Continuation of the open thread. Please use these threads to bring up things that are creating ‘buzz’ rather than having news items get buried in comment threads on more specific topics. We’ll promote the best responses to the head post.
Knorr (2009): Case in point, Knorr (GRL, 2009) is a study about how much of the human emissions are staying the atmosphere (around 40%) and whether that is detectably changing over time. It does not undermine the fact that CO2 is rising. The confusion in the denialosphere is based on a misunderstanding between ‘airborne fraction of CO2 emissions’ (not changing very much) and ‘CO2 fraction in the air’ (changing very rapidly), led in no small part by a misleading headline (subsequently fixed) on the ScienceDaily news item Update: MT/AH point out the headline came from an AGU press release (Sigh…). SkepticalScience has a good discussion of the details including some other recent work by Le Quéré and colleagues.
Update: Some comments on the John Coleman/KUSI/Joe D’Aleo/E. M. Smith accusations about the temperature records. Their claim is apparently that coastal station absolute temperatures are being used to estimate the current absolute temperatures in mountain regions and that the anomalies there are warm because the coast is warmer than the mountain. This is simply wrong. What is actually done is that temperature anomalies are calculated locally from local baselines, and these anomalies can be interpolated over quite large distances. This is perfectly fine and checkable by looking at the pairwise correlations at the monthly stations between different stations (London-Paris or New York-Cleveland or LA-San Francisco). The second thread in their ‘accusation’ is that the agencies are deleting records, but this just underscores their lack of understanding of where the GHCN data set actually comes from. This is thoroughly discussed in Peterson and Vose (1997) which indicates where the data came from and which data streams give real time updates. The principle one is the CLIMAT updates of monthly mean temperature via the WMO network of reports. These are distributed by the Nat. Met. Services who have decided which stations they choose to produce monthly mean data for (and how it is calculated) and is absolutely nothing to do with NCDC or NASA.
Further Update: NCDC has a good description of their procedures now available, and Zeke Hausfather has a very good explanation of the real issues on the Yale Forum.
Comment by David Wright — 21 January 2010 @ 12:12 AM
“Doug,
http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/ak/aktest/frontiers.Par.83299.File.dat/blmfi77.pdf
or,
http://www.treeringsociety.org/TRBTRR/TRRvol60_1_59-65.pdf ”
Wow, interesting. The BLM item is pretty ambiguous, but the “treeringsociety” piece clearly portrays remains of a forest overrun by a glacier which apparently was not flowing long enough in that location to entirely obliterate objects in its path, a rare thing.
No wonder it’s so popular. A real cherry.
Of course, that overrun was something like 3,000 years ago. That was then, we’re at “now”.
Here’s a comprehensive treatment of the situation in question, now:
http://employees.oneonta.edu/baumanpr/geosat2/Big_Melt_Down/Big_Melt_Down.htm
If you digest Baumann’s analysis, which appears scrupulously comprehensive, the Saskatchewan glacier is undergoing a unprecedented in the record. According to Baumann, “The Saskatchewan Glacier is about 8 miles in length. At the melt back rate of 1/12 of a mile per year, the glacier should be gone in 96 years.”
That would be one of those upcoming brick walls I mentioned.
> Bagley
Note how big that is, and it includes an ice field as well as a glacier. Note the reference to a ‘stagnant ice lobe’ here.
This isn’t a simple ‘slow moving freight train’ glacier situation where the action is all at one leading or retreating face at the downhill end. Bagley is _huge_.
This kind of ice can build up, sit, get covered by dirt and trees, maybe melt out from under, maybe another ice mass forms to the side, starts to bury the trees, then more ice spreads into the area, breaking trees off fairly high up on the trunk as it seems happened here
“We found ice under the peat layer, which suggests
that this forest grew on a layer of debris
which accumulated on the surface of a stagnant
ice lobe. After a few hundred years, the
mature forest was overrun and buried by a
new ice advance. Look at the Matanuska Glacier,”
points out Crossen. “One side of the
glacier has debris on top that actually supports
forest growth. At first glance, it just
looks like an ordinary forest, but if you look
closely, you can see ice beneath it.”
“Wow, interesting. The BLM item is pretty ambiguous, but the “treeringsociety” piece clearly portrays remains of a forest overrun by a glacier which apparently was not flowing long enough in that location to entirely obliterate objects in its path, a rare thing.”
The treeringsociety paper states that the trees were likely partially buried in silt. Then the glacier advanced over the silt and sheared off the trees several feet up the trunk. After the glacier receeded, the silt eroded exposing the sheared trunk.
“A real cherry.”
You asked for an example, not a catalogue.
The point is that receeding glaciers happened before the industrial revolution. They are not indicative of a man caused disaster.
We build homes in areas prone to mudslides, wildfires and earthquakes in California because the climate is favorable. More irony. Should that be outlawed?
[Response: What a strange lesson to take away from this. The warmth of the mid-to-early Holocene was driven by orbital factors (the Earth was closer to the sun during Northern Hemisphere summers- the opposite case to today). The orbitally-driven tendency has been to cool since then (which is likely why the Little Ice Age appears to have been the greatest expansion of glaciers in many places in the Holocene). Now we have a situation where 7000 years of orbital cooling has been undone in a century. And this makes you think that what is going on now is just par for the course? Wow. What is going on is important on a millennial time scale – Otzi 5000 years old, Larsen B, 10,000 years old, this forest 7000 years old. And that doesn’t concern you? Wow again. – gavin]
“this forest 7000 years old.”
This forest was obviously not covered in ice 2500 years ago (are we referring to the same paper? http://www.treeringsociety.org/TRBTRR/TRRvol60_1_59-65.pdf).
Humans have thrived in the rebound from the last ice age.
The little ice age was tough for humans.
“The orbitally-driven tendency has been to cool since then (which is likely why the Little Ice Age appears to have been the greatest expansion of glaciers in many places in the Holocene). Now we have a situation where 7000 years of orbital cooling has been undone in a century.”
It this is true, then we should be grateful that we are mitigating the cooling prescribed by the orbital tendency. Regardless, like our leveeing off of the Mississippi, nature will eventually overcome our petty influences. We should be prepared to insulate ourselves from that eventuality.
“And this makes you think that what is going on now is just par for the course?”
There are no reruns in the real world.
> no reruns
Hmmmmmmm ….
Well, take a look at the first picture here, you’ll recognize it:
http://www.pnas.org/content/102/31/10832/F1.large.jpg
…
Ice age, thaw, cooling,
ice age, thaw, cooling,
ice age, thaw, cooling,
ice age, thaw, coo … ACK MONKEYS EVOLVING
–sudden swerve! —
That’s from
ah, that’s one of the images from:
http://www.pnas.org/content/102/31/10832.full
Contributions of past and present human generations to committed warming caused by carbon dioxide
Pierre Friedlingstein and Susan Solomon‡
1198, Completely fed up
“complete collapse of human civilization”
Is a quote from the post that I was disputing. That’s why I put it in quotes.
1200: BPL: There is if civilization is actually in danger.
BPL, that is the claim that Gavin says no one is making. “[I]n danger” is a little weaker than “complete collapse”, so perhaps you are backing off from complete collapse of human civilization”; of course there is danger: the levees in the California Central Valley could collapse and cause billions of dollars in agricultural and structural losses (even without AGW that might happen), and that is certainly a “threat”, but hardly a “complete collapse.”
“It this is true, then we should be grateful that we are mitigating the cooling prescribed by the orbital tendency.”
That’s a little like saying we should be grateful we’ve mitigated the cooling prescribed by a severe winter by burning down the house around ourselves. How do you propose to identify when we’ve mitigates sufficiently so that we don’t, er, over-mitigate?
David Wright says: 21 January 2010 at 10:30 PM
“This forest was obviously not covered in ice 2500 years ago (are we referring to the same paper?”
From the abstract:
“Crossdating and construction of two radiocarbon-controlled floating tree-ring chronologies showed that all the subfossil stumps and boles exposed at this location were killed during a Neoglacial advance of the Saskatchewan Glacier 2,910 +/- 60 to 2,730 +/-60 14C years B.P.”
Presumably you don’t think the trees somehow were exposed a little more than 2,500 years ago and then miraculously survived to this day.
What exactly is your point here?
Oh, I see, you tell us:
“The point is that receeding glaciers happened before the industrial revolution. They are not indicative of a man caused disaster.”
Forest fires happened before children began playing with matches in the woods. If a kid accidentally burns down a forest, is that benign? Should we just pat him on the head and chuckle?
I’m curious to know what you thought of the Baumann piece,
http://employees.oneonta.edu/baumanpr/geosat2/Big_Melt_Down/Big_Melt_Down.htm
Oh, boy, something new to fight about!
Urban heat island effect dead? Leads to net -cooling- error?
No snark:
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf
With snark:
http://www.desmogblog.com/urban-heat-island-myth-dead
For the impatient who just want to begin arguing right now, the juicy part of the abstract:
“To evaluate the potential impact of poor siting/instrument exposure on CONUS temperatures, trends derived from poor and well-sited USHCN stations were compared. Results indicate that there is a mean bias associated with poor exposure sites relative to good exposure sites; however, this bias is
consistent with previously documented changes associated with the widespread conversion to electronic sensors in the USHCN during the last 25 years. Moreover, the sign of the bias is counterintuitive to photographic documentation of poor exposure because associated instrument changes have led to an artificial negative (“cool”) bias in maximum temperatures and only a slight positive (“warm”) bias in minimum temperatures. These results underscore the need to consider all changes in observation practice when determining the impacts of siting irregularities.
Further, the influence of non-standard siting on temperature trends can only be quantified through an analysis of the data. Adjustments applied to USHCN Version 2 data largely account for the impact of instrument and siting changes, although a small overall residual negative (“cool”) bias appears to remain in the adjusted maximum temperature series.”
David Wright said:
> It this is true, then we should be grateful that we are
> mitigating the cooling prescribed by the orbital tendency.
If you want to call it “mitigation” when we undo 7,000 years of cooling in a century, go ahead. So what are you going to call the warming over the *next* century? Did you think this all the way through?
What contribution to CO2 in atmosphere comes from global natural fires such as in
the vast Indian coalfields.There are many more examples..
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/jan102007/61.pdf
“The little ice age was tough for humans.”
And that’s because even a small change in climate is tough for humans now: we’ve built our cities on the stable climate.
How easy is it to move Mexico City?
David Wright says “There is no sense in harboring fear that civilization or humanity is in danger.”
David, who is talking about fear? I am talking about taking action to address a very real threat to the infrastructure of human civilization–something that affects our ability to produce what is needed to sustain the 9-10 billion people who will be on the planet by mid-century.
I find it interesting that you seem to consider taking responsibility to be alarmist!
1203 Gavin’s comment: The warmth of the mid-to-early Holocene was driven by orbital factors (the Earth was closer to the sun during Northern Hemisphere summers- the opposite case to today). The orbitally-driven tendency has been to cool since then (which is likely why the Little Ice Age appears to have been the greatest expansion of glaciers in many places in the Holocene). Now we have a situation where 7000 years of orbital cooling has been undone in a century.
What are the other possible explanations for the Little Ice Age are there, and how “likely” are they as well? I had not previously read that the reasons for the oscillations of the last 2,000 years were known: Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period, and the complementary coolings.
[Response: The biggest drivers of global variability in the recent pre-industrial were very likely solar and volcanic, but much of what is perceived as global may not end up being so. There is no credible hemisphere or global reconstruction that shows a global ‘Roman Warm Period’ for instance – and like the MWP these terms tend to be tossed around whenever a peak is seen in a record regardless of how coherent it is with any other record. Regional climate changes are of course to be expected – perhaps as a consequence of unforced changes in ocean circulation. – gavin]
Gavin,
Here is an analysis that you might enjoy reading and disputing (or maybe not!)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/22/flashback-bob-tisdales-november-prediction-on-giss-exploiting-the-warmest-decade-on-record/
Notice that it does not have an explanation for the overall warming since ca. 1850 (hence, it does not actually refute the claim that increased CO2 has led to increased storage of heat in the long term, therefor might be the cause of global warming over the last 150 years), and does not make a testable prediction about the future. Put differently, it does not rule out the possibility that the increased CO2 is the cause of the relative weakness of the La Ninas.
[Response: It’s been obvious that this decade would be the warmest decade in the historical record for years (we even offered a bet on a similar proposition in 2007). Calling it in November was not particularly impressive. – gavin]
“And that’s because even a small change in climate is tough for humans now: we’ve built our cities on the stable climate.”
We’ve built our cities and homes to isulate us from the extremes.
“How easy is it to move Mexico City?”
If it gets too expensive to obtain water (or whatever it is you’re implying will make it unbearable in Mexico City) then folks will migrate elsewhere. It won’t happen overnight. (Alarming prophecies tend to be blind to long timescales) Migration is not a new concept. We’ve been doing it for eons.
Consider the earthquake in Haiti. It’s very likely that over the next few decades that many courageous families will be leaving that country, looking for a better life. There are just too many better places to live.
300 years from today most of our cities will probably look nothing like they do today. That’s not catastrophe, that’s progress. We’re pretty good at it.
