The only source of heat on the Earth is the Sun with minor, rounding error level contributions from geothermal processes and human heat production. As far as accelerating the phenomena the paper talks about is known to be cyclical with a 20 to 35 year periodicity so there are times when it absorbs more heat and time when it absorbs less. As far as CO2 goes, it doesn't produce any heat either, it just changes the radiative characteristics of the atmosphere which affects the energy balance of the planet. More CO2 (and other GHGs) means an increase in temperature as the energy balance adjusts.
I'm not sure you can call this an unknown. We've known for a long time heat is absorbed in the ocean in this way and about the specific currents in the Atlantic that this paper is examining. It's just that since the ARGO floats were deployed starting 12 years ago we are better able to quantify the effects now.
Things like ENSO and heat absorption in the Atlantic that the paper was about are cyclical. They neither add nor remove heat from the Earth system, they just change where it's going temporarily but average out to zero in the long run. A model isn't really expected to get the timing of these cyclical phenomena right, just the long term average. That means sometimes a model will be under the curve and sometimes it will be over the curve as the cycles cycle but it could still have the long term average right. The Earth is still gaining heat, otherwise this Atlantic heat absorption would have cause actual cooling instead of just a plateauing in temperature rises.
It doesn't mean climate models are useless at all. The phenomenon absorbing the heat that this paper studies is cyclical with 20-35 years between more and less absorption periods. That's difficult to model because it's probably impossible to predict the exact timing of the cyclical changes. One way to model that is it just take the long term average of heat absorption and accept that sometimes the model will over predict the warming and sometimes it will under predict the warming but the long term average will be about right. The findings of the paper don't contradict the fundamental assumptions of climate models but it may point the way to improvements in modeling the ocean portion of the models.
If this study is right then there will come a point when climate models are underestimating the warming again. The mechanism of this heat absorption is cyclical and eventually it will reverse leaving more heat in the atmosphere leading to rapid warming again. It's difficult if not impossible to put that into climate models partially because it's impossible (with our current knowledge) to know the timing of the switches in the cycle so models tend to just use the average which means sometimes their above the average and sometimes they're below.
A vacillating global heat sink at intermediate ocean depths is associated with different climate regimes of surface warming under anthropogenic forcing: The latter part of the 20th century saw rapid global warming as more heat stayed near the surface. In the 21st century, surface warming slowed as more heat moved into deeper oceans. In situ and reanalyzed data are used to trace the pathways of ocean heat uptake. In addition to the shallow La Niña–like patterns in the Pacific that were the previous focus, we found that the slowdown is mainly caused by heat transported to deeper layers in the Atlantic and the Southern oceans, initiated by a recurrent salinity anomaly in the subpolar North Atlantic. Cooling periods associated with the latter deeper heat-sequestration mechanism historically lasted 20 to 35 years.
The question climate science deniers need to ask themselves is "If all of this heat is going into the ocean why hasn't it actually cooled rather than temperatures just sort of plateauing?" If all that heat is disappearing into the ocean and we're not actually cooling that means heat is still building up.
So why has every environmental initiative in the past 40 years been pushed by the Democrats and resisted by the Republicans?
Not really. Up until the 1990's there were enough Republicans who were sane about the environment to get things done. It's only recently that has changed.
One thing all Environmentalists have in common is the loathing of humans and their "impact" on the environment. A close second is Self Loathing, but not no much that they will volunteer to go first in an effort to reduce the human impact on the environment.
What a steaming pile of shit. There may be a few extremists who tend to get headlines that feel that way but most environmentalists like me just recognize how utterly dependent our human civilization is on the natural systems that sustain us and feel that we should take steps to help keep those systems going.
We'll see how it goes for those two new Vogtle plants. They're already charging their customers in Georgia over $10/month to help pay for them even though it's years until they come online.
Bardarbunga is a very large volcano and potentially capable of a huge eruption. At this point it's impossible to tell how large an eruption may occur or even if it's actually going to erupt enough to break through the ice cap over it. This is a different type of volcano than Tambora. The volcanoes on Iceland are formed because the Earth is splitting apart along the mid-Atlantic Ridge and the magma tends to be runny flowing magma. Tambora is located near a subduction zone where two plates are pushing together. The volcanic eruptions along those areas tend to be more explosive.
So, at this point it's impossible to tell how big an eruption Bardarbunga might have. It could be nothing or it could be immense. All you can really do is prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Thanks for the support but I don't care much about how someone mods me. Besides my karma's been pegged on excellent for longer than I can remember. I've considered starting to troll just to see how long it would take to drop it back down but I'm not a troll at heart:)
It always surprises me how the nuclear power fanboi's are so unrealistic about the cost of nuclear power. I'm not against nuclear power per se but unless they can cut the cost by more than half and still operate safely they don't have much of a chance to compete against oncoming renewable power sources.
It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out once (if?) they complete the new nuclear power plants in Georgia and South Carolina.
I like planting trees but I'm under no illusion that it will solve the problem. We're burning fossil fuels in a few centuries that took 10's to 100's of thousands to millions of years to lay down. I would expect it to take a similar amount of time to reverse the CO2 levels.
DO NOT DO THIS. If it works and you overshoot, you'll induce another ice age, which can happen in as few as a couple of years.
