Is Global warming real?

[liveforphysics]

Maybe that fresh forest air I breath at night cap national park isnt as good as the city smog that nearly made me faint every day.

I also hate to breathe smog my friend. NOx's, CO, HC's, particulates, etc are all nasty to breathe. They fall into that <0.1% green house gas impact category though, so it's not exactly a factor for this thread.

[317537]

So the air we breath must be comming from earthly electrolysis? Would be funny if it turned out that everything we learned in schools over the last 100 years or so was bull shit.

Biosphere experiments did prove that trees are our recyclers of CO2.

[317537]

Ok lets put our concepts in a biosphere. We have plants and animals in balance. now take out all the ground shade and leave the animals alive in there.

Poor animals will die and its going to get very hot in there. This is where we are heading IMO.

[liveforphysics]

Also, I want to make a statement here on my personal beliefs.

I drive a 70mpg Honda Insight hybrid, motorcycles, and a 35-40mpg Civic hatch racecar all gutted out in the back that I use to serve the roll of both a racecar and a pickup truck. I carpool whenever possible on trips, I moved (and moving 310gal coral reefs is a MEGA PITA) to the closest possible house for rent to my workplace to minimize my commuting impact. I disabled the heater in my house, and instead wear winter clothes while indoors. I set a timer for my showers to minimize energy use. I like dogs and cats, but I keep no mammal pets to avoid additional environmental impact. I use my cell phone (<1w power draw) as my normal use computer, and a <18w power draw netbook that gets turned on for more intensive computer work. I don't mow, I let the yard be natural (which my landlord hates, and I love). When things break, I fix them if it's possible and inside my scope of skills rather than buying new. I haven't washed a car for years. I don't even have furniture (but I do have a ton of tools). lol

etc etc etc.


I believe it makes the world a better place if everyone does what they can to minimize their personal footprint.

I am upset by people using environmental concerns as political propaganda tool, and using the power of the press and political influence to mis-guide and mis-lead people. I think if you are going to talk the talk, you should walk the walk, which makes all the political/press/media hypocrites a bunch of nature exploiting clowns in my eyes, who just exploit nature (and people) in an additional greed driven way.

My $0.02

Best Wishes,
-Luke

[317537]

Also, I want to make a statement here on my personal beliefs.
I drive a 70mpg Honda Insight hybrid, motorcycles, and a 35-40mpg Civic hatch racecar all gutted out in the back that I use to serve the roll of both a racecar and a pickup truck.
etc etc etc.


My $0.02

Best Wishes,
-Luke

Ah dont get all like that. You dont have to be concerned about your footprint. I bet as soon as its practical you of all people will figure out how to do stuff polution free. Gawd I fart more than a cow on grain.

I wouldnt agree with cars being .1 though. I dont think percenatges are accurate. I think its more when and where its concentrated make the difference and what we do with our land more so. Concentrations of CO2 with nothing to absorb it for long periods has a tail of dying land behind it otherwise Co2 is a plants best friend. You should see these morton bay figs growing over the top of the one most traffic bound city streets in Sydney (Anzac PRD) The limbs extend right over the drive path for 40ft. They are huge and the Id guestimate the trunks are 25+ ft in circumferance and they suck up all the CO2 and love it.

Good land practice is never a worthless pursuit.


Trees do cause lots of problems in stormy weather and when they catch fire they put out ship loads of methane and Co2.

We just have to figure out how to do stuff better and smarter.

[317537]

I was thinking of the topology of all this. Is there a difference between hot CO2 and cool CO2? Similar to a hot air ballon hot air rises.

If The CO2 in cities get hot, Either by the lack of ground cover or hot concrete, hot tail pipes and roofs reflecting heat back into the atmosphere,

,,

Is that CO2 concentration going to rise above cooler gases into an area where plants cant do their job and is this hot Co2 hovering over our head causing the global warming effect as its in the area of concern?

[317537]

Polititions will be polititions and they have the same effect on what ever they touch. They are trying to echo the peoples concerns not be green hippies. They cant do the walk so when they talk the talk they do come off looking stupid and hypocritical. If they dressed in bell bottoms and handed flowers out telling everyone to hug a tree they would never get voted in.

Honestly there needs to be money thrown into getting the green tech off the ground and not just a little bit of money, Truck loads, its what many are demanding from our polititions

When someone in a suit using more KW of energy than a community hippies in the bush start asking for green trading cash the already green concious are going to say FY suit pant a tree.

I understand the confusion as its only over the last decade the well to do are becoming concerned to the facts. Their Malabu beach house is washing into the ocean.

The con artists and frauds that are trying to cash into the scheme is just wrong. The money should be going into green power tech and the research of, not on the well to do hypocrites power bills.

[liveforphysics]

I wouldnt agree with cars being .1 though.

For CO2 impact, cars are well above 0.1% of course. You had mentioned smog that you and I both don't like breathing. The CO2 isn't what bothers us a bit, it's the NOx, CO, HC's, and particulates that make you feel sick, and those are what make up a very very tiny effect towards global warming, but a significant, troubling and annoying effect on our lungs (and other life).

[julesa]

The people helping the most are the folks clear cutting rainforest, and digging drainage draining wetlands are doing the greatest global warming relief. The irony is folks like Al Gore with his increadible personal energy consumption and mega consumer practices are the folks shaking their fist at the people actually helping.

The fact that plants produce methane does not mean that planting forests is a bad idea, however. "Putting a tree where there was no tree before locks up a lot of carbon and this [new research] perhaps reduces the overall benefit of that by a fraction," said Dr Mahli.

I am upset by people using environmental concerns as political propaganda tool.

Are there multiple people posting from that account?

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

Propaganda is communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda.

[liveforphysics]

The people helping the most are the folks clear cutting rainforest, and digging drainage draining wetlands are doing the greatest global warming relief. The irony is folks like Al Gore with his increadible personal energy consumption and mega consumer practices are the folks shaking their fist at the people actually helping.

The fact that plants produce methane does not mean that planting forests is a bad idea, however. "Putting a tree where there was no tree before locks up a lot of carbon and this [new research] perhaps reduces the overall benefit of that by a fraction," said Dr Mahli.

I am upset by people using environmental concerns as political propaganda tool.

Are there multiple people posting from that account?

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

Propaganda is communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda.

I wasn't aware I was working to advance a political position? Do you find my posts to be driving an emotional rather than rational response to drive a political cause?

[gogo]

I don't mow

Mowing can be enviromentally friendly.

[jag]

Al Gore must have read this Endless Sphere thread and answers our questions:

Methane accounts for about 27 percent of the man-made warming so far, largely because of how it interacts with atmospheric aerosols.

Halocarbons have caused 8 percent of the warming.

Black carbon (sooty emissions from burning wood, dung, and diesel) 12 percent

Carbon monoxide and volatile organics, 7 percent.

Carbon dioxide, 43 percent.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/220552
http://ourchoicethebook.com/

So indeed, global warming is more complex than just CO2

[RTLSHIP]

Scientists have only been accurately recording temperatures for maybe half a century. So the evidence of global warning
is incomplete but nonetheless persuasive.
Lets not rely on Al Gore or Rush Limbaugh to decide whether global warming is real or scam.
I say warming has got to be real at least temporary. It may be permanent.

[liveforphysics]

Al Gore must have read this Endless Sphere thread and answers our questions:

Methane accounts for about 27 percent of the man-made warming so far, largely because of how it interacts with atmospheric aerosols.

Halocarbons have caused 8 percent of the warming.

Black carbon (sooty emissions from burning wood, dung, and diesel) 12 percent

Carbon monoxide and volatile organics, 7 percent.

Carbon dioxide, 43 percent.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/220552
http://ourchoicethebook.com/

So indeed, global warming is more complex than just CO2

Yep. More than CO2 for sure. Something like >95% directly linked to water vapor. It's in the remaining 5% that we look at when we talk about all the combined greenhouse gasses. Then a tiny fraction of that 5% that we look at as far as human influence, and then write all our percentage statistics and things (like the above quoted data) from that tiny fraction of the >5%.

Interesting report just released by US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration a day ago. If you get science rag, it's in there.
Here a very brief summary:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthn ... tists.html

[julesa]

Yes, water vapor in the atmosphere is a major factor. The thing is, warmer temperatures put more water vapor into the atmosphere. That's why a relatively small input of new greenhouse gases can result in a larger overall effect. It's feedback.

http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/WaterVapor.htm

[boostjuice]

[spinningmagnets]

I'm having a difficult time finding data on how much CO2 and CO has been expelled (roughly) from the major volcanoes. Off the top of my head I can name Mt St Helens, Pinatubo, Krakatoa, Mt Vesuvius...and apparently they weren't even the biggest ones in history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vo ... death_toll

If their carbon footprint has not had a major effect, it would seem to me that there would be some rough estimates floating around somewhere...

