Topic: Global Warming
Those terrible twins of climate change, CO2 and H2O Climate change is a very complex issue with many variables. Attempts by denialists to simplify the issue and then attack their own strawman are bogus and must be exposed as such.by Dale Husband
(centrist liberal)
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
One of the most commonly held misconceptions about the man-made global warming hypothesis is that temperatures must increase every year and evenly over the world. No one knowledgable about climate issues would seriously claim that, so it's an obvious strawman. The question is, why do temperatures fluctuate so much and does global warming explain this? Indeed it does!
The process begins with the slight increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere known to be caused by human emissions. Because CO2 traps slightly more heat, it also causes more water to evaporate. Water vapor (H2O) is also a greenhouse gas, so that causes a feedback loop, in which the temperature increases further, causing more water to evaporate. In the summer months, the result is much hotter weather than you might expect from CO2 alone.
But H2O has an opposite effect in winter. As temperature drops, the increased amounts of H2O forms clouds, which block sunlight and thus cool the earth further. Winters will be even colder than one would expect, plus there would be increased precipitation, including snow.
As long as the average temperature over the course of a year at a certain place or region is below the melting point of water, then global warming actually has the paradoxical effect of causing colder winters, more snow and thus increased ice in certain places. It is where the average annual temperatures have risen above the melting point of water that we see glaciers retreating. And the hotter summers at the northern ice cap are nothing to ignore, for its melting away will still have a tragic effect on polar bears.
In the southern hemisphere, global warming has had less of an effect, and this can be explained by geography. There is far more land up north than down south. Land radiates heat, while oceans absorb it. Also, the Arctic Ocean is water surrounded by warmer land, while Antarctica is frigid land surrounded by cold oceans that insulate it from warmer regions. So it stands to reason that the Arctic Ocean will melt long before the Antarctic does, and that there may even be some increase in Antarctic ice for the reasons I explained above.
If there was no CO2, or any other greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, the average temperature on Earth would actually be below the freezing point of water, thus the oceans would be frozen solid and life on Earth would be impossible. And if there was no H2O to form oceans and absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, then CO2 would have accumulated so greatly in the atmosphere from volcanic eruptions over billions of years that we would have experienced temperatures too high for carbon based life forms to survive, thus we would already be like Venus. The abundance of water on Earth, plus the small amount of CO2 in our atmosphere, provide the delicate balance that maintains life on Earth. But too much CO2 can be as much a problem as too little, hence our concern about how much longer it may be before we reach a tipping point in the climate change problem.
Did you like this article? If you did, Thumb It! 16 thumbs so far
The views expressed in this
article are those of Dale Husband only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Dale Husband is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2009-01-21 06:21:12
Actually, it's the people who favor the anthropogenic global warming who are the denialists. They're the ones who deny the much simpler and more reasonable theory of global warming (and cooling) due to differences in solar irradiance in favor of a much more controversial (and frankly, much less believable) theory based on human generation of so-called "greenhouse gases" to explain the relatively small average changes in global temperatures experienced over the past 100 years or so.
Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2009-01-21 08:34:43
Hi Dale,
You're a real hoot! Thanks for brightening my day with your hypocrisy.
The common theme in your articles is that anytime you question the faith-based positions held by others you are an honorable skeptic.
But...anytime your faith-based positions are questioned the questioner is labeled as a "denialist." I find great humor in the two-faced nature of your "honorable skepticism".
I know logic doesn't (cannot, ever) play into your religious beliefs but one thing you should know, whether you believe it or not, correlation does not imply causation.
I believe climate change is happening. I believe all life on earth can potentially contribute to change in either direction. I also believe that any efforts humans make to reduce their potential contribution, even if those efforts were Herculean and spanned centuries, could be entirely obliterated by a single volcanic eruption.
The only thing I would admit to denying is that you, or anyone else, can project with any certainty at all the direction or magnitude or duration of any global climactic trends from the data now available. The only conclusions from this tiny snapshot in time are 100% faith-based conclusions.
The only reason for such conclusions is to fuel the flames of fear-based political power aimed at elitist control of every human's thoughts and actions, regardless of how the imposed fear-based manipulations deviate from real world experience.
I see no difference between your faith and Bin Laden's faith or the Pope's faith. Reason cannot impact any of them. Reason and faith exist in incompatible frames of reference. Those who reside fully in one frame or another cannot even acknowledge the existence of another frame. From your writing, I'd guess you exist fully in the faith-based frame with most other liberals, democrats, and keynesians, reacting to your the emotions generated by your faith rather than considering the real world nature of cause and effect.