No, an ice age is not something that can happen in a couple of years. The thermal capacitance of the oceans pretty much guarantees that. If you look at the records of past ice ages (glaciations) over the past million years the drop into them is usually much slower than the rise out of them.
Besides that, nothing about geoengineering is long lasting. It pretty much requires that you keep doing it to maintain the effect. That will be an ongoing expense without any clear end.
The problem with nuclear power is simple ignorance. Most people don't understand it, and basically just think: Nuclear? as in the bombs? I don't want that in my back yard.
The problem with nuclear power is the cost. It's more expensive than most other ways of producing electrical power and unlike solar and wind which still have a downward price curve nuclear is getting more expensive.
Don't you think the inability to negotiate a status of forces agreement that gave US soldiers immunity from Iraqi law had something to do with it? Should we have forced ourselves on them and violated their sovereignty?
When it comes to government bureaucracy how much of it is due to the need to document everything so they can prove that they're not wasting taxpayer dollars? It seems like a no-win situation for them. If you're not going to trust that people are doing their jobs conscientiously then you have to live with the inefficiency that all of that documentation requires.
Slashdot Mirror
The only source of heat on the Earth is the Sun with minor, rounding error level contributions from geothermal processes and human heat production. As far as accelerating the phenomena the paper talks about is known to be cyclical with a 20 to 35 year periodicity so there are times when it absorbs more heat and time when it absorbs less. As far as CO2 goes, it doesn't produce any heat either, it just changes the radiative characteristics of the atmosphere which affects the energy balance of the planet. More CO2 (and other GHGs) means an increase in temperature as the energy balance adjusts.
I'm not sure you can call this an unknown. We've known for a long time heat is absorbed in the ocean in this way and about the specific currents in the Atlantic that this paper is examining. It's just that since the ARGO floats were deployed starting 12 years ago we are better able to quantify the effects now.
Things like ENSO and heat absorption in the Atlantic that the paper was about are cyclical. They neither add nor remove heat from the Earth system, they just change where it's going temporarily but average out to zero in the long run. A model isn't really expected to get the timing of these cyclical phenomena right, just the long term average. That means sometimes a model will be under the curve and sometimes it will be over the curve as the cycles cycle but it could still have the long term average right. The Earth is still gaining heat, otherwise this Atlantic heat absorption would have cause actual cooling instead of just a plateauing in temperature rises.
Pierre Latour is still wrong.
It doesn't mean climate models are useless at all. The phenomenon absorbing the heat that this paper studies is cyclical with 20-35 years between more and less absorption periods. That's difficult to model because it's probably impossible to predict the exact timing of the cyclical changes. One way to model that is it just take the long term average of heat absorption and accept that sometimes the model will over predict the warming and sometimes it will under predict the warming but the long term average will be about right. The findings of the paper don't contradict the fundamental assumptions of climate models but it may point the way to improvements in modeling the ocean portion of the models.
If this study is right then there will come a point when climate models are underestimating the warming again. The mechanism of this heat absorption is cyclical and eventually it will reverse leaving more heat in the atmosphere leading to rapid warming again. It's difficult if not impossible to put that into climate models partially because it's impossible (with our current knowledge) to know the timing of the switches in the cycle so models tend to just use the average which means sometimes their above the average and sometimes they're below.
The abstract:
A vacillating global heat sink at intermediate ocean depths is associated with different climate regimes of surface warming under anthropogenic forcing: The latter part of the 20th century saw rapid global warming as more heat stayed near the surface. In the 21st century, surface warming slowed as more heat moved into deeper oceans. In situ and reanalyzed data are used to trace the pathways of ocean heat uptake. In addition to the shallow La Niña–like patterns in the Pacific that were the previous focus, we found that the slowdown is mainly caused by heat transported to deeper layers in the Atlantic and the Southern oceans, initiated by a recurrent salinity anomaly in the subpolar North Atlantic. Cooling periods associated with the latter deeper heat-sequestration mechanism historically lasted 20 to 35 years.
The question climate science deniers need to ask themselves is "If all of this heat is going into the ocean why hasn't it actually cooled rather than temperatures just sort of plateauing?" If all that heat is disappearing into the ocean and we're not actually cooling that means heat is still building up.
Economics have a lot more to do with blocking nuclear power plants than evironmentalists.
So why has every environmental initiative in the past 40 years been pushed by the Democrats and resisted by the Republicans?
Not really. Up until the 1990's there were enough Republicans who were sane about the environment to get things done. It's only recently that has changed.
For example, could Ebola become a global threat?
Probably not unless it evolves to be more easily transmissible like the flu.
Maybe it was a double eagle.
It's the violin strings that are made with catgut. The bows are generally made with horsehair.
Actually, he is Spot On.
One thing all Environmentalists have in common is the loathing of humans and their "impact" on the environment. A close second is Self Loathing, but not no much that they will volunteer to go first in an effort to reduce the human impact on the environment.
What a steaming pile of shit. There may be a few extremists who tend to get headlines that feel that way but most environmentalists like me just recognize how utterly dependent our human civilization is on the natural systems that sustain us and feel that we should take steps to help keep those systems going.
We'll see how it goes for those two new Vogtle plants. