?
5. We've only had measurements of temperatures at various altitudes for half a century or so and some layers of the atmosphere appear to be warming while others are cooling.
6. So what if the earth is warming? Who is to say that the current temperature is optimal?
7. More carbon dioxide in the air will mean more and bigger plants. More plants is good for people and more plants convert more carbon dioxide to oxygen thus reducing one of the greenhouse gases. People are very mobile. If one part of the earth becomes difficult to live in then you can move to another part that will become more livable.
8. Some people want to build factories on Mars to produce CFCs and pump them into the Martian atmosphere. CFCs are 1000s of times more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide and still some climatologists believe it would take thousands of years to warm Mars up even pumping huge quantities of CFCs into the atmosphere. I don't think you can have it both ways.
9. My understanding is that this whole hub-bub about Freon came about when the patent on Freon was about to expire. Coincidence?

[hrothgar]

DrTodd13, on Mar 30 2006, 12:52 AM, said:

1. The earth's cycles of warming and cooling have happened over and over again throughout time and seem to happen at regular intervals. This would indicate they are related to orbital differences, sun cycles, precession, etc.
2. We can't predict weather reasonably well 2 weeks in advance and yet claim that we know that a certain level of carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming?
3. Water vapor is a much more effective greenhouse gas then carbon dioxide. So what causes increased cloud cover? As in #2, I'm not sure they can claim to know all the factors that relate to the amount of cloud cover.
4. As I recall from looking at this before, volcanos and oceans annually release orders of magnitude more greenhouse gases than humans do. How can they be so sure that the relatively tiny amount we create is making such a difference?
5. We've only had measurements of temperatures at various altitudes for half a century or so and some layers of the atmosphere appear to be warming while others are cooling.
6. So what if the earth is warming? Who is to say that the current temperature is optimal?
7. More carbon dioxide in the air will mean more and bigger plants. More plants is good for people and more plants convert more carbon dioxide to oxygen thus reducing one of the greenhouse gases. People are very mobile. If one part of the earth becomes difficult to live in then you can move to another part that will become more livable.
8. Some people want to build factories on Mars to produce CFCs and pump them into the Martian atmosphere. CFCs are 1000s of times more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide and still some climatologists believe it would take thousands of years to warm Mars up even pumping huge quantities of CFCs into the atmosphere. I don't think you can have it both ways.
9. My understanding is that this whole hub-bub about Freon came about when the patent on Freon was about to expire. Coincidence?

There's a old saying in English that I typically associate with playgrounds and 5th graders: "Put your money where your mouth is"

I've often wondered whether this could be aplied to the global warming debate.

I'll be quite blunt here: I find attitude's like DrTodd's infuriating. Personally I associate this type of drivel with shills hired by Exxon/Mobil. I think that you need search far and wide to find a respectable scientist who would support DrTodd's comments who doesn't have a conflict of interest issue. While I agree that its difficult to be certain in these matters, I think that the stakes associated with issue suggest erring on the conservative side.

In any case, I've often wondered whether it would be possible to create some kind of financial instrument whose value was tied to some of the statistics associated with the Global Warming hypothesis.

1. For example, we could have one derivative whose yield was tied to sea level.
2. We could have a second derivative whose yield was linked to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
3. We could have a third based on the Global mean temperature.

Individuals could express their options regarding the legitimacy of global warming by investing in various derivatives. If you you honestly beleive that sea levels will rise, then you will go long on the sea level derivative. In contrast, if you beleive that sea levels are not going to rise, you can short that sea level derivative.

Anyone wishing to play the pundit should be expected to make a "meaningful" investment in one or more of the derivatives. If you aren't willing to pony up some real cash, you might as well shut up because you probably don't have a well informed opinion.

[joshs]

1. Over the last 100 years or so there has been a steady increase in the average global temperature coupled with glacures receeding and the polar ice caps melting some. These facts are well documented.

2. There is overwhelming statistical evidence that the rate of temperature change is highly correlated with the magntitude of human co2 production. The statistical evidence doesn't assert causation, just a strong hint that the phenomenons may be related. Also note that because of the complexity of the non-linear system that governs the climate, the temperature change might not be proportional to the total co2 level, but instead might be just be related to the change in co2 from our current level (a pertubation from some sort of equilibrium) or even might depend on the locations where co2 is produced (great concentrations in certain places).

Note here: Its very important to develop models that explain the relationship between your phenomenon (here global temperature change) and the potential cause when its hard to properly do statistical analysis controlling for all possible causes. If you lived in the northern hemisphere you might have decided that the weather was warmer in the summer than in the winter since the earth was closer to the sun. In fact its because of the angle of of orientation of the earth relative to the sun....

