The problem with injecting SO2 into the stratosphere is that you can never stop doing it as it has a limited lifetime in the atmosphere and as more and more CO2 is in the atmosphere you would have to increase it. Who's going to pay for that indefinitely into the future? On top of that the SO2 reduces the sunlight hitting the Earth which will reduce photosynthesis and thus agricultural productivity. TANSTAAFL.
We know there is an ice age tipping point just a few degrees colder then present. Geo-engineering could fuck us all if they trust a climate model that overestimates.
I guarantee to you that no matter what we do the Earth will not plunge into an ice age in your lifetime or even your grandchildren's lifetimes. It takes multiple centuries for such a thing to even get going and millennia to fully develop. It is easily countered just by increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
If we let the free market sort it out, no doubt Consumer Reports will print an article revealing which ISPs deliver Netflix content at good speeds, and which ISPs deliver Netflix content at lousy speeds.
That's just fine if I have my choice of ISP's to select from but I'm basically limited to two (Comcast or Quest). What I'd prefer is that the cable into my house is treated as a public utility that any ISP can avail themselves of. That would spur real competition between ISP's to get my business.
Net neutrality is not about the end user paying the same amount regardless of bandwidth usage. It's about the ISPs not treating content providers differently based on their competition with the ISP, their content or charging them extra when it's the end user making the demand. I have no problem with the end user paying for their level of bandwidth usage.
Solar panels have just recently become self sustaining (where they create more energy than is needed to make them).
Ignoring the other issues with your post that statement is just plain silly. You're saying that over the (at least) 20-30 year life span of a solar PV panel it just barely produces more power than it took to build it. I'd like to see you try and justify that statement with actual facts.
There are factors in the current warming that are quantifiably different than those other cycles you're talking about. The high level of CO2, the rate of change and the state of Milankovitch cycles for instance.
To your specific point, we even have several historical examples in the ice records of (geologically) sudden 'pulses' in CO2 and temperature to levels comparable or exceeding today.* In every case the system has then returned to an equilibrium....DOZENS of times over the past couple of million years. The feedback loops you talk about are real; the cataclysmic FUD you're talking about negative feedback is, quite evidently, not.
There is little or no evidence that CO2 levels have been above about 300 ppm in the past several million years. They are now about 400 ppm so you have to go back more than 5 million years or so to find a comparable level.
As far as feedbacks and the cycles of the ice age go, the main driver appears to be orbital variations (Milankovitch Cycles) which are definitely not a feedback. Once the Milankovitch Cycles kick things off then various feedbacks come in to play.
On thing that people forget is that as latitude increases the available land decreases. That is somewhat mitigated in the Northern Hemisphere by the continents getting wider further north. The formula for the circumference of a sphere at any angle from the equator is C = 2 pi r cos(angle). The circumference of the Earth at the Equator is about 40,000 km, at 45 degrees (where I live) it's about 28,337 km, at 60 degrees it's about 20,000 km, half the equatorial circumference.
There's no need to "defend the moron climatologists" since they not the ones making those claims. There are plenty of people on the AGW is happening side who are getting overwrought about methane but most scientists studying the subject think it's a minor issue compared to CO2. It's something worth paying attention to but the chances of a catastrophic release from undersea methane deposits appears to be pretty remote.
Yeah i never understood how th atmospheric temperature could remain constant but the ocean temperatures be continually rising from heat input from the atmosphere.
The major source of heat in the oceans is from absorbed sunlight. Some of that heat gets transferred to the atmosphere by convection (evaporation) and as the rate varies more or less heat remains in the oceans. In this case more of the heat is getting sucked down by oceanic currents and less is going into the atmosphere.
The real denialists are, and always have been, the ones who think science is never to be questioned.
It's fine to question science but it needs to be done in a scientific manner. If you can't make a cogent scientific argument then your questions are useless and a waste of time to real scientists. Continually bringing up things that have already been examined and rejected without finding unexpected new evidence is getting old.
