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ruveyn
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Location: New Jersey
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 Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 12:59 pm Post subject: |
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It has yet to be established firmly that human activity is the main driver for the current warming trend in Earth climate. There are other causes: cosmic ray input (which affects the formation of clouds), earth orbit variation, earth wobble around its axis, variation in solar power output, etc. etc. For largely political reasons, the role of human activity has been singled out as the main cause of the current warming trend. Apparently the fact that there was a prior warm period back around 1300 is ignored. At that time Vikings used to live, farm and keep livestock in Greenland (it was green then). And that was 500 years before the Industrial Revolution complete with its coal fired steam engines.
Even before that the earth has been much warmer than it is now and it had little to do with CO2. In fact past data shows that CO2 increases, trail warming trends.
It is understandable why human activity is so singled out. It gives the handiest excuse for government intervention in industrial and economic affairs and provides a ready scape-goat for the current warming trend -- those greedy capitalistic industrial plutocrats. I suppose I should be grateful they are not blaming the warming trend on the Jews.
ruveyn
Last edited by ruveyn on Sat Oct 31, 2009 8:33 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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number5
Deinonychus
Joined: Jun 16, 2009
Posts: 360
Location: central NY
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| Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 1:37 pm Post subject: |
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Scientists have in no way ignored past climatic data. The problem is that we do not have an acurate record of actual gmt's (global mean temps). Through forensic meteorology, it appears that past warming/cooling trends occured over a much broader time period as opposed to today's warming trend. The rate at which we are observing warming appears to be unprecedented. As far as changes in insolation, that's measureable. There appears to be no significant anomoly. The fact is that CO2 is indeed a greenhouse gas and is present in the atmosphere in record amounts. It's also important to realize that a huge percentage of earth's population now lives on or near the coast. Once you start to realize the potential affects on real eastate, as well as human lives, it becomes easy to understand how these ideas quickly become political.
It's not about picking someone or something to blame, it's rather that all available scientific data points towards human activity and pollution (and has for quite some time now). Did we really think that pumping trillions and trillions of pounds of pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere would have no repercussions? Technology exists for us to do things in a cleaner, greener, and more cost effective way. The sun is like a huge light bulb over our heads in so many ways. It should be a no brainer. |
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ascan
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Joined: Feb 23, 2005
Posts: 2184
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| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 5:12 am Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | Apparently the fact that there was a prior warm period back around 1300 is ignored. At that time Vikings used to live, farm and keep livestock in Greenland (it was green then). And that was 500 years before the Industrial Revolution complete with its coal fired steam engines. |
Ruveyn, I believe I've corrected you before on this. Firstly, Greenland still is "green" in the summer in the south near the coast. Most of the place, however, is covered in an ice sheet that's been there since long before any Vikings showed up. Moreover, nobody in the scientific community is arguing that climatic conditions don't fluctuate especially on a regional level, and yes the climate of coastal Greenland may have been marginally more conducive to settlement at the time you refer to. That is widely acknowledged, and doesn't detract from the validity of current arguments suggesting anthropogenic warming is occuring.
| ruveyn wrote: | | Even before that the earth has been much warmer than it is now and it had little to do with CO2. In fact past data shows that CO2 increases, trail warming trends. |
Evidence shows that warming due to Milankovitch forcing (the change in insolation due to the orbital variation you mentioned) causes CO2 increase in the atmosphere. That CO2 is a greenhouse gas that amplifies that warming, thus resulting in even higher concentrations of atmospheric CO2 -- a positive feedback mechanism. In the anthropogenic warming argument the initial CO2 increase is from human activity, but once the warming starts, the feedback loop is initiated. So your statement again does nothing to invalidate the argument for anthropogenic warming.
I will add that I think the media and politicians do disseminate, by and large, nothing but crap with regard to the whole issue. Everything is overdramatised to make a story, to take some political advantage, to excuse lack of investment in infrastructure, or to extract more tax. I really get sick of seeing every weather event that's slightly out of the ordinary being attributed to global warming. |
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ruveyn
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Joined: Sep 22, 2008
Age: 73
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Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 7:50 am Post subject: |
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| ascan wrote: | So your statement again does nothing to invalidate the argument for anthropogenic warming.
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Until every non-anthropogenic cause is eliminated the anthropogenic hypothesis is unsupported empirically. As long as there are multiple causes for the warming we don't know which is the major cause. All we can do is fiddle statistical correlations, and that ain't science. One thing for sure, we don't have a scientific basis for making important policy decisions. All we have are political agendas.
ruveyn |
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Inventor
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Joined: Feb 16, 2007
Posts: 3541
Location: New Orleans
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| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 7:52 am Post subject: |
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I don't own a beach house, I live below sea level. It was not always so. Locally most of the decline was caused by drainage, of a mud flat,, clay, that was 90% water, drain it, it compacts, dig deeper ditches, it sinks faster, to where parts of New Orleans are 27 foot below sea level.