3. Climate models and weather models are not the same thing. It is often much easier to understand and model macro behavior than micro behavior. That is why thermodynamics came long before quantum physics.

4. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists while not agreeing on every detail of the dynamics between co2 production and global warming agrees that there is a strong relationship between them, and have built climate models that appear to model recent history in addition to longer term trends (estimates as to temperature and other factors comes from geological and biological evidence).

5. Assesing if global warming is bad, of course is a judgement thing, but its clearly bad for most of the existing human population centers, and its probably a bad thing having the earth's climate change much faster than it normally does, so the natural system may or may not be able to adjust.

[luke warm]

Al_U_Card, on Mar 29 2006, 04:45 PM, said:

Who knows how the earth will react to this unprecedented situation but while it may remain to eventually return to balance, we the human scourge that infects its skin will hopefully be scoured away clean.

hey!! i resemble that remark

richard said:

As for why "we" (meaning the developed Western world) should care...
If you have to ask, you aren't gonna understand the answer

i probably wouldn't understand the answer even if i knew what question to ask.. in any case, i don't think todd's post can be dismissed out of hand... for example, in december of '04 the seattle times reported:

"Since Mount St. Helens started erupting in early October, it has been pumping out between 50 and 250 tons a day of sulfur dioxide, the lung-stinging gas that causes acid rain and contributes to haze."

it went on to say that this one volcano was responsible for more greenhouse gases and other pollutants than all other sources... besides, i'd be interested in knowing whether or not his points are true rather than whether or not they're agreed with... for example:

"5. We've only had measurements of temperatures at various altitudes for half a century or so and some layers of the atmosphere appear to be warming while others are cooling."

is that true? if it is, does 50 or so years seem like a sufficient length of time to form life/earth changing policies?

i think that if there are changes made (ie, fuel changes, energy producing changes), the reasons will be more mundane... economics, politics, even technological discoveries (fusion anyone?) will cause change far quicker than any sense of danger, imho

[DrTodd13]

I'm not saying that human-caused global warming doesn't exist. I'm just saying that to me it seems pompous to say with certainty that we are the cause. I also find it disingenuous that periodically the "sky is falling" crowd gets a petition signed by so many thousands of scientists claiming global warming is real but what they don't tell you is that only a fraction of these scientists are actually climatologists. Hell, my business card says "scientist" on it so does that qualify me to offer an opinion? I think that according to criminal legal standards, you would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt human causation for global warming. Correlation is not causation. You probably would be able to prove this by civilian legal standards of the preponderance of the evidence though.

Largely I think the issue is a political one where the real goal is to cripple the economies of industrialized nations in the name of the environment. I say this because the Kyoto agreement would only reduce CO2 emissions by less than 5% if I recall. That 5% is enough to do serious damage to the economy of the US but would have little effect on the environment. So if you really are serious about believing in global warming, you should be calling for immediate drastic reductions in CO2 and accepting the inevitable world-wide depression this would cause.

[joshs]

DrTodd13, on Mar 29 2006, 07:05 PM, said:

I'm not saying that human-caused global warming doesn't exist. I'm just saying that to me it seems pompous to say with certainty that we are the cause. I also find it disingenuous that periodically the "sky is falling" crowd gets a petition signed by so many thousands of scientists claiming global warming is real but what they don't tell you is that only a fraction of these scientists are actually climatologists. Hell, my business card says "scientist" on it so does that qualify me to offer an opinion? I think that according to criminal legal standards, you would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt human causation for global warming. Correlation is not causation. You probably would be able to prove this by civilian legal standards of the preponderance of the evidence though.

Largely I think the issue is a political one where the real goal is to cripple the economies of industrialized nations in the name of the environment. I say this because the Kyoto agreement would only reduce CO2 emissions by less than 5% if I recall. That 5% is enough to do serious damage to the economy of the US but would have little effect on the environment. So if you really are serious about believing in global warming, you should be calling for immediate drastic reductions in CO2 and accepting the inevitable world-wide depression this would cause.

Suprisingly enough, the experts in the field disagree with you. No scientist thinks that corrrelation is causation. Thats why lots of work has gone into doing modeling work. Molina at MIT won a nobel prize for his modeling work. There are tons of scientists in this field at NASA, at NOA, at universities, at the sante fe institute. While there is not complete agreement yet (climatology is complicated like neurology or astronomy becuase you can't really do physics experiments) on all the details of the model there is agreements about a great many things, including

Additional co2 production would have a variety of bad effects, hence even small reductions could do great things. Yes all of us wish the models were exact, so we know that we can tolerate 2.5 trillion metric tons more co2 but not 3 trillion, but the exact thresholds are not understood that well, in part because of the complex interaction (with feedback) between living organisms and the air we breathe, and in part because the whole damn system is very non-linear.

The scientists are not out to ruin the world economy. Maybe there is some radicals who mistate science for other purposes (I am sure thats true on any issue, and from all sides) but really, why are you making a claim that a whole field of science are political hacks, without providing evidence that their models are wrong? Now thats political hackery as far as I am concerned.

[Rain]

Low lying places like Singapore will lose more land as the water level goes up.

[jikl]

Quote

Largely I think the issue is a political one where the real goal is to cripple the economies of industrialized nations in the name of the environment. I say this because the Kyoto agreement would only reduce CO2 emissions by less than 5% if I recall. That 5% is enough to do serious damage to the economy of the US but would have little effect on the environment. So if you really are serious about believing in global warming, you should be calling for immediate drastic reductions in CO2 and accepting the inevitable world-wide depression this would cause.

Why another example that the US is the capital of the world? The fact that the US does not sign the Kyoto protocol gives rapidly developing countries like China an excuse to be a little slack in meeting quotas. If China or India reaches development levels of a US standard without meeting quotas then the world is screwed.

Think of the world, not just the US.

Sean

[Gerben42]

Quote

1. The earth's cycles of warming and cooling have happened over and over again throughout time and seem to happen at regular intervals. This would indicate they are related to orbital differences, sun cycles, precession, etc.

One needs to distinguish between the natural global warming effect and human activity enhanced global warming. The combination of both causes concern.

Quote

2. We can't predict weather reasonably well 2 weeks in advance and yet claim that we know that a certain level of carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming?

Global properties are easier to predict than local phenomena. This is because weather is chaotic. The smaller the scale, the harder to predict the weather. No weatherman can tell you the path of a tornado even an hour in advance, for example.

The average surface temperature of the Earth is about 15 deg. C). This would below zero for a planet with no atmosphere. You can simply calculate the blackbody radiation of the Earth and put that equal to the radiation from the sun (1300 Watt / m^2 x pi r^2) and figure that one out. It's higher because of greenhouse gases (Water vapour, CO2, Methane, etc.). The planet Venus is in a state of a runaway greenhouse effect: 100 atmospheric pressures of greenhouse gases raised the planet temperature from about 80 deg. C to over 400!

So be happy that there are greenhouse gases in the atmosphere otherwise we'd all be freezing, but too much of it is really, really bad.

Quote

3. Water vapor is a much more effective greenhouse gas then carbon dioxide. So what causes increased cloud cover? As in #2, I'm not sure they can claim to know all the factors that relate to the amount of cloud cover.

A higher global temperature means more water evaporates from the oceans, causing more cloud cover, which causes more evaporation etc. There is an equilibrium when there are enough clouds covering the oceans to avoid more evaporation. It's of course more complicated than that, but this is the main factor.

Quote

5. We've only had measurements of temperatures at various altitudes for half a century or so and some layers of the atmosphere appear to be warming while others are cooling.

The whole atmosphere is connected to eachother. A rise in temperature in some layer must be followed with a drop somewhere else. But in the end the SURFACE temperature is decisive because that is where the atmosphere couples to the water on the surface, liquid or solid.

Quote

6. So what if the earth is warming? Who is to say that the current temperature is optimal?

A higher global temperature means:

* More extreme weather conditions (hurricanes, tornadoes, tropical cyclones, blizzards...)
* A higher ocean level

Quote

7. More carbon dioxide in the air will mean more and bigger plants. More plants is good for people and more plants convert more carbon dioxide to oxygen thus reducing one of the greenhouse gases. People are very mobile. If one part of the earth becomes difficult to live in then you can move to another part that will become more livable.

Tell that to the people living there. It's already happening, the deserts are increasing in size. The Gobi desert is pushing east towards Beijing, the Sahara is pushing south.

Quote

8. Some people want to build factories on Mars to produce CFCs and pump them into the Martian atmosphere. CFCs are 1000s of times more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide and still some climatologists believe it would take thousands of years to warm Mars up even pumping huge quantities of CFCs into the atmosphere. I don't think you can have it both ways.

CFCs are so potent because they cause a reaction in which they are preserved. For example CFC + O_3 -> CFC + O + O_2. You've broken down an ozone molecule and you still have your CFC molecule which can do the same over and over again.

It will take so long on Mars because it hardly has an atmosphere, to build one up takes ages. To mess one up (like on Earth) takes considerably shorter... It's always so much easier to break things than to fix things.

Quote

9. My understanding is that this whole hub-bub about Freon came about when the patent on Freon was about to expire. Coincidence?

