brucep said:
Thanks for your comments. Always informative for me. I believe research is a great pastime for humans. LOL. More research=more literature (knowledge). More research would be a key component for 'get to work'.
I didn't exactly follow some of the controversy here, but I like to throw in with you guys because it's one of the more active topics, and the contributors (cranks excluded) are educated people with sometimes surprising ideas and outlooks. And we are fortunate to have this really great Earth Sciences expert as moderator. He is out there actually fighting some of this war only to come here and be insulted by cranks, or at least to have to police them when they start going off the chain. I think I was mistaken in calling billvon a power industry employee (which is a great perpective to add to the mix) but at least as an EE he is on top of that perspective better than the average poster.
One of the advantages of research is that it keeps the pressure on the public in headlines that continually corroborate the stark realities of AGW. The pressure can induce people to move into that progressive "can-do" frame of mind that seemed to sweep the 2008 elections. It has a lot of tangible benefits, too, like now we have all kinds of assets in place to determine that there was a drop in emissions. That was Roger Revelle's indirect way of selling climate science research (even though his field was oceanography) to unlikely investors like the DOD: by convincing them that the more we understand the atmosphere, the better our chances of detecting a Soviet or Chinese nuclear test. With all these assets in place today, we can now monitor the carbon "nukes" everyone is cavalierly setting off. And the upside of this is that we can also tell when things are improving. That will potentially be a huge daily undertaking decades from now, when people start watching CO[sub]2[/sub] the way we watch the daily temperatures, or [gawd forbid] the stock market!
That's definitely a good thing, but unfortunately much of it has been caused by the recession of 2008.
It would be good to know if some of that is the benefit of adding wind and solar farms to the grid.
Thus once the economy recovers to 2006 levels we'll see an increase again, unless we get some kind of greenhouse gas regulation in place. (Both methane and CO2.)
Without a doubt growth is bad for the planet. Even if we could magically end all AGHGs today, total human impact cannot conceivably be contained. I mean I can imagine some hypothetical low-impact medieval style hippie communes that would come close, but average people wouldn't want to live there. And they could only be optimized. There simply can't be zero-impact anything. Even if we could regress back into our ancestral arboreal form -- back to foraging for apples or whatever -- there are far too many of us to relinquish enough of the habitats we occupy. I don'd like to think I'm a fatalist. I just don't see the apocalypse as Billy does, or any of the other popular versions. To me the apocalypse is not even physical. It's the forward creep of profound sadness, that the planet is slowly crashing and we are helpless to stop it. By the same token I'm not advocating that we shouldn't make it our top priority to stanch the bleeding. But to really get behind that idea is to concede that the best humans can ever do is to embrace the impact-optimized medieval hippie lifestyle, or whatever anyone else might call it. Short of some historic technological breakthrough, of course.
It seems to me that we're not going to get much more in the way of carbon regulation. With the collapse of carbon-credit trading in Europe we've lost that system and gained an example of "things that don't work." We will get some form of power plant CO2 regulation from the EPA in 2015 but most of the improvements, IMO, will come from secondary effects. For example, increasing CAFE requirements will indirectly cut carbon emissions because cars will be required to become more efficient.
Without some fully baked end solution like a cheap easily implemented sequestration technology it's hard to see carbon credits winnowing their way back into focus. De facto carbon taxes like the federal excise taxes on gasoline remain as the bitter pill to swallow. But at least the implementation is trivial.
The increase in solar and wind power will help, but to really get coal power plants shut down we need to build out more nuclear generation.
Either that or begin to phase out coal when solar and wind reach some magic percentage of total capacity. Then I guess you pay some nominal cost to keep the coal plants available for backup, perhaps indefinitely.
And yet ironically one of the biggest criticisms of the green movement is "it's all about money" and "Al Gore is rich."
I don't recall that they were that antagonistic. I spot checked Google and nothing quite that bad popped up. Greenpeace suffers from a dearth of technical skills, if not an actual aversion to science. It's probably connected to their genetic memory of the evils of the military industrial complex. Too bad; they have a lot of noble ideals. But since doing right depends on being right, they will never be able to realize those ideals without first striving to be right. And that requires building bridges with the international science academies, which isn't likely to happen.
No mission statement is fine - even the review of reports before release by 190 governments may be necessary as the over all objective is to get action / regulations etc.
I thought the need for action was a settled matter, and henceforth the reports are merely assessing the confidence intervals in simulations of climate sensitivity to a doubling of carbon, as those confidence intervals begin to narrow.
However, there are powerful interest in continuing or even increasing the profits of burning fossil fuels and building cars that use them.
I agree that those people are rich but their powers over IPCC are intangible at best. Unless you think the scientists are taking bribes I can't see what the connection is.
In the US the "representatives" of the people need campaign funds - lobbyists and ultra rich like Koch brothers, supply most of that. Hence for example US has not signed on to even the relatively weak Kyoto agreements.
But Kyoto was entirely political in nature, in that it sponsored a treaty that member nations were given to ratify. IPCC is purely scientific in nature. It assesses the state of climate science from the deposit of public evidence created by independent research as well as agencies like NOAA. And as you say, the US effectively insulted Kyoto -- yet it produced the vast majority of that research. So while it's fair to say that powerful energy companies are attacking science politically, that's not the same as saying the IPCC is being manipulated by energy moguls, or that research is being obstructed by Big Energy.
In summary: the IPCC may be doing all that is politically possible, but IMO that is not enough.
I think the other case applies. They are doing all that is scientifically possible. The policymaking is in the hands of voters around the world and their delegates -- legislators, Paliamentarians, whatever. The chip falls on you and me, Billy. We have to make this happen. Imagine carrying that message up into the favelas of Sao Paolo. That's a pretty tough nut to crack, methinks. Here in the states we are confronted by the Tea Party dropouts, fundies and the rest of the numbskulls that make up the 46% who are still in denial of climate change. Something tells me working the favelas would be easier!
I was very happy t see thousands marching in the streets, in many countires - that is how major change has been achieved in the past. I was part of Dr. King's "March on Washington" and several others for end of racial discrimination. I still march in Sao Paulo's "Gay Parade" (world's 2nd largest) despite being as "straight" as they come.
In my mind the only march sorely needed is the one that rages against propaganda in favor of science. That 46% of Americans who deny climate science -- that's where policy intervention by the energy companies has dragged us closer to the impending doom you are forecasting. The influence of well funded con artists on the most naive and illiterate groups in American society -- that's the outrage of modern times that enslaves minds the ways the Jim Crow laws enslaved the persons who happened to be the wrong color, back when the Northern European complexion was the propaganda tool that programmed the morons of the day.
I have been listening to speech by co-chair of IPCC's WGI at:
http://www.climatechange2013.org/report/ now for the second time as I type. He gives what seems to me to be balanced truth. I especially like how he has reduced the problem to a few simple equations reflecting what our choices are (More than just the fact that waiting increases the cost, etc. If you don't want to watch all hour & 9 minutes, at least jump in at 39 minutes into the talk to see this compressed math summary which ends with his talk at 52 minutes. -
These 13 minutes are the best and most important discussion of GW problem I know of. If instead of a more than million word reports, the IPCC just published a transcript with the graphs of these 13 minutes, I would be singing their praises!
It hasn't occurred to me that anyone needs more than the findings that human carbon loading is accelerating the ice melt, crashing ecosystems and threatening future disaster. I suspect that only better educated people, who already embrace the IPCC, are the only ones who know or care about the facts. But I agree that such a speech should be used to counter the chronic propaganda from the con artists which is feeding all the moronic denial. And hopefully everyone who hears this speech who was in denial will experience the scales falling from their eyes. But that's giving the average knothead far too much credit.
I am ignorant of this history and don't care - only what I see now seems important to me.
My point was that climate science enjoyed two centuries of unfettered development. That legacy is only in recent years declared fundamentally broken. In your objections they are broken in the opposite direction -- inadequate science, as opposed to overblown science. My question is: when and where did it break? I suspect you would agree that all was well with climatology in the 1960's when a scientist (Roger Revelle) first alerted a president (LBJ) that AGW could crash the cryosphere and cause unlimited harm to civilization and the environment. When did pure science like that become manipulated by the wealthy? I don't think it ever did. I think the science has remained constant, continually chipping away at the mysteries and exposing new facts, and ever becoming more complete, more certain of the mechanisms that promote AGW, and those which deter it.
Not exactly a pure assumption as something must be happening during the more than year long period that governments are reviewing reports before they can be released. I don't have access to first drafts of reports, so don't know how governments have changed reports.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. The member nations are supposed to furnish reports of their GHG inventories. Other than information like that, I don't understand what any government has to add to any IPCC report. The stuff I've read purports to be reviewed by the working groups of scientists from member nations, not any political or business people. The data being discussed in the reports, and the simulations, are either the work products of government agencies, like NOAA, or independent researchers (such as biologist Camille Paremesan, who is periodically attacked in these threads by the Sock Puppet Army of Zealots [SPAZ]). It's all public domain, so it's impossible to understand how the reports can be altered by the will of member nations. They either match the published findings or they don't, and if they don't those authors will raise holy hell, right? And so will the million or so professionals around the world who actually keep up with this stuff. Imagine the backlash if even one obscure researcher detected that IPCC had deliberately lied. It would go viral and there would be a Congressional inquiry that would put the McCarthy hearings to shame.
There are many interest at work in addition to the fossil fuel interest. Even within the government - For example, NASA wants to justify its budget, reduce chances it will be reduced so does a lot of good and needed climate research. DoD likewise - even just within its plans for defense, needs to model how the world it operates in will change. Etc. These various interest are often in conflict - coal interest have been losing recent battles with EPA, etc.
BTW the DOD funded the stations like Maua Loa where Keeling collected his first evidence of rising CO[sub]2[/sub] - back around 1959. The DOD was heavily dependent on fossil fuels and the US had intervened in Iran, only a few years earlier, to install the Shah as our puppet. It was clearly done not only to strengthen our hold on listening posts in the Elburz mountains (facing Russia across the Caspian Sea) but also to secure our grip on Iranian oil. Yet that same monstrous branch of the government sponsored the first climate monitoring stations which gave birth to the report Revelle gave LBJ which Moynihan carried to the UN which eventually founded IPCC. And I doubt the DOD is interfering in NOAA today, which means the IPCC is getting objective data sets from NOAA. I just don't believe any of these huge organizations act as evil monoliths without any disparity of opinion from within, with complete secrecy, no whistleblowers, and that similar cabals are operating in 190 member nations around the globe, without so much as attracting the curiousity of reporters who thrive on exposing conspiracies. And for what? The reports simply condense what the independent research has already published. There really is no smoking gun. If anything it's pretty obviously consistent with everything in the public domain.
When you get to be my age, even if you still have clear mind and healthy body, you cease to be much concerned about how many more years you will live, at least I have. My concern now is for my grand children, and their grand children, or to generalize: my species an even many others that will go extinct if business as usual continues.
Ok. So that's consistent in general with Roger Revelle's 1965 report which suggest global ice melt would raise sea levels enough to threaten future generations. And that theme has been consistent with every IPCC report, only that we have a lot more details about the nature of ecosystem crashes as well, of higher energy levels to feed dangerous storms, of increased flooding and drought etc all of which threaten your grandchildren and possibly your children as well. IPCC has only channeled more and more evidence of the scale of damage from AGW. So at this point IPCC looks like the organization best qualified to represent your interests to protect future generations such as your family.
Currently slightly more than half the net absorption of solar energy is heating the oceans. That will cease to be the case. When it does in 4 or 5 decades, the land will feel the full effect of the net solar heating - and worse - of the greater rate of water evaporation from the oceans.
At what water temperature does sunlight cease to transfer energy into the oceans, and what happens if there is no energy transfer? How do the land masses get hotter? And how or why does that take 40 years or so? I don't follow this.
I doubt man will know as 95F wet bulb temperatures will have killed almost all and completely abolished civilization's nice advantages like drinkable water coming out faucets, food stores, and electric power for lights, etc.
It would be more meaningful to talk about average surface temperatures. Suffice it to say that temperature rises are contributing to the retreat of the cryosphere. Glaciers feed all the major rivers of the world, and thus the eventual disappearance of those glaciers, exacerbated by the evaporation of soil moisture and shallow surface water will accelerate the human depletion of ground water. Large fresh water sources will conceivably be limited to reservoirs replenished by rain, and droughts will be disastrous. Reliance on desalination might drive an urgent rush to dominate fresh water production the way oil production was dominated by a small elite.
I disagree with both (1) [education about AGW is lowly working] & (2) [carbon regulation seems to be at a standstill.]
You think carbon regulation is working?
but I have not searched to see if my concern for large fires, aided by Hadley (or the two other) cell circulation patterns as rapid reducers of albedo of very high and now very reflecting clean white clouds has been done.
It's known to be a cause of dissipating cloud formation.
This is totally different question from that cloud formation - your link's concern;
I don't understand what you mean.
however here too the effect of soot aerosols can be the opposite from other aerosols during day time, at least. I.e. by absorbing sunlight they become much warmer than the droplets of water of the cloud. When hot black speck collides with water drop, part or all of that liquid becomes vapor (an "anti- cloud forming process") which both reduces the scattering that drop (if part still exists) of sun shine back into space AND add to the concentration of the strongest of all GHGs blocking IR escape - a "double whammie."
I would have to rely on the experimental observations.
Here is narrative made for general consumption which tells the story of the discovery that smoke tends to dissipate clouds. You can get more following the links. And there are more detailed explanations in the papers mentioned which may interest you.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SmokeClouds/
I have been thinking more about my "Ph. D. problem" suggestion. I think an approximation solution of it may be feasible without too much work or computer time cost. I may start a thread on this in Physic & Math, to see if others agree my ideas for an approximate solution are valid. Some of the approximations are: All drops, the soot included, are spheres of same size, large enough that Mie scattering can be neglected. The distance between successive scatterings is constant (could be the mean free path, but think that if constant the actual value drops outs of the equations.) A one time calculated table of scattering angle probabilities is OK, say 360 entries for the angle by integer number of degrees AND can neglect fact that sometimes it is up, and sometimes it is down from the horizontal plane (Only change in distance from entry point of photon from cloud with flat surface is important. That flat surface can be the x, y plain of Cartesian coordinate system with photon approaching it along the +z axis.)
I.e. program just draws random number to add next step away (or back towards) the z=0 entry plain (the x, y plain) in Monte Carlo analysis of many photons to learn the average number of scattering required for escape back to space. (z > 0.) If, for example, that turns out to be 1000, then one soot sphere per 1000 water drops, cuts the expected reflectivity in half, I think. One per 500 drops cuts the expected reflectivity by factor of 4, etc. I think, but need to think some more about this. May need to have another random number draw for each scattering to see if absorption, instead of scatter, took place.
It seems to me the actual modelling issue is to figure out where every particle is, and where it's going, and what the temperature and humidity are as each particle moves through the sky, and then when the conditions are right for the condensation of water vapor on that particle, and then how the particle dynamics changes, it becomes less buoyant, and as it falls it collides with other microdroplets -- at some point producing a droplet of a given volume which represents the average size of a raindrop, hailstone, sleet or snowflake falling to Earth. And then that has to be coupled into the models that account for circulation and weather, air-sea coupling, land-dust coupling, anthropogenic aerosol coupling and these hypothetical fires. It's huge!
Since actual cloud albedos have been measured, as well as the amount of heat absorbed, it would seem that the main problem is writing a simulation as above that creates the actual amount of cloud formation expected at a given altitude at a given moment -- and to be able to simulate cloud formation, then apply the measured albedos and absorption amounts to those types of clouds as they form in the simulator. Then these need to be tested to predict actual cloud formations from historical records. That's a mighty tall order. No wonder the project is so elusive.