[boostjuice]

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Ice_cores

[julesa]

I'm having a difficult time finding data on how much CO2 and CO has been expelled (roughly) from the major volcanoes. Off the top of my head I can name Mt St Helens, Pinatubo, Krakatoa, Mt Vesuvius...and apparently they weren't even the biggest ones in history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vo ... death_toll

If their carbon footprint has not had a major effect, it would seem to me that there would be some rough estimates floating around somewhere...

http://www.springerlink.com/content/631t022372116213/

Continuing interest in the effects of carbon dioxide on climate has been promoted by the exponentially increasing anthropogenic production of CO2. Volcanoes are also a major source of carbon dioxide, but their average input to the atmosphere is generally considered minor relative to anthropogenic input. This study examines eruption chronologies to determine a new estimate of the volcanic CO2 input and to test if temporal fluctuations may be resolved. Employing representative average values of 2.7 g cm−3 as density of erupted material, 0.2 wt percent CO2 in the original melt, 60 percent degassing during eruption, and an average volume of 0.1 km3 for each of the eruptions in the recently published eruption chronology of Hirschboeck (1980), a volcanic input of about 1.5 · 1011 moles CO2 yr−1 was determined for the period 1800–1969. The period 1800–1899 had a somewhat lower input than 1900–1969, which could well be related more to completeness of observational data than to a real increase in volcanic CO2. This input is well below man's current CO2 production of 4–5 · 1014 moles CO2 yr−1.

[Lessss]

Global warming ~> NO Solar Warming ~~>YES
Will high CO2 levels make Solar Warming worse AND MAKE IT'S EFFECTS LAST MUCH MUCH LONGER THAN NATURAL~~~>HELL YES.
Our only hope to mitigate that is Greenland icecap melt will trigger a shut down of the NA ocean heat pump and trigger a northern hemisphere mini ice age.

The Earths orbit is not mechanically precise. It varies.
http://www.nowykurier.com/toys/gravity/gravity.html
http://www.orbitsimulator.com/gravity/a ... /what.html

[boostjuice]

..........
Sunspot cycles and other changes

Solar radiation also changes over decades and centuries, time scales that are comparable to the human influence on climate.

The mechanisms that have perhaps received the most popular attention are solar cycles. These refer to physical solar changes which cause increases or decreases in the amount of solar energy emitted from the sun itself.

The 11-year sunspot cycle is perhaps the most widely known form of this type of solar variability.

Understanding the sunspot cycle is still an area of active research. However it is reasonably clear that a regular cycle of magnetic activity is associated with the appearance of darker regions (known an sunspots) and brighter regions (known as faculae) on the surface of the sun.

The sunspot cycle is literally a cycle in the number of sunspots, which causes solar radiation to slightly rise and fall over an 11 year period.

The existence of sunspots was known to very early astronomers, with the earliest regular observations taken in China around 2000 years ago. Modern science has been observing and recording sunspots for around 400 years, since the invention of the modern telescope. These days, satellite measurements provide very accurate observations of the sunspot cycle and associated changes in solar radiation.

Sunspot cycles can have a slight impact on global mean temperature and might even have a subtle affect on weather patterns. However to date, scientists have not found that sunspots have a regular and profound influence on the climate system.

Direct solar radiation varies on longer timescales as well. Over decades to centuries other, less well understood changes in solar magnetic activity occur. A significant decline in sunspot activity during the 17th century is today known as the Maunder Minimum, a period of reduced solar radiation.

The Maunder Minimum appears to have contributed to cooler global temperatures and a series of crop failures in parts of the northern mid latitudes.

What about the last 100 years or more?

There are a range of methods for estimating past solar radiation changes that represents an entire field of research.

Suffice to say, reconstructions of changes in solar radiation, over the 20th century in particular, are highly important to climate scientists seeking to understand why our climate has warmed.

The best way to understand how 20th century solar changes affected the climate system is with global climate models.

Changes in solar radiation in a climate model are known as solar forcing. Climate models capture the effects of solar forcing well. The most basic proof of this is that climate models reproduce the diurnal cycle (the difference between night and day) with great accuracy.