From the scientist's point of view, no doubt a coincidence. For the politicians who acted upon the findings of the scienticts I cannot know. Ask them.

[pbleighton]

"The overwhelming majority of climate scientists while not agreeing on every detail of the dynamics between co2 production and global warming agrees that there is a strong relationship between them, and have built climate models that appear to model recent history in addition to longer term trends (estimates as to temperature and other factors comes from geological and biological evidence)."

This is true. It is also true that global warming has, in the last 15 years, gone from a new theory, which was greeted with much skepticism, to the overwhelming consensus in the field, based on modelling as well as new data.

I don't see that any of the posters claim to be a climate scientist. Most seem to have significant scientific training, however. Given this training, it is puzzling to me why those who seem to think it is hogwash (perhaps based on political biases) ignore the validity of domain expertise.

Peter

[helene_t]

mike777, on Mar 29 2006, 11:00 PM, said:

The news say most scientists agree global warming is happening but when I really listen to them it seems they do not even agree on what the definition of global warming is.[..]Ok once we agree on a definition we need to agree on what is causing it, I see no agreement, please do not say greenhouse gases cause all or most of it, I see no proof of that argument.

Of course scientists disagree. That's what they pay us for.

Once scientists start agreeing with each other, there would be reason for doubt about the scientific community - in the Soviet Union, as well as in medieval Europe, scientist had to share a common belief which was dictated by the politicians/church. Those circumstances did not lead to much scientific progress.

[pigpenz]

what goes around come around.....this has happened before and will happen again as long as we have a planet. All we need now to stop global warming is some castrophic event like giant volcanoe blowing up to change to global chilling

[Al_U_Card]

Sadly, ice ages couldnt exist when the Earth (prior to 90 million years ago or so) didnt have different oceans and continents. That required continental drift (the result of natural forces too) which was also a "radical" scientific theory that was largely ridiculed when it was first proposed.

When you look at the pattern over the last million years, the systemic cycles are so obvious and rythmic that their variation is minute and was only subject to slight perturbation caused by the main drivers (sun cycles, axial tilt, greenhouse gas emission by volcanic sources etc.)

These main drivers continue to operate but have been over-ridden by a pernicious and powerful factor......and we are it. It is real, don't buy any seaside property (unless it is several miles inland at present) and hope that the special interest nay-sayers eventually are overthrown. It may be too late for us, but what of generations to come?

[AceOfHeart]

Some people attitude would be who cares.... I will be long dead b4 the global warming thing affects me.

Look at the attitude of the American government and Bush on global warming and the kyoto protocol.

The fact that this is an non issue during the election, where parties focuses on the Iraq war shows how nonchalant the public is on this issue.

[Al_U_Card]

AceOfHeart, on Mar 30 2006, 01:34 PM, said:

Some people attitude would be who cares.... I will be long dead b4 the global warming thing affects me.

Look at the attitude of the American government and Bush on global warming and the koyto protocol.

The fact that this is an non issue during the election, where parties focuses on the Iraq war shows how nonchalant the public is on this issue.

Unfortunately, you are probably right. On the bright side, the dinosaurs didn't care (or couldnt do anything about) the planet smashing asteroid that ended THEIR reign. Since those in power and control are mostly dinosaurs, why should we be surprised?

[cherdano]

DrTodd13, on Mar 30 2006, 02:05 AM, said:

Largely I think the issue is a political one where the real goal is to cripple the economies of industrialized nations in the name of the environment. I say this because the Kyoto agreement would only reduce CO2 emissions by less than 5% if I recall. That 5% is enough to do serious damage to the economy of the US but would have little effect on the environment.

This is just blatantly wrong. In Germany (and I am sure many other countries), the CO2 emissions have been successfully decoupled from economic growth. I.e. the increase in energy efficiency is more than making up for the growth of the economy, leading to a net reduction of CO2 emissions since about 1990.

Since energy efficiency in the U.S. is still on a low standard compared to Europe (not sure you will believe this, but for example the insulation of a typical house in the U.S. is ridiculously bad compared to everything you would find in Europe), it should be even easier to substantially reduce CO2 emissions of the US economy without any negative impact.

I won't comment on the conspiracy aspect of your statement above...

Arend

[joshs]

BTW, I highly recomend Michael Porter's book, the competative advantage of nations. He studied the japanese electronic industry (as well as many other countries/industries). He had a very interesting observation. While regulation initially drove some companies under, those that survived did so by innovating and ultimately became dominant worldwide becuase there products were better.

In a similar manner, while there will be some short term negative effects of forcing companies to innovate when it comes to more energy effeciency and reducing emmitions. those that survive will be better positioned for global leadership in their respective industries.