The flipside: Global Warming Challenge Round 2

The Coffee Shop
2

Well, I for one don’t think you can prove it either way…that the current warming trend is or isn’t being caused by increased greenhouse gases. I don’t think we have that level of understanding yet of the process of global climate on a long time scale. My reasons for that belief are thus:

  1. It has been proven via analysis of ice cores in Greenland that the earth has regularly warmed and cooled in the past, sometimes much quicker than is even happening now. Clearly there is a some sort of natural phenomona that creates climate change, sometimes much quicker than had originally thought possible. So, I would think that it is just as equally likely that the current warming trend is natural, and not human caused, since we know that quicker warming trends occurred in the past.

  2. CO2 gases have not caused warming trends in the past. Increases in CO2 is strongly correlated with all past warming trends, but the increase in CO2 occurred hundreds of years after the warming trend had already started. Scientists, even those who espouse human caused global warming, admit that they have no idea what was the cause of the previous warming trends. The belief is that the CO2 increases either intensified or prolonged earlier warming trends. However, and this is admitted as equally possible, that the warming trends themselves, with an unknown cause, caused the increase in CO2 that is correlated with the warming trend.

Regardless of whether or not humans are causing global warming, I think we ought to try and limit spewing crap into the air for its own sake…cleaning up the air that we breathe.

Spot

3

Well, it’s really warm for December in Indiana…

4

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/

While the initial causes of global warming cycles remain elusive as you say, the amplification of the process due to higher CO2 levels has been evidenced quite strongly. Though there is an initial lag of roughly 800 years for CO2 levels to rise after the start of a gw cycle, and there are some interesting theories about this related to phytoplankton absorption, the rest of the roughly 4200 years show increased C02 levels. So we have a clear correlation between C02 concentrations and gw

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/650000-years-of-greenhouse-gas-concentrations/

and what’s left is to argue causality. At this point, there is of course a mountain of research , though naturally not complete, which explains the mechanisms by which ghg leads to gw.

5

**Well, it’s really warm for December in Indiana… **

It was really cold in October here in MI. In fact, we had 4 inches of snow on the ground on October 12. That was the earliest recorded snow accumulation. I guess neither my facts nor your’s prove anything.

By the way, it is pretty warm here in MI for mid-december, and I’m LOVING it!

Bernie

6

…
By the way, it is pretty warm here in MI for mid-december, and I’m LOVING it!

Bernie

A positive thought on a Saturday night. Must Squash.

LIONS Vs. GREENBAY Sunday 1:00.

Good feeling gone.

7

A positive thought on a Saturday night. Must Squash.

LIONS Vs. GREENBAY Sunday 1:00.

Good feeling gone.

Let’s stay on point here. Obviously Global Warming is something we can fix and can do something about. The Global Warming problem is small compared to the quagmire that is the Detroit Lions!

Bernie

8

My brain isn’t big enough to figure out a way to prove global warming, plus I’m barely awake. But I think we’re missing the forest for the trees. Air quality has definitely gotten worse. This can and has been proven, not just over the last 10-20 years, but over millenia through ice core samples. The view of Denver or LA from the mountains is proof enough, not to mention all the cases of children with asthma.

9

In the scientific community, there is as much debate over whether we are responsible for global warming as there is over how credible intelligent design is…

sterile discussion…there is plenty enough evidence.

10

… Air quality has definitely gotten worse. This can and has been proven, …not to mention all the cases of children with asthma.

Interesting do you have anything to link the two. All the evidence I have heard is actually just the opposite, the overly clean sterile environment most kids are raised in does not allow there immune system to build properly.

Well documented kids who grow up in houses with pets have a significantly lower occurrence of asthma.

11

C’mon Dave, you seem to just be happy to tweak people here. You are an engineer are you not? That seems to mean that empirical evidence carries some weight with you, you know repeated testing, peer review, consensus, etc…

So what’s the deal? What’s your dog in this fight? Do you work in the non-renewable energy sector? Is your house paid for with petro dollars? Why are you not willing to entertain a reasonable argument that perhaps our current mode of resource consumption might be harmful to the planet?

12

Interesting do you have anything to link the two. All the evidence I have heard is actually just the opposite, the overly clean sterile environment most kids are raised in does not allow there immune system to build properly.

Well documented kids who grow up in houses with pets have a significantly lower occurrence of asthma.

13

the biggest issue here is data. Ice cores only go back so far. There are methods of getting CO2 concentrations beyond Ice cores, but they are not as accurate and not guarenteed to give reasonable results. The other issue is that we are focusing on CO2, not GreenHouse gasses. One of the major mass extinctions and recorded warming periods of the earth was accomanied by realtively low CO2, but massive release of Methane (CH4) which is a much more potent green house gas. There are several other substances along with CO2 and methane responsibe and the ‘complete picture’ dynamics have yet to be understood. This makes it very hard to isolate patterns in geologic history. We could have experienced this cycle before, but the pattern might not show up in the CO2 records. It might show up in Methane or NOX, or SOX records, or in any combination of them. It could be that elevating gasX above a certain critical level suddenly makes the system more or less sensitive to gasY. The world of nonlinear dynamics is VERY strange and before attempting to understand feedback loops, I recomend taking the time to at least read up on the basics. Specificly look up Chaos, dynamical systems and bifurcation theory.

The other thing you have to recognize is that these patterns we are looking for are chaotic in nature. They aren’t random, but they have a non-rational period. Think about a faucet dripping. The drips come at a constant rate…a constant period. You can write an equation that relates pressure to the drip frequency. If you increase the pressure a little, you get period doubling. It’s no longer drips evenly. You get drip drip…drip drip…drip drip. This is still an easily recognizable pattern and is just a superposition of two frequencies. If you keep increasing pressure, each drip double again, then again and again. You finally reach a state where the drips seem to happen at random. Don’t believe me? Try it. The random nature of the drops is not really random. I could write a function describing when the drops would fall. It’s as predictable as if I had a single period drip. Unfortunately, if I were to see a record of drips over a time period and try to write that function, I could not do it. If I know the system and the exact initial conditions, I can model the system and know what happens for infinite time. If I don’t know the EXACT initial conditions, my solution rapidly diverges.

That is the state of the climate as we know it. We have a record of ‘drips’ and we are attempting to find this function that predicts its future. Unfortunately the chaotic nature prevents us from being able to actually pull out the periodicity. Even if we get close, our approximation will quickly fall apart on us. So there is no way of knowing if this is a periodic cycle or not.

So…it’s really hard to quantify the link between CO2 increase and increases in global temperature. What’s even scarier comes from the realm of bifurcaion theory. The dripping sink analogy above is an example of bifurcation. We started with a steady system (the earth), slowly tweaked the pressure, which does not change according to base function (CO2, CH4, etc) and the stable state of the system suddenly changed. It could be possible that altering the chemistry of the air is going to change the stable state of the atmosphere. It may have happened. We may have increased CO2 beyond the bifurcation point and the increase in temp we are seeing is the earth adapting to the new stable state. Maybe we tweaked a different parameter that is suddenly allowing the mass build up of CO2 (warming is a secondary effect). If that is the case, then reducing emmissions won’t do anything, because the earth system is now stable at higher CO2 levels. The worst part is that bifurcation works both ways; once you alter the state of a complex nonlinear system like this with multiple bifurcation points, you can have new bifurcation points evolve in backwards time. AKA we increase CO2 past a bifurcation point. This causes some effect which introduces a new bifurcation point for lower CO2 values. We start reducing CO2 and suddenly hit this second new bifurcation point that didn’t exist on the way up. This new bifurcation point leads to yet another wild swing in climate. So really… no matter what we do, we take a risk of jacking something up…and due to the complexity and the chaotic nature we can’t really make these sort of predictions unless we could explicitly model every single atomic interaction from the beginning of time with infinite precision. There is no single safe course of action.

All of that being said… You still with me? I really think we need to take priority on this issue. Continue the research into emmissions and warming but start focusing on changing stuff that we can handle now. Start cutting the emmissions of aerosols and other polutants that DIRECTLY have an impact on human health NOW. Start cleaning up water ways and land. Start finding alternative sources of energy and better ways to store and distribute it to reduce our dependance on foreign oil and make our power supply renewable. Most of these things will go a long way to helping the CO2 emmissions in the end, but make a difference NOW. Us focusing on CO2 emmissions is like doing a cancer screen on a guy suffering a heart attack. It’s still something to be concerned about, but should not be our number 1 priority.

14

On the GW issue, the data is in and the conclusions are strongly supported.

The local air quality issue is a different pickle. Domestically, because of stringent air regulations in this country (that some people said would collapse our economy - the same ones who say the same about trying to reduce GHG emissions), the average ambient air quality has improved since the 1970s. There are still areas of improvement to be had, and we still have many unsafe days in many communities. And, again, the scientific consensus is very strong toward a link between local air quality and asthma, as well as several other chronic diseases.

Now, indoors, you have other issues. Some argue that we are too sterile in our indoor settings, and that has caused kids to be less immune to health issues. I’m not so sure about that, having been in many people’s houses over the years. Some of us argue that many changes have occurred due to the development of air conditioning in homes. AC is a great thing, but done poorly it can cause moisture problems that lead to mold, which is very much an asthma trigger. Further, you’ve got ETS (environmental tobacco smoke), which, before AC, used to quickly leave the home. Now, with the home closed up, the ETS (and other stuff like bug and mouse proteins) stays inside, with your family.