Change happens. Look for opportunity in it and you'll sleep a lot better. React in fear every time the notion of change enters you noggin and you'll gain nothing at all from the behavior...unless you seek political power...then fear is the best tool available to you.
Dale, good job on presenting a bit of the science findings. Also consider the North Atlantic Oscillation, which has a large influence on the severity of cold weather in the eastern U.S. Evidence shows that as the climate warms, the NAO experiences greater shifts and extremes which is responsible for some of the extreme winter weather events we've seen. This is consistent with the predictions that global warming will cause more extremes of all kinds of weather--hot, cold, flooding and drought. While some may look at a record low temp or record snowfall as "proof" against warming, the real signature of climate change is a long-term change in average global temperature.
It's unfortunate that some people are lumping the scientific consensus of global warming in with all the other conspiracy, elitist, fascist, etc. charges (some true) that are leveled against the government. As the National Science Academies of eleven nations (including the U.S.) stated, there is a high degree of certainty that we are contributing to global warming. The issue that deserves attention is how we should address our contribution to global warming.
Good point about the straw men,too. Denialists often paint the picture of scientists claiming that "humans are causing global warming." The actual consensus is that global warming is occurring and there is a high degree of certainty that we are contributing to it. Scientists do not exclude other factors in climate change such as solar input. It's hard to understand why some want to paint the issue as "all or none," for instance saying that solar input is the cause of warming. The science shows that solar input is a factor contributing to perhaps 20% of warming. There are all sorts of mischaracterizations that lead to misunderstanding of the issue.
Note to Jafhre. A volcanic eruption of the sort we're used to would not have a lasting effect on climate, as the carbon is in the form of carbonic acid which is washed out of the atmosphere rather quickly. Now, if we were to experience the beginning of a flood basalt eruption, you can definitely forget about our contribution to warming.
I expected to be attacked by the libertarian ideologues here. They recognize, as I do, that the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is the single biggest threat to the supremacy of their cause. They assume that because THEY have a political agenda, their opponents must have one as well. Actually, no one would be happier than me if it could be shown:
That there was no global warming at all.
That CO2 has no heat retaining properties.
That we humans are not emitting any greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
That the amount of solar irradiance matches exactly the increases in average global temperatures.
That global warming would be entirely beneficial and had no harmful side effects.
That there was compelling evidence that the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is indeed a conspiracy rather than a genuine effort to deal with a real problem.
What do global warming "skeptics" do instead? They NITPICK! They note inaccuracies in global warming models (which scientists are quite happy to address and debate among themselves), and use them to justify throwing out the whole idea of such models. If you have an automobile and it is a lemon, do you go back to a horse and buggy? NO! You design or purchase a superior car. That's what scientists have been trying to do about global warming research. Science by nature improves itself over time by becoming more accurate and detailed. What denialists of ALL types try to do is toss out all the scientific progress over the past several decades just because we don't yet know everything there is to know about climate change, AIDS, evolution, autism, or anything else in science that is offensive to some crank's preconceptions.
I don't have "faith" in global warming any more than I have "faith" in evolution, so don't insult me with lame rhetoric, Walt and Jahfre. I reject religions because there is not enough evidence to prove any of them true beyond a reasonable doubt. That makes me a skeptic. YOU are denialist because you reject something that has not been proven beyond ALL possible doubt. Guess what! In science, that is NOT possible! I can't even "prove" to you beyond all doubt that the Earth is a sphere instead of flat, because you can always use some sort of bogus rhetoric to claim that the proofs used to support the round Earth theory are inadequate and that there are other proofs for a flat Earth.
And you don't have to give me that "correlation does not imply causation" issue, for I DID know that. Science is ultimately based on a methodology of repeatable observation, experimentation, and reason. The scientific method establishes physical and chemical laws as valid. Then those laws are applied to the past to produce natural history, to the future to produce predictions about what the future may bring, and to human creativity to produce technology. Everything I wrote above in my essay is consistent with known scientific laws and if you doubt them, you can always run your own experiments to test anything I say. That is NOT faith! So DO the experiments and publish the results if you want to shut me up. Show the evidence that:
CO2 has no heat retaining properties.
Humans are emitting no greenhouse gases.
Greenhouse gas levels in Earth's atmosphere are not increasing
Radiation from the Sun matches exactly the increases in temperatures.