On the North Shore, which is above the mud flat, the highest point of river naviagation from 1800. I found a dock now two foot below the surface, which is very close to sea level.
A rise of the oceans at one foot per hundred years is accepted science. This is a continuation of the end of the last ice age, and the peak rise was 60 foot in a summer. Before that ice age, sea level was 21 foot higher. The Arctic was ice free.
Before Global Warming, the consensus was, we are still in a long ice age, and the next wave is due.
Our current warm period is about 10,000 years, in which sea level has risen about 4.5 foot per hundred years, and recently slowing. The two prior warm periods, 22,000 to 27,000 years ago, and 32,000 to 37,000 years ago, were 5,000 years each. Before that was 125,000 years of ice.
So out of 165,000 years, 20,000 warm, 5,000, 5,000 and 10,000.
The concensus model was, every time it gets this hot it starts another wave of ice. The last interglacial did get hotter, it did come suddenly.
Human heating was factored in, as as campfire stopping a blizzard.
It will get warmer, till it triggers the next wave of ice. The way this works, snow and ice are cold and reflective. They also insulate, at 32 degrees. As the snow and ice melt, bare ground gets warmer in the summer, which speeds up the process, but then can freeze to -20 during winter.
This will give hottter summers and colder winters till the tipping point is reached, when warm moist air moves over deeply frozen rock, 50 degrees colder than ice, and snow falls, and falls, and then does not melt the next summer. As the mountains covered in snow and ice grow, six inches a day falls for a thousand years.
This is the best model of how an ice age forms. It has been the accepted view for a hundred years.
Of all of this, government has latched on one point, two, if you count you cannot tax an ice age, "First it will get warmer." That can be taxed, it won't change anything, but that is all government got from the science.
We are at the tipping point of ice, wave before last, still the next did get a twenty foot sea rise more, so at the longest at the current foot a hundred years, 2,000 years. If I were to place it, I would say closer to now than a thousand years.
An early snowstorm has blanketed Nevada, Utah, Colodrado, Wyoming, Kansas, the Dakodas, and that is a big patch of white that will last till next summer. It came from the west, where most snow comes from the north. A cold and wet storm has just passed over Louisiana, from the south. We get our cold from the north. Something is dragging in moist ocean air in new patterns.
We did not get any hurricanes, the Atlantic has been mild for a few years, building up heat, but big hurricanes hit Baja Mexico. Last year it lead to flooding in the Rio Grande. Rain fell in the desert.
Ice ages are not slow to start, once the snow starts, cold land, warm oceans, the conveyer belt runs faster. The first year without summer, no crops. It ends when the oceans are too salty to give up more moisture.
I would much rather deal with global warming. |
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pakled
"Bless his Heart"
Joined: Nov 13, 2007
Age: 52
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| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 10:25 am Post subject: |
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I think it's evolved from a scientific 'fact', to a political 'fact'....whether true or not, it 'ought' to be...
_________________
anahl nathrak, uth vas bethude, doth yel dyenvey... |
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ascan
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Joined: Feb 23, 2005
Posts: 2184
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| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 11:11 am Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | Until every non-anthropogenic cause is eliminated the anthropogenic hypothesis is unsupported empirically. As long as there are multiple causes for the warming we don't know which is the major cause. All we can do is fiddle statistical correlations, and that ain't science. One thing for sure, we don't have a scientific basis for making important policy decisions. All we have are political agendas.
ruveyn |
Ruveyn, you are confusing the type of tidy mathemetical proof needed in your profession with the realities of science in the natural world. The latter makes significant use of statistical correlations. But that as it may be, I think you are correct in this context to view with caution evidence based purely on short-term correlation considering the many other factors that cause climatic fluctuation. However, as I've pointed out previously, this is not just about correlation. We are clearly increasing the CO2 component of the atmosphere due to our activities. Not only can we measure that increase in the atmosphere, but we can calculate based on the quanties of oil, coal and gas we burn how much we are adding annually. As CO2 is proven to be a "greenhouse" gas then continually adding more without considering the consequences seems a little foolish. That deduction doesn't require us to "fiddle statistical correlations". |
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ruveyn
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Joined: Sep 22, 2008
Age: 73
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Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 1:21 pm Post subject: |
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| ascan wrote: |
Ruveyn, you are confusing the type of tidy mathemetical proof needed in your profession with the realities of science in the natural world. |
If it ain't physics it is either stamp collecting or statistical fraud.