On the pet side, I think you are confusing allergic reactions to asthma. One of the oddest things I have found about allergies is that most are built up over time, in that the more exposure you have, the more likely you are going to show signs of allergy. And different people react differently. One of the outliers is cat dander. If you grow up in a house with a cat, you are less likely to become allergic to cats. It doesn’t seem to make sense, but cat dander acts differently than other allergy triggers.

15

Thank you Vortmax for a very well written explanation of the complexity of measuring/predicting climate change. I’ve used the history and evolution of weather forecasting as an analogy for our progress in measuring and predicting anthropogenic influences on the global climate; we’ve gone beyond the simple weather tools of the weathervane and barometer to computer modeling pressure system movements over the entire globe, 24/7, predicting change down to the minute, location down to the mile.

As computing power continues to improve and data points multiply; we’ll get a handle on climate change beyond the current state of uncertainty. Until then, the simple understanding of the concept of limited resources and finite habitat must direct peoples actions. The alternative leaves too much to chance.

17

the other thing we have to realize is that there is no ‘undo’ button. There is no going back to a previous state. Even if we could undo all of our ‘damage’, we would still settle into a new and different. We have to accept that change is the nature of the beast. This is very disconcerning to us as humans. We don’t like change that we cannot control, just like we don’t like changes we can’t understand.

18

“To correct global warming, humans must adopt the approach of not scratching and allowing the biosphere to adapt and recuperate.”

Astrotri, I fear I may be slandering you over in the other thread. In our previous chat, you made perfectly clear that our goose was already cooked. We had already passed the tipping point, and the only issue left to be decided by future conduct was just how fast the Earth turned into Venus, not whether it did.

Do you now have a different opinion?

Vortmax has posted here effectively before about how complex the problem of climate forecasting really is. He provides some background to the bottom line I have offered. The climate system is way too complex and chaotic to model and predict, ever. No matter how much computer power you throw at it. A butterfly flapping its wings in Japan really can start a series of events in a chaotic system that results in a hurricane in the Atlantic. We do not and never will have the ability to model such a system. Attempts at models are interesting, but like the worthless hurricane forecasts of the previous hurricane season, not to be taken seriously.

You are the only one who has stepped up to the plate to connect the obvious dots that I believe force someone who believes in all the models and other forecasts to conclude that we are way past the point of no return and we will soon have our roasted carcuses on the second version of Venus, no matter what we do. If you are backtracking, let me know.

19

“We don’t like change that we cannot control, just like we don’t like changes we can’t understand.” -vortmax

Dang Art, you are the embodiment of that statement. Cut us some slack man! We already all said there’s uncertainty involved here. It’s not like anyone is asking you to jump off a bridge, only to start to move in the direction of evaluating your actions against the best evidence you find regarding climate change. I know you do this in everyday life for simple economic choices, just apply another layer in the decision process.

I’m all for holding the posters of ST to the highest rigor of scientific standards but as you yourself have stated (and I paraphrase) it’s OK to give a measured response to a seemingly radical assertion. It sounds like you don’t want to do any more than you are doing now in terms of sustainability until you have a higher level of confidence that any action on your part will avert a precise portion of some negative effect; so be it. But don’t limit yourself to ST in your investigation. Arguing over the fine points here isn’t going to change the environment one iota if all you do is try to pin astrotri on a possibly exaggerated claim he made a couple of months ago. The core of his message is sound advice if I read correctly.

My point is, what harm can it do to you to think about your behaviors as they relate to sustainable practices; at worst, you might save some money because eliminating unneeded consumption of resources can definitely save money (this is how I appeal to the bean counters), at best, you can save money and more because you’ll be assigning a more realistic lifecycle cost to your choices. Forget Venus II and find whatever motivation you need to at least minimize the possibility (to the best of our current knowledge) that our current actions are not healthy for the environment.

20

Bummer, Tim. Does this mean you don’t want to buy my credits?

21

You know, I was thinking of starting a backroom emissions trading scheme. It’ll be my shortcut to riches and the mindless consumption that is my right and reward! Actually, I can just about afford to drink French champagne and Russian caviar on my meager wages, imagine what crazy tastes I might develop if I actually had real money! Just think of it, Australian nectarines in the dead of winter! And reasonably priced too!

22

“Cut us some slack man! We already all said there’s uncertainty involved here.”

Well, actually, if you really buy into the global warming stuff that has you so depressed, I really don’t thing there is uncertainty about the end result. I believe astrotri had it right, if you take the models and such as a given. Venus is on tap for us.

I had been hoping to get some consensus behind astrotri’s opinions, or at least behind some quantifyable forecast, but no one will come out to play. They rant on about the sanctity of peer reviewed analysis that they don’t understand, pronounce a consensus, then move on. Since they don’t understand the analysis, they can’t see where it leads. Their objective, like that of the ISG, is to achieve consensus, not get the right answer.

Now even astrotri is going wobbly on me. He has the horses to understand the analysis and point out where it leads, but the courage to follow through seems to have abandoned him.