Bill (1212) — THe estimate I’ve seen from a Chinese researcher is that coalfield fires account for about 0.5% of CO2 emissions.
NY Times item on just-past warm decade:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/science/earth/22warming.html?hpw
Some guy Gavin quoted, again.
SM: BPL, that is the claim that Gavin says no one is making. “[I]n danger” is a little weaker than “complete collapse”, so perhaps you are backing off from complete collapse of human civilization”; of course there is danger: the levees in the California Central Valley could collapse and cause billions of dollars in agricultural and structural losses (even without AGW that might happen), and that is certainly a “threat”, but hardly a “complete collapse.”
BPL: Here’s what I think will happen. The deniers, like you, will win the political debate by preventing action until it’s too late. Agricultural production will be hit harder and harder in a stochastic series of droughts and storm events. Glaciers will retreat, rivers will run low, refugees will seek areas with water and food. Those who still have water and food will fight to keep the refugees out. At some point the agricultural system will collapse completely. Governments worldwide will panic and clamp down hard with draconian laws that would not have been necessary if they had enacted something as simple as a carbon tax 40 years earlier. It will be too late. Trucks and trains will no longer bring food into cities; there won’t be any food to bring. Supermarkets and restaurants will close. People will get increasingly small rations from government ration lines. When rations decline too far, people will fight over the remainder and the rationing system will collapse. Meanwhile, since nearly everybody will be malnourished, plagues will spread everywhere. By 2050 at the latest, human civilization as we know it will no longer exist. By 2100 most of the world’s population will be gone; no more than one billion will be left out of nine billion, and the population will continue to decline for some time.
Because all the easily reachable metals, fossil fuels, forests, cropland and rangeland will be gone, it will be a long, long time before a civilization comparable to our own arises again. I would guess a thousand years or more. For the space-flight minded, we might get to Mars by, say, the 32nd century.
David Wright says, “Consider the earthquake in Haiti. It’s very likely that over the next few decades that many courageous families will be leaving that country, looking for a better life. There are just too many better places to live.”
Damn, you’re so close! Now work with me. What happens when the climate changes and there are very few places that offer what people need to live…and we have 50% more people than we have today…?
DW: 300 years from today most of our cities will probably look nothing like they do today. That’s not catastrophe, that’s progress. We’re pretty good at it.
BPL: It’s true that they won’t look anything like today. The larger buildings will have collapsed and been overrun with greenery; bridges will be incomplete and unusable. The roads will be buried under soil and plants. Most buildings will look like greenery-covered hills. The smaller mounds will be where cars stopped for the last time.
There will be no honking horns, no boom boxes, no streetlights, no one talking on cellphones. If you see people at all, they will probably be wearing animal-skin clothing and will be hunting game in what used to be the streets. Hunting parties will be mostly male; parties gathering plants and mushrooms mostly female, accompanied by children.
Languages will have changed severely and will only be recognizable as related to the original regional languages to professional linguists, except that there won’t be any professional linguists. If you talk to someone in a hunting party, you might have to think about it awhile before you recognized his name, “Zha Myskid” as “John, Mike’s kid.”
A higher level of civilization will exist in villages well away from the old cities. These people will be farmers rather than hunter-gatherers, will live in wood and stone buildings, and may grind their grain in wind-powered mills. They will have laws, schools for the kids, and strictly enforced customs. Very likely they will have a mandatory local religion–in the US, usually a debased Christianity with strong pagan elements, including a myth blaming evil people or even demons for the collapse of The Rich Time (“Za Ristime”).
“If it gets too expensive to obtain water (or whatever it is you’re implying will make it unbearable in Mexico City) then folks will migrate elsewhere”
And how easy will it be, David?
You didn’t answer.
David Wright,
seriously, did you even look at this?
http://www.pnas.org/content/102/31/10832/F1.large.jpg
Compare the range between bottom and top of the previous ice ages to the range from the beginning of human warming (most of the main image) to the range since the end of the last ice age up to about today (that’s the vertical column of circles at the right hand side, the bit that’s pulled out and enlarged in the second image for detail.
Got it? More difference in the past couple of centuries than the difference between the deepest part of the ice ages and the warmest part of the intervening thaws.
We know what the difference was between deep ice age and thaw.
We know the forcing caused.
We don’t know the feedbacks perfectly but we have a good idea.
I’d just like to know you even looked at the picture and the paper and thought about the size of the change that’s happened so incredibly fast.
Doug,
#1209 My round number of 2500 years was off by around 500 years. So 3000 years ago living trees were partially covered by silt, then sheared off at the silt level by an advancing glacier. More recently the glacier receeded, the silt eroded revealing the sheared off tree trunks.
The point remains the same.
“I’m curious to know what you thought of the Baumann piece,
http://employees.oneonta.edu/baumanpr/geosat2/Big_Melt_Down/Big_Melt_Down.htm”
It was an interesting article. It seems to be pointed toward a fear of the loss of fresh water supplies if all the glaciers melt. That’s what I got from it. The rate of flow of the watersheds may change, but the area will likely continue to have winter snowfall and springtime melt regardless of the status of the glaciers.
I have visited a location in Yosemite Valley where a pile of rock and boulders stretches between the walls of the valley, like a dam. At one time, a glacier had “parked” with its terminus at the location of the dam. Rocks and boulders rolling down the slope of the glacier collected at the terminus, forming a glacial moraine. At one time, there was probably a lake behind the moraine. Over time, silt collected against the upstream side of the moraine, causing the valley to partially fill with rich soil where a forest now grows. If glaciers never melted or advanced then you would not see multiple moraines in old glacial valleys, but they are quite common. I’m not sure why some think that glaciers should never advance or retreat.
Is it a myth that New York City was once under a kilometer of ice? That’s hard to imagine.
[Response: Doesn’t make it less true. – gavin]
Who is forecasting that climate change will result in a catastrpohic decrease in global precipitation?
[Response: No-one. You have misunderstood completely the reason why glacier retreat has an impact on water resources downstream. It is all about storage and seasonal flow. – gavin]
I’m still searching for an expert description of the “brick wall” into which we expect to collide. Anyone?
“And how easy will it be, David?
You didn’t answer.”
How can anyone answer such a subjective question?
Here’s an attempt:
I expect that it would be easier to have lived in Mexico City and then have to move to another city than it would have been to live in the jungle or the desert, without shelter, education, medical care, transportation and the other ameneties civilization offers.
Barton, I hope you’re working on a novel in this milieu!
1215, gavin: The biggest drivers of global variability in the recent pre-industrial were very likely solar and volcanic, but much of what is perceived as global may not end up being so. There is no credible hemisphere or global reconstruction that shows a global ‘Roman Warm Period’ for instance – and like the MWP these terms tend to be tossed around whenever a peak is seen in a record regardless of how coherent it is with any other record. Regional climate changes are of course to be expected – perhaps as a consequence of unforced changes in ocean circulation.
Thank you.
I got to wondering after I posted my comment that you commented on, whether there is evidence that the volcanoes (globally, not just individually) are cyclical, either periodic or possibly chaotic.
Obviously, it will look like I am grasping at straws to rescue my scepticism attitude, but the magnetic poles move around, the plates move around, and there is an underlying dynamic system. If we had another Little Ice Age caused by a consistent upsurge in volcanic activity, I’d be surprised. At age 62, I do not expect to be around to see it. I have children, and they’ll experience whatever happens after 2030, so I wouldn’t want it to be bad.
Well, I was wrong when I wrote just above
> We know what the difference was between deep ice age and thaw.
How do I know I was wrong? Because David Wright followed immediately with
> Is it a myth that New York City was once under a kilometer of ice?
> That’s hard to imagine.
Make that “anyone who’s read the science should know ….”
So — this helps focus on the problem. David didn’t know, nor imagine, the change from ice age to Holocene. That makes it “hard to imagine” how much the world already has been changing in natural cycles.
So the picture I kept pointing to really can’t have meant anything.
Someone else try. I find it hard to imagine what’s needed here.
David Wright says: 22 January 2010 at 7:17 PM
A lot of words, apparently conceding that you have no serious case to make for your position.
We could go on an on like this, you citing glacial advance and retreat driven by natural forces, with me rejoining by pointing out there’s a new kid in town, humans, added to the roster of natural forces, except that we’re happening fast and furious yet have the unique property of mindfulness and thus should ideally be under better control than nature.
But that would be pointless; you’ve got your ideological attachment and I’ve my fondness for the material world. Neither of us are going to change our minds.
Feel free to have the last word, on me. Cheers.