Global warming will be more beneficial than harmful.
On the other hand, there are plenty of experiments that can be proposed and done to test what I have said in the above essay. Here are some examples:
Fact 1:Because CO2 traps slightly more heat, it also causes more water to evaporate.Test: Make a chamber with more CO2 than in a normal sample of Earth's atmosphere and with a certain temperature input, including water in a bowl, and observe the water's evaporation over a period of time. Make a control chamber with the same air as in Earth's normal atmosphere and with the identical temperature input, an identical amount of water and observe the waters evaporation in that second chamber over the same time period. Compare the results.
Fact 2:Water vapor (H2O) is also a greenhouse gas, so that causes a feedback loop, in which the temperature increases further, causing more water to evaporate.Test: Repeat the first experiment, but add more water to both chambers as soon as the water put in first evaporates away. Make sure the amounts of water added to both chambers are identical. Which has warmer air after a period of time? What is the degree of increased warmth? Test further with a third chamber with NO water. Is that chamber cooler than the other two?
Fact 3:As temperature drops, the increased amounts of H2O forms clouds, which block sunlight and thus cool the earth further.Test: Take a chamber with high humidity and a light and heat source (like an incandencent bulb) shining from above and lower its temperature enough to make a cloud (fog) due to the condensation of the water vapor. Take the temperature of the floor at regular intervals. What happens when the cloud forms? Does the floor also become wet or even icy?
Inference:As long as the average temperature over the course of a year at a certain place or region is below the melting point of water, then global warming actually has the paradoxical effect of causing colder winters, more snow and thus increased ice in certain places.Results from application of Fact 3.
Fact 4: It is where the average annual temperatures have risenabove the melting point of water that we see glaciers retreating.Test: Take a chamber with high and low temperatures that average above the freezing point of water and observe a bowl full of water that repeatedly freezes, melts, and ultimately evaporates away.
Fact 5:Land radiates heat, while oceans absorb it.Reason: Most of the mass of the oceans are dark and cold, so there is plenty of space for heat to go. By contrast, land, being solid, can only get hotter if subjected to heat, especially since there are very few spaces for heat to disappear to (such as caves). Test: This is self-evident to anyone that spends time at a swimming pool on a summer day and notes that the concrete sidewalk is hotter than the water of the pool. The sidewalk would burn your feet, but the pool water would not.
Fact 6:If there was no CO2, or any other greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, the average temperature on Earth would actually be below the freezing point of water, thus the oceans would be frozen solid and life on Earth would be impossible.1st Test: Make a chamber with no CO2 or any other identified greenhouse gas in it, but plenty of oxygen and nitrogen, and subject it to heat. Do the same with a chamber with a normal atmosphere. Which has a lower temperature? 2nd Test: Measure the solar output that Earth recieves, then use mathematics, based on the known laws of physics, to determine what the temperature of anything subjected to that irradiance "should" be. What is the actual temperature?
I like how you succinctly summed up the mechanics of the CO2 imbalance mankind\'s actions have caused. And in particular, I like your suggestion to the skeptics on how they need to start thinking and critiquing. I\'ve yet to see many of these folks add much value to the discussion other than claiming that the scientists studying this crisis and many other interested & concerned citizins ultimately have a political agenda.
As a non-scientific comment, I have a hard time believing that w/ the rate at which humans are consuming fossil fuels and cutting down trees (i.e. major CO2 sink) our actions are not having an impact on the carbon-cycle balance. I suspect that it doesn\'t take too much to put us off-centre before we\'re in zones that will become unmanageable for human life.
David S, I am amused that you would cherry pick by starting from the year 2003. Five years does not make for much of a climate trend, especially considering the recent strong La Nina forcing down temperatures since 2005. Thirty years makes for a better indicator.
Look what happens when I start from the year 1980.
Meanwhile, using the same interactive dataset David S provided, I checked the solar output since 1980 to 2005 (when Al Gore published his An Inconvienent Truth), and found.....well, see for yourself:
Like a rollercoaster up and down, not continuously going upward like the global temperatures have been doing over the decades. We can compare the two using a linear trend setting for them both:
That's a serious downward trend that does match what we have been experiencing. The sun is causing global COOLING over the past few years, NOT the global warming over the past few decades!
If you look at the historical record, temperatures rose from 1900 to about 1940, then dropped until 1970 and then rose again until about 1998. Now its dropping again. Those phases correspond more to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation than to CO2.