Climate models also represent the seasonal cycle in land and ocean temperatures; as well as the seasonal cycle in patterns of rainfall, pressure, winds, ocean currents and sea-ice, with impressive fidelity.

Models can also reproduce climates from the geological past, based on palaeo evidence of solar energy changes.

Using the same physics, climate models are able to include observed changes in direct solar forcing over the 20th century. To do this, they use a number of different estimates of solar forcing from different research teams.

All of the modelling conducted over the last 20 years has shown that solar changes do have a discernible affect on the climate of the last 100 years, but that those changes are typically very small compared to those associated with increasing greenhouse gases

Finding the fingerprints

Climate scientists like to look at so-called fingerprints of climate change when examining their models to understand drivers of climate change.

They run the models with a range of different forcing experiments and examine the patterns of change associated with one or more climate influences. Then, they match those fingerprints against the climate observations.

Some of the patterns of change associated with solar forcing are similar to greenhouse gas driven changes, such as more rapid warming of the Arctic. However when the pace of change is also factored in, solar changes have been far too small to explain the dramatic warming of the Arctic that has been observed.

Other patterns of change provide a means of distinguishing between solar warming and greenhouse warming.

Perhaps the best pattern to investigate the role of the sun on the climate system is the temperature of the upper atmosphere known as the stratosphere.

If solar energy increases, so too should the temperature of the stratosphere.

Conversely, increasing greenhouse gases should cool the stratosphere, as they change the way long-wave radiation is absorbed and re-emitted through the atmosphere.

Years of study have now confirmed that the upper atmosphere is cooling, and that this cooling is consistent with both global increases in carbon dioxide and decreases in stratospheric ozone in the southern hemisphere.

On average, solar forcing has been in relative decline in recent decades, and global temperatures have continued to warm.
.........

http://theconversation.edu.au/theres-always-the-sun-solar-forcing-and-climate-change-1878

[Kingfish]

The NY Times today - 'One disaster after another': Most tie extreme weather to global warming, poll finds

Scientists may hesitate to link some of the weather extremes of recent years to global warming — but the public, it seems, is already there.

A poll due for release on Wednesday shows that a large majority of Americans believe that this year’s unusually warm winter, last year’s blistering summer and some other weather disasters were probably made worse by global warming. And by a 2-to-1 margin, the public says the weather has been getting worse, rather than better, in recent years.

This article was republished on MSNBC and has a link to a video that has the tagline: "In the lower 48 states, only Washington State had below normal weather."

Figures.

Forecast for today: Rain showers as oppose to just plain o' Showers. And tomorrow, we'll have Partly cloudy with PM showers.
~ KF

[iamsofunny]

The earth has been cooling since its inception. The molten core of the earth has been cooling for billions of years. In about 1 billion years the earth will be completely frozen and nobody will live here. You are welcome to stay, pay your carbon taxes and continue to feel the increasingly cold temperatures until your descendants are so cold that life becomes unbearable and food is so scarce that achieving a net energy gain from foraging becomes impossible. Or you could study science and hope your children can figure out a way to cast off into space to find new planets that are in a better state.

[RTLSHIP]

Interesting comments from iamsofunny. 30,000 years ago the summertime temp in France/Spain was about 30 to 40 below. That was the daytime high according to a science book dealing with Paleolithic Cave Art.

[Joseph C.]

Interesting comments from iamsofunny. 30,000 years ago the summertime temp in France/Spain was about 30 to 40 below. That was the daytime high according to a science book dealing with Paleolithic Cave Art.

That, and one billion years from now the Earth will be toasted out of it by the expanding Sun.

I don't think the cause matters at this stage. The Earth is well on its way to heating up and starting a new Ice Age cycle. I did see a video on micro-algae lamps that would absorb the CO2 on a large enough scale but it is probably too little too late.

Besides I think all global warming has done is put off the next Ice Age for a little bit. It was always going to come anyway.

It would be interesting to see if our species survives it or not. The last time the human population was reduced to pockets of handfuls of people and we just about survived. It is also intriguing to note that the Neanderthals were wiped out in the last Ice Age, 28,000 years ago (it may have had something to do with the energy needed for their larger brains).

We are much more technological advanced now. However, on the flip side our population is perhaps a million or more times larger.