David Wright,
I think you are asking us to do your homework for you. You could read the IPCC summaries of likely changes due to climate change. The very likely ones having to do with precipitation are that more rain will fall in impulsive events rather than in smaller events. This not only increases flooding risks, it makes the water much more difficult to catch and use for productive purposes. Now add to this the fact that we will have about 1.5 times as many people, with a commensurate reduction in permeable surface, and the potential for destructive flooding becomes quite severe, especially in places where infrastructure is not in place to encourage measures to limit runoff. Further complicating the equation is a reduction in snowpack and glacial runoff, which makes the summers drier. That leaves 1.5 times as many people copeting for much less water. Do you see the problem here, or should I draw you a map.
The above water stress is also likely to significantly reduce crop yields. Other crops may simply fail (e.g. winter wheat). Exotics and invasive pests, weeds and vermin will have an easier time of it in a warmer world. This leaves 1.5 times as many people competing for less food–already in our world 1 billion go hungry.
The oceans, already under stress from overfishing and pollution, will experience further stress due to increased runoff (remember the impulsive precipitation events), ocean acidification and several other factors. At some point (maybe 6 degrees of warming?), the balance could shift away from oxygen producing bacteria and toward those that produce H2S–not a good development if you breathe oxygen.
The other consideration is all the confident assertions by denialists that CO2 follows temperature in the ice cores. It does in some cases, but far from being reassuring, this instead demonstrates the near-term peril we face. In past warming events, some initial warming (due to changes summarized under Milankovitch cycles) raises temperatures enough to release CO2 and CH4 from sequestration in permafrost, peat bogs and the ocean. This CO2 then accelerated and prolonged the warming. We have not yet reached this release, and it will likely be unstoppable once we do. If that happens, we’re likely just along for the ride.
I would suggest, David, that you read Six Degrees. If you can maintain your Oh-it’ll-be-all-right, pollyanna demeanor after reading that, then you are not educable. One thing I have learned from this debate–all the people who confidently assert that all the doomsayers (Malthus, etc.) have been wrong in the past are blissfully unaware of the heroic efforts of those who recognized the problem and averted the predicted catastrophes.
Septic, There is no evidence of any sort of periodicity of volcanism, earthquakes or other such geologic phenomena. Rather they exhibit a phenomenon called self-organized criticality (SOC). In SOC, a stress acting on a system increases in time. The system has a certain probability of relaxing to relieve the stress, and that probability increases with the stress applied. Such systems can sometimes exhibit a kind of quasi-periodicity, but they aren’t really oscillatory. A colleague of mine found evidence of SOC in solar flares (really solar particle events–pretty cool).
In reality, the numbers of such events are best described by a Poisson distribution about some mean value. The mean may change somewhat slowly as the energy in the system changes.
Oh, one last bit of homework help, for the exercise
http://www.google.com/search?q=compare+living+conditions+Mexico+City +indigenous+tribe
finds among much else, these from the first page of hits
Dec 4, 2009 … (CNN) — Mexican authorities have freed 107 indigenous people who officials say were being held as slave laborers in a Mexico City factory …
cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/12/04/mexico…
Female Migration, Environment, and Quality of Life in Mexico City …
Magazine article from: New Internationalist ; Indigenous Mexicans suffer from extreme poverty, racism and difficult living conditions in Mexico City.
encyclopedia.com/doc/1P3-1048937471.html
Environmental Research : Ozone, area social conditions, and …
by MS O’Neill – 2004 – Cited by 27 – Related articles – All 8 versions
Ozone, area social conditions, and mortality in Mexico City*1 … the accessibility of health services, affect entire groups of people living in proximity. …. Given the narrow range of variability of the indigenous language indicator, …
linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0013935103001506
#
“Well, I was wrong when I wrote just above
> We know what the difference was between deep ice age and thaw.
How do I know I was wrong? Because David Wright followed immediately with
> Is it a myth that New York City was once under a kilometer of ice?
> That’s hard to imagine.
You missed the point. The question was rhetorical. I did not state that it was not true. Just that it’s hard to imagine.”
Given that, is it so hard to imagine that a glacier that exists today won’t in the future?
To the folks above writing the book about the end of civlization, is local change predictable under AGW theory? Are you certain that South Louisiana will no longer be wet? That Arizona will no longer be dry? That a dam, rather than a glacier, cannot be used to store water?
“we’re happening fast and furious yet have the unique property of mindfulness and thus should ideally be under better control than nature.”
Perhaps the progress we’ve made over the last century, from the first flight to landing on the moon, has gone to our heads a bit. IMHO humility is in order. We can insulate ourselves, but we cannot control nature.
“In past warming events, some initial warming (due to changes summarized under Milankovitch cycles) raises temperatures enough to release CO2 and CH4 from sequestration in permafrost, peat bogs and the ocean.”