Global CO2 levels have been much higher in the past and the planet wasn't burned to a Venus-like cinder. The negative effects of increased carbon dioxide are being exagerated. Acceptance of man-made global warming will result in more world-wide central government power. Follow the money.
Not that Dale needs any help, but the fact that CO2 levels have been higher in earth's past means nothing regarding its effect on the biosphere. The RATE OF CHANGE is what matters. And guess what? The rate of change we are seeing is FAST. Life can adapt with no trouble to gradual climate change and has done so many times, but with a rapid rate of change life systems start falling apart.
Hi Dale, good info, i had never heard of the freezing point issue. what would be interesting is what happens at the change point, in other words, once the temp rises just above freezing is the effect magnified? and right below also? it would seem in areas that are further above or below the freezing point in average there would be less corresponding effect?
David S, get a clue! The Industrial Revolution, which included the massive burning of fossil fuels, began in the mid 19th Century, long before 1900. The temperature increases you just referred to (1900 to 1940) could have been an early period of man-made global warming that we simply didn't recognize at the time. The cooling period that followed may have been natural, but it was too short and too slight compared to all the warming that occured before and after it. And while I acknowledge the role of the PDO in climate patterns, that still does not explain why CO2 levels are rising at the same time as the global warming temperatures. Have you ever considered that those higher CO2 levels are making the PDO worse than they otherwise would have been?
Denialists who say we "are merely recovering from the Little Ice Age since 1800" fail to consider that this would be like saying that a child that is "recovering" from a fever.......by FREEZING TO DEATH! Global warming can indeed go too far, just as an ice age would also be a global disaster.
daddysteve, when the Earth was first formed, its atmosphere must have been full of CO2, just as those of Venus and Mars are now. But the Sun was also a lot dimmer and cooler. Why? Because its core consisted mostly of hydrogen, the lightest element, and as it began to fuse that hydrogen into denser helium, the already hot core slowly became hotter and denser. So the Earth would have also become warmer over time. Indeed, Earth should already have become like Venus is now, as I indicated in the original essay above. What seems to have stopped Earth from burning itself up so far was the presence of the oceans, which sucked up much of that CO2, turning it into carbonic acid and thus storing the CO2 away, as well as the evolution of photosynthetic organisms (cyanobacteria, algae, and finally land plants), which removed even more CO2. Beginning in the Devonian period, plants covered the land and actually stored away vast portions of CO2 in the form of coal and other fossil fuels, which we humans would later dig up and begin burning.
So the amounts of CO2 have been streadily decreasing while the Sun has been getting hotter. Astronomers now estimate that within two or three billion years, long before the Sun actually runs out of hydrogen in its core and blows up into a red giant (five billion years from now) it will already be hot enough to break down the Earth's carbon cycle completely and it will finally overheat, destroying all life. Then Earth and Venus really WILL be twin planets!
Today, we are causing CO2 levels to increase like they must have been hundreds of millions of years ago, while the Sun is actually hotter now than it was back then. The result: We could end up even hotter then Earth was back then if we do not stop relying on fossil fuels within a century or so. This is a very real possibility, because it is estimated that even while oil and natural gas may soon run out, coal is estimated to last us for centuries to come, and coal is actually the MOST polluting fossil fuel, emitting far more CO2 per kilogram than any other.
Justin, you are correct. Unfortunately, most people are used to the idea that centuries are long periods of time and ignore that Earth and its biosphere are BILLIONS of years old. So they are prone to think that if something may not happen for a decade or two, we need not worry about it. If a denialist says that ocean levels may not rise but 2 meters in a century, that's still two meters of sea level rise we could have prevented, and it does not disprove that sea levels could rise 10 meters in 1000 years. What about all those cities we've built on the coastal and low lying areas that will be flooded if the oceans rise even ONE meter?! Yeah, let them eat cake!
So you are telling me that global CO2 concentrations at 4000 ppm didn't roast us but levels at 3-400ppm could because the sun is hotter now? I am very skeptical of your assertation. You are starting to sound like the "Master C" of climatology.
So, daddysteve, where do you get the 4000 ppm figure from? I must point out that ppm stands for parts per million, so you are actually saying that CO2 levels in the Earth of some prehistoric time period (which one?) was only 4%, which is hardly a great deal. Maybe if the atmosphere had been 40% CO2 and not 4%, your arguement would be valid. Earth WAS much hotter in the past, with sea levels much higher than today, even though the Sun was cooler.