Physics is the only science (it has branches, mainly chemistry). Everything else is muddled.
ruveyn |
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Inventor
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 16, 2007
Posts: 3541
Location: New Orleans
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 12:23 am Post subject: |
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| ascan wrote: | | ruveyn wrote: | Until every non-anthropogenic cause is eliminated the anthropogenic hypothesis is unsupported empirically. As long as there are multiple causes for the warming we don't know which is the major cause. All we can do is fiddle statistical correlations, and that ain't science. One thing for sure, we don't have a scientific basis for making important policy decisions. All we have are political agendas.
ruveyn |
Ruveyn, you are confusing the type of tidy mathemetical proof needed in your profession with the realities of science in the natural world. The latter makes significant use of statistical correlations. But that as it may be, I think you are correct in this context to view with caution evidence based purely on short-term correlation considering the many other factors that cause climatic fluctuation. However, as I've pointed out previously, this is not just about correlation. We are clearly increasing the CO2 component of the atmosphere due to our activities. Not only can we measure that increase in the atmosphere, but we can calculate based on the quanties of oil, coal and gas we burn how much we are adding annually. As CO2 is proven to be a "greenhouse" gas then continually adding more without considering the consequences seems a little foolish. That deduction doesn't require us to "fiddle statistical correlations". |
As CO2 is a bit better than a campfire, and Real Science does show it is a greenhouse gas, we should produce as much as we can. Faced with getting a little warmer, or a lot colder, I would vote prolong the interglacial period.
The Earth has been warming for 13,000 years, why stop now? Warmer pushes crop land north into Canada, Siberia, which opens new lands for food production. Cold will cover everything to the Mexican border in snow. In the first year it will kill just about everything.
The hottest it can get is only a few degrees more, if all the ice melts sea level can go up 20 foot. Sure, we lose some coastline, but open huge areas of Northern Canada to productive use. A rising ocean will cover shallow land, which is the richest for sea life. Florida is one big coral reef, that just happens to be above the surface right now. It would out do the Great Barrior Reef in the splendor of life if it was covered in clear warm water.
From Baton Rouge to Florida is an old trail, later called the English Road, for they cleared it, but long used by Americans, It is the beach line from before the last ice age, and just as natural as the current beachline. All of Florida south of this line was a living reef.
Warm spreads life, fuels it's development, and is the part of the cycle that lead to our development. People did survive ice ages, at least in Europe, there are some old traces in the American tropics but nothing in North America. I am sure they were there, coming across the Bering Land Bridge, but they all died. No trace till after 13,000 when they return.
The survivors in Europe were the reindeer herders, perhaps thousands, but the cattle herders, grain farmers, all died.
We have nothing to do with these climate cycles, but if we could, stopping it seems impossible, and if we had to chose between warmer or cooler, warmer is life, cooler means the death of most creatures.
Humans are a species that came from the Tropics, they still live there, I go visit, it is great. Warm is going to favor 99% of life, and an ice age is going to kill the same percentage. |
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ruveyn
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 8:59 am Post subject: |
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| number5 wrote: | | I have a degree in atmospheric science with a minor in math and physics and a strong focus on climatology. I can tell with absolute certainty that humans do indeed have a significant impact on the climate. |
In science there are no absolute certainties. Not even in quantum physics, quantum electrodynamics, quantum chromodynamics and the standard model of particles and fields. That is number one.
Number two, weather and climate are based on chaotic dynamics for which our mathematics is not particularly well suited. Hell, we cannot even solve the Navier Stokes equations for plain old turbulent fluid motion.
Three, Climate science is an oxymoron, like Military Intelligence and Business Ethics.
You may have a degree in "atmospheric science" (have you done any controlled experiments lately?), but you are not wise enough to realize that science and certainty are only loosely coupled. The only certainty in science is the empirical disproof of a hypothesis. Anything else is at most probably true and all positive conclusion are provisionally held.
At one time Newtonian Gravitation was thought to be positively absolutely true. We now know it isn't. And Gravitation is better established than anything related to the atmosphere.
ruveyn |
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number5
Deinonychus
Joined: Jun 16, 2009
Posts: 360
Location: central NY
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 2:23 pm Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | number5 wrote: | | I have a degree in atmospheric science with a minor in math and physics and a strong focus on climatology. I can tell with absolute certainty that humans do indeed have a significant impact on the climate. |
In science there are no absolute certainties. Not even in quantum physics, quantum electrodynamics, quantum chromodynamics and the standard model of particles and fields. That is number one.