The “tipping point” I presume?
You’re confusing theory with fact.
“but much of what is perceived as global may not end up being so.”
Agreed.
“Oh, one last bit of homework help, for the exercise
http://www.google.com/search?q=compare+living+conditions+Mexico+City”
What does this have to do with CO2, Climate Change?
Do you propose we force Mexico to ban poverty and corruption?
What’s your point?
David: is it so hard to imagine that a glacier that exists today won’t in the future?
The rate of change is key. We’re changing ocean and atmospheric chemistry faster than at any time in the past several hundred thousand years, and possibly tens of millions of years. We know that biological systems have serious problems with much slower rates of change, with past mass extinction events to inform us. There is no reason to believe that human civilization can be any more successful at adapting to these rapid changes; for example, sea level rise of 1m by 2100 is a very serious threat to civilization.
We can insulate ourselves, but we cannot control nature.
But we can completely f*ck up nature.
“The above water stress is also likely to significantly reduce crop yields. Other crops may simply fail (e.g. winter wheat). Exotics and invasive pests, weeds and vermin will have an easier time of it in a warmer world. This leaves 1.5 times as many people competing for less food–already in our world 1 billion go hungry.”
Today we produced more food from less land, and the technology is still improving. So long as we don’t try again to turn food into fuel, we should not have a problem. There’s lots of farm land idle these days due to plentiful supply and the resultant low price for crops. Those who go hungry do so due to political, not supply problems. Most also reside in underdeveloped regions without industry.
The IPCC proposes to tax the well fed industrious nations in order to pay starving, underdeveloped nations so that they will limit their industrial development (remain impoverished). That’s a crime IMHO.
I didn’t come here to discuss politics, Hank started it.
Science makes much more sense.
http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php?id=12161
Apparently it was about 300 feet thick, not a kilometer.
“The land that makes up Alley Pond Park was acquired over the course of many years between 1927 and the present. The landscape itself, however, came into existence roughly 15,000 years ago, during the Pleistocene Epoch, when a passing glacier carved out the landscape of New York City.”
Still difficult to imagine, only 15,000 years ago.
“I would suggest, David, that you read Six Degrees. If you can maintain your Oh-it’ll-be-all-right, pollyanna demeanor after reading that, then you are not educable.”
Ray,
You read a science fiction novel and declare that if I don’t believe it that I am not educable? Name calling? This is Disappointing.
“The warmth of the mid-to-early Holocene was driven by orbital factors (the Earth was closer to the sun during Northern Hemisphere summers- the opposite case to today). The orbitally-driven tendency has been to cool since then (which is likely why the Little Ice Age appears to have been the greatest expansion of glaciers in many places in the Holocene). Now we have a situation where 7000 years of orbital cooling has been undone in a century.”
We really don’t have enough valid proxies to verify that we’ve undone 7000 years of cooling on a global basis. It may be, but we’re not really sure of this. Regardless, the Milankovich cycle is 150,000 years, isn’t it? Even 500 years of a degree or two of warm bias would have little effect on such a long cycle.
Question: For the transient response to climate change, there is stratospheric cooling and, more slowly, tropospheric and surface warming in response to increased LW opacity in general; while the troposphere and surface warm to equilibrium, the stratosphere warms back up a bit but (at least if it is not only in equilibrium with LW fluxes but also being heated by solar radiation) is still cooler than the initial value.
I had thought that this would tend to result in a colder tropopause level – that even given the increased surface temperature and (outside higher latitudes) decreased lapse rate in the lower troposphere, the shift of the tropopause to lower pressure levels would allow for a cooler tropopause.
But I’m not sure, and recently saw an abstract which suggested tropopause cooling would be due to ozone depletion. So I’m curious about this.
Also, how much is the tropopause level expected to shift (pressure coordinates)?
Sorry, try this again:
[stratosphere with whole climate system in climatic equilibrium] “is still cooler than the initial value.” … Unless there are sufficiently strong *POSITIVE* SW feedbacks …
“anyone who’s read the science should know”
The term “the science” is often used by proponents in reference to Global Warming. This intrigues me. It seems to elevate climatology to a mystical level above “ordinary science.” It seems to imply something which is known, settled.
Actually, it’s more than an implication since the writer of the above quote emphatically states that to read “the science” is to know.
> I expect that it would be easier to have lived in Mexico City ….
David Wright #1233
> IMHO humility is in order.
Yes. Show some.
“http://www.google.com/search?q=compare+living+conditions+Mexico+City”
What does this have to do with CO2, Climate Change?”
Because if the climate changes enough, Mexico City will have to move.
You’ve already said they’ll do that.
Now, how expensive and difficult would that be?
Answer.
David Wright says “You’re confusing theory with fact.”
Ah, the ol’ “It’s only a theory” gambit, beloved of creationists, conspiracy theorists and other anti-science types. No, David, the outgassing of greenhouse gasses in response to warming is actually a FACT that gets incoporated into the THEORY.
David: “Perhaps the progress we’ve made over the last century, from the first flight to landing on the moon, has gone to our heads a bit. IMHO humility is in order. We can insulate ourselves, but we cannot control nature.”
No, David, we cannot control nature, but we can, have and are changing nature. I recommend reading “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. And by humility, you seem to mean a state of naivete in which one believes that 9 billion people can do whatever they want with no environmental consequences. That would equate to my definition of hubris.
No, South Louisiana will not be dry; it will be under saltwater. And no Arizona will not be wet; it will be even drier, along with the rest of the west. GCM are able to begin making regional projections. See:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/regional-climate-projections/
And do read “Collapse”.
David Wright, Are you even paying attention? What good is idle farm land if the crops we depend will not grow on it!?!
And the fact you consider Lynas’s “Six Degrees” to be fiction suggests that your mind is made up. It is clearly based on the science.
It has been my experience that technological optimists are usually those who understand least about science or technology. You have not dented that impression.
Given your unwillingness to learn, it is not surprising that you have remained ignorant.
David Wright, your description of what “the IPCC proposes” is itself close to criminal–the crime in question being libel. (One definition is “a published false statement that is damaging to a person’s reputation; a written defamation.”) Certainly your statement is both false and baseless; quite gratuitously so.
The IPCC doesn’t propose *any* policy–it is not a policy body, it is essentially an advisory panel writ large. Its advice–which you seem bent on denigrating from a position of entrenched ignorance–is that business as usual is extremely dangerous.
Please try to pay attention to the facts. For instance, can you find any source whatsoever that advocates limiting development in the so-called Third World? As far as I know, every proposal to support developing nations is intended to allow them to mitigate emissions without stifling their economic development.
Your allegation as it stands seems to me a contemptible distortion–even a lie. If you can support what you say, I will reconsider this. But I doubt you can.
(And, as far as I’m concerned, hand-waving arguments that this “must” be what is intended because “obviously” this will be the unintended consequence won’t cut it.)
“Ah, the ol’ “It’s only a theory” gambit, beloved of creationists, conspiracy theorists and other anti-science types. No, David, the outgassing of greenhouse gasses in response to warming is actually a FACT that gets incoporated into the THEORY.”
I already said that I am not a creationist, so why do you keep associating me with them? I never said anything about a conspiracy either, have you ever heard of the old boy network and groupthink? These are cultural phenomena. Nor am I anti-science, as I discussed above as well.
Ray, a scientist would attack the argument, not the man. Still disappointed.
Back to the argument…I did not disagree that warming can result in outgassing of GHG in permafrost (should such local conditions exist to allow it). I was arguing that the irreversable tipping point is only theory. Obviously permafrost has been exposed in the past. The planet has warmed in the past, but it recovered. There are obvious mechanisms which limit the planet to certain extremes, because Earth has descended from warm conditions to ice ages many times.
“Are you even paying attention? What good is idle farm land if the crops we depend will not grow on it!?!”
What makes you think the idle land is barren? Much of the unused land is returning to wild land.
“For instance, can you find any source whatsoever that advocates limiting development in the so-called Third World? ”
Not in so many words, but that is the effect of CO2 trading. That’s why India, China and others are opposed. Dictators in smaller nations would love to get their hands on the mitigation money, but that’s another story.
I’ll look for an article, but again, politics stinks & I’m reluctant to mix it with the science discussion here.
“9 billion people can do whatever they want with no environmental consequences”
I agree. The big environmental problems are local, not global. Focusing on global warming casuses society to lose focus on local problems which can be addressed, such as the fertilizer runoff at the mouth of the Mississippi causing dead zones.
I cut this quote too short in my last post, so the point came out wrong.
“And by humility, you seem to mean a state of naivete in which one believes that 9 billion people can do whatever they want with no environmental consequences.”
What I meant to reply is that I agree that we cannot do whatever we want.
We need to address problems locally, not globally.