:)
The problem is not trying to prevent Earth from being "roasted". Even Al Gore has never claimed that Earth could turn into a clone of Venus due to man-made global warming. That daddysteve would even suggest that indicates his profound ignorance about the actual issue. The real problem is that our civilization is highly adapted to the climate of the late 20th Century, and any significant change, of either warming or cooling, would inflict major economic damage around the world.
daddysteve also says: "Acceptance of man-made global warming will result in more world-wide central government power. Follow the money."
More? I didn't know there was any to begin with! What planet are YOU on??? The United Nations is not a government, but an organization like NATO or OPEC. The UN has almost NO power, since wars have continued around the world. Do wars occur between states in the USA?
And when I follow the money, it leads straight to ExxonMobil funding denialist propaganda. Ever heard of a conflict of interest?! Oil companies should just SHUT THE HELL UP!!!
Bob N, there is no "ideal" level of CO2, just there are no ideal global temperatres, no ideal sea levels, and no ideal amounts of precipitation. All we can do is show what can happen if any of those factors change. There might actually be some positive results from the melting of the polar ice caps (Canada and Russia could establish trade routes across the Arctic Sea that the northern ice cap currently blocks) but most of the results of global warming would be considered negative. If you don't give a damn about polar bears, coastal cities, inhabited islands, or people in drought stricken areas, so be it.
As to costs, consider the costs of digging up or drilling for fossil fuels, transporting them to where they are to be consumed, and then the environmental hazards they can pose. Then consider that none of these are issues with wind, water, and solar power facilities. Build many more of them, and we can then tell the fossil fuel companies to kiss our @$$es.
So breaking it down simply leads me to conclude that we no longer have any compelling reason to continue with the status quo. Even without global warming, I'd be demanding that we get off the oil teat so that we would no longer be so dependent on the Middle East for our energy supplies.
You must be consistent. It is either "global warming" or "climate change", but not both. Climate change could also mean global cooling.
But the whole scientific discussion, though interesting, has no practical value, because it has no relation whatsoever to the goal of the globalwarmers, which is to convince the rest of us that we should say goodbye to industrial civilization and adopt medieval levels of consumption. We don't need to convince the globalwarmers that enthropogenic global warming is scientific BS. They know. That explains why, while they tell us to consume less to save Gaia, they are hyperconsuming as if there is no tomorrow.
If tomorrow it is scientifically proved that there is neither global cooling nor global warming, they will create from thin air the human-caused nonglobalwarmingcooling theory and try to convince us to return to pre-industrial levels of consumption or the sky will fall. And I am sure that many people will accept it as a scientific fact.
You must be consistent. It is either "global warming" or "climate change", but not both. Climate change could also mean global cooling.
You must have overlooked my earlier comment: "The real problem is that our civilization is highly adapted to the climate of the late 20th Century, and any significant change, of either warming or cooling, would inflict major economic damage around the world."
How is that contradicted by my emphasis on global WARMING, which we know has been happening?
But the whole scientific discussion, though interesting, has no practical value, because it has no relation whatsoever to the goal of the globalwarmers, which is to convince the rest of us that we should say goodbye to industrial civilization and adopt medieval levels of consumption. We don't need to convince the globalwarmers that enthropogenic global warming is scientific BS. They know. That explains why, while they tell us to consume less to save Gaia, they are hyperconsuming as if there is no tomorrow.
Total falsehoods! Where did you get those strange ideas from? Probably some loony "conspiracy" website.
If tomorrow it is scientifically proved that there is neither global cooling nor global warming, they will create from thin air the human-caused nonglobalwarmingcooling theory and try to convince us to return to pre-industrial levels of consumption or the sky will fall. And I am sure that many people will accept it as a scientific fact.
It would be impossible for science to be corrupted that way, because of the actual process by which modern science operates. Hint: George Orwell's 1984 novel was not meant to be taken literally and never referred to how real science is run in the real world. Tyrannical governments that tried to bend science to fit an ideology inevitably failed. Look at the Soviet Union! Why the hell would millions of people, including myself, be so stupid as to not learn from that failure? You insult me!
Want to comment on this
article? Leave your comment here. Your email address is
required to track your comment. However, we will neither
publish your email address nor distribute it to other
organizations or persons. The only reason we might use
it would be if we needed to contact you regarding your
comment. All comments are subject to our
terms of use policy.