Number two, weather and climate are based on chaotic dynamics for which our mathematics is not particularly well suited. Hell, we cannot even solve the Navier Stokes equations for plain old turbulent fluid motion.
Three, Climate science is an oxymoron, like Military Intelligence and Business Ethics.
You may have a degree in "atmospheric science" (have you done any controlled experiments lately?), but you are not wise enough to realize that science and certainty are only loosely coupled. The only certainty in science is the empirical disproof of a hypothesis. Anything else is at most probably true and all positive conclusion are provisionally held.
At one time Newtonian Gravitation was thought to be positively absolutely true. We now know it isn't. And Gravitation is better established than anything related to the atmosphere.
ruveyn |
I'm speaking on behalf of practical purpose. If you'd like to get into a philisphical discussion of the notion absolute ceratinty, I'm not interested. Technically graviation is still only a theory. If it was not widely accepted as an actual force, the door would be wide open for anyone to come to their own conclusions about how/why the planets revolve and why objects seem to magically be attracted to the ground. I can see it now, "The devil wants to pull everything down to hell..." No thank you. I know that humans indeed impact climate. By physical laws they have to. We have changed the compostion of the atmosphere and of the land and ocean. Smog is new. Even only a single newly introduced particle (aerosol) can be the basis of a single ice crystal that would have not otherwise formed without it. No one believed humans could destroy the ozone layer either and, in fact, we have. We must consider the consequences of our actions. We must ask ourselves "When you throw something away, where do you think "away" is?
Also, I have not been actively involved in scientific study lately because I've chosen to stay at home with my young children. We reap what we sow, both with humans and with the environment. |
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ruveyn
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 8:40 pm Post subject: |
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I'm speaking on behalf of practical purpose. quote]
Practical? For whom? And what is to be practiced? Are we supposed to let junk science lead us to a life of deprivation and squalor. Screw that!
ruveyn |
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ruveyn
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Age: 73
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| Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 8:44 pm Post subject: |
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| number5 wrote: |
I'm speaking on behalf of practical purpose. If you'd like to get into a philisphical discussion of the notion absolute ceratinty, I'm not interested. Technically graviation is still only a theory. children. We reap what we sow, both with humans and with the environment. |
Gravitation is a fact. If you don't believe me jump off a cliff with no parachute and see for yourself. We have several theories which describe gravitation, General Relativity being the current best theory, but still not sufficient since it cannot be unified with quantum physics.
And the philosophy which you apparently espouse, letting junk science lead us to a life of poverty interests me very much. I want to avoid that end.
ruveyn |
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Inventor
Phoenix
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Posts: 3541
Location: New Orleans
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| Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 12:49 am Post subject: |
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Read Al Gore's new book, he admits it is junk science.
It was not industry, it was the cutting of forests from 1800 on.
All of the Carbon buildup comes from that act, and restoring the forests would reverse it.
He also brings up a long ago culture in the Amazon, who made a highly productive artifical soil, they mixed in charcoal, which sucked up CO2, and made it available to plants.
Just doing the same to our croplands would draw in CO2.
Cut down the trees, farm the topsoil to death, then run cattle that eat all the grass seed, it turns to weeds and brush, so run sheep and goats, till it becomes desert.
South Texas has been restoring desert to grassland, five years till it will support limited grazing, or hay, but 10,000 years to restore the top soil. It had been grassland since the last ice age, but a hundred years of Europeans turned it to desert.
The slaughter of 90,000,000 buffalo is the cause of the drought that has been spreading ever since.
Europeans murdering the people of this land, the forests, the animals, the soil, is the problem.
You reap what you sow. |
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ascan
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Posts: 2184
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| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 2:46 pm Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | Are we supposed to let junk science lead us to a life of deprivation and squalor... |
I assume by junk science that you refer to all science that's not physics or chemistry, as you appeared to indicate earlier:
| ruveyn wrote: | If it ain't physics it is either stamp collecting or statistical fraud.
Physics is the only science (it has branches, mainly chemistry). Everything else is muddled. |
Do you know how the oil used in the economic system you worship is located, extracted and transported? A lot of what you seem to call "junk science" is involved. In fact that "junk science" has played a major part in allowing you to live your affluent middle-class American existence. Your mind seems to be stuck back in the 60's, ruveyn. And I know they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but I do reckon that if you were actually to educate yourself in one of those "junk sciences", and read a few "junk science" journals, rather than the ill-informed crap from the mainstream media, you might be persuaded. |
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