It will be nice a decade or two hence when it is undeniable just how far you have allowed yourself to be duped (well actually it is the case now, but even you will admit it in 20 years).
I think it's too bad that Feynman isn't still alive. It would be interesting to see what he had to say about all of you folks trying to use his words to cast doubt on current climate theory. Do you have any real evidence that climate scientists aren't practicing science as outlined by Feynman? All of the doubt is no doubt well represented in the scientific literature and scientific discussions but when it comes to the general public without scientific training expressing the doubt mostly just confuses them.
The correctness or incorrectness of a model is not a binary problem. As has been famously said, "All models are wrong, but some are useful." So the idea that if a model isn't (close to) perfect it's results have to be ignored is an absolutist position that has no place in science.
If there were no atmosphere there would be no ice (except maybe some pockets at the poles like the Moon). So the surface albedo wouldn't be that different from the Moon.
Perhaps you could point me to the research that says we can't figure it out to better than 10 C.
How can models account for something where the periodicity is only known to +/- 7.5 years? As I said this new more detailed information may lead to improvements in the ocean portions of climate models.
If the Earth had no atmosphere it would have an average temperature similar to the Moon's (about -5C according to Wikipedia) but it wouldn't have a great a range as the Moon because it revolves in 24 hours rather than 28 days. There might be some small albedo differences but without an atmosphere there would be little water so not much ice to affect that. Maybe you're talking about an atmosphere without CO2 in it but I think we could figure that out to better than 10 C too.
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This being /. shouldn't we brand ID10T on their foreheads?
The problem with injecting SO2 into the stratosphere is that you can never stop doing it as it has a limited lifetime in the atmosphere and as more and more CO2 is in the atmosphere you would have to increase it. Who's going to pay for that indefinitely into the future? On top of that the SO2 reduces the sunlight hitting the Earth which will reduce photosynthesis and thus agricultural productivity. TANSTAAFL.
We know there is an ice age tipping point just a few degrees colder then present. Geo-engineering could fuck us all if they trust a climate model that overestimates.
I guarantee to you that no matter what we do the Earth will not plunge into an ice age in your lifetime or even your grandchildren's lifetimes. It takes multiple centuries for such a thing to even get going and millennia to fully develop. It is easily countered just by increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
That's cheap compared to the money you'd be spending to keep the actual geoengineering going month after month.
If we let the free market sort it out, no doubt Consumer Reports will print an article revealing which ISPs deliver Netflix content at good speeds, and which ISPs deliver Netflix content at lousy speeds.
That's just fine if I have my choice of ISP's to select from but I'm basically limited to two (Comcast or Quest). What I'd prefer is that the cable into my house is treated as a public utility that any ISP can avail themselves of. That would spur real competition between ISP's to get my business.
Net neutrality is not about the end user paying the same amount regardless of bandwidth usage. It's about the ISPs not treating content providers differently based on their competition with the ISP, their content or charging them extra when it's the end user making the demand. I have no problem with the end user paying for their level of bandwidth usage.
Solar panels have just recently become self sustaining (where they create more energy than is needed to make them).
Ignoring the other issues with your post that statement is just plain silly. You're saying that over the (at least) 20-30 year life span of a solar PV panel it just barely produces more power than it took to build it. I'd like to see you try and justify that statement with actual facts.
There are factors in the current warming that are quantifiably different than those other cycles you're talking about. The high level of CO2, the rate of change and the state of Milankovitch cycles for instance.
To your specific point, we even have several historical examples in the ice records of (geologically) sudden 'pulses' in CO2 and temperature to levels comparable or exceeding today.* In every case the system has then returned to an equilibrium....DOZENS of times over the past couple of million years. The feedback loops you talk about are real; the cataclysmic FUD you're talking about negative feedback is, quite evidently, not.
There is little or no evidence that CO2 levels have been above about 300 ppm in the past several million years. They are now about 400 ppm so you have to go back more than 5 million years or so to find a comparable level.
As far as feedbacks and the cycles of the ice age go, the main driver appears to be orbital variations (Milankovitch Cycles) which are definitely not a feedback. Once the Milankovitch Cycles kick things off then various feedbacks come in to play.
It would also hamper the productivity of our agricultural sector by reducing sunlight. That probably wouldn't be a good thing.
On thing that people forget is that as latitude increases the available land decreases. That is somewhat mitigated in the Northern Hemisphere by the continents getting wider further north. The formula for the circumference of a sphere at any angle from the equator is C = 2 pi r cos(angle). The circumference of the Earth at the Equator is about 40,000 km, at 45 degrees (where I live) it's about 28,337 km, at 60 degrees it's about 20,000 km, half the equatorial circumference.
There's no need to "defend the moron climatologists" since they not the ones making those claims. There are plenty of people on the AGW is happening side who are getting overwrought about methane but most scientists studying the subject think it's a minor issue compared to CO2. It's something worth paying attention to but the chances of a catastrophic release from undersea methane deposits appears to be pretty remote.
True but at least Bardabunga is something that can be coherently rendered in English. You can sprain your tongue trying to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull.
What about them? When I say the Earth is still gaining heat I'm including the oceans as well as the atmosphere.
Yeah i never understood how th atmospheric temperature could remain constant but the ocean temperatures be continually rising from heat input from the atmosphere.
The major source of heat in the oceans is from absorbed sunlight. Some of that heat gets transferred to the atmosphere by convection (evaporation) and as the rate varies more or less heat remains in the oceans. In this case more of the heat is getting sucked down by oceanic currents and less is going into the atmosphere.
The part of the vulcanism measured in the North Atlantic produces one cubic kilometer of new rock every year.
That's in an ocean of of over 150,000,000 cubic kilometers volume.
And then they affirm their lack of scientific integrity with a site ban.
No, they just don't countenance bullshit.
The real denialists are, and always have been, the ones who think science is never to be questioned.
It's fine to question science but it needs to be done in a scientific manner. If you can't make a cogent scientific argument then your questions are useless and a waste of time to real scientists. Continually bringing up things that have already been examined and rejected without finding unexpected new evidence is getting old.
It will be nice a decade or two hence when it is undeniable just how far you have allowed yourself to be duped (well actually it is the case now, but even you will admit it in 20 years).
I would turn that around and aim it at you.
I think it's too bad that Feynman isn't still alive. It would be interesting to see what he had to say about all of you folks trying to use his words to cast doubt on current climate theory. Do you have any real evidence that climate scientists aren't practicing science as outlined by Feynman? All of the doubt is no doubt well represented in the scientific literature and scientific discussions but when it comes to the general public without scientific training expressing the doubt mostly just confuses them.
The correctness or incorrectness of a model is not a binary problem. As has been famously said, "All models are wrong, but some are useful." So the idea that if a model isn't (close to) perfect it's results have to be ignored is an absolutist position that has no place in science.
Don't you think that without an atmosphere the Earth's surface would move toward that state as well?
If there were no atmosphere there would be no ice (except maybe some pockets at the poles like the Moon). So the surface albedo wouldn't be that different from the Moon.
Perhaps you could point me to the research that says we can't figure it out to better than 10 C.
So you think political science trumps climate science? Good luck with that.
How can models account for something where the periodicity is only known to +/- 7.5 years? As I said this new more detailed information may lead to improvements in the ocean portions of climate models.
If the Earth had no atmosphere it would have an average temperature similar to the Moon's (about -5C according to Wikipedia) but it wouldn't have a great a range as the Moon because it revolves in 24 hours rather than 28 days. There might be some small albedo differences but without an atmosphere there would be little water so not much ice to affect that. Maybe you're talking about an atmosphere without CO2 in it but I think we could figure that out to better than 10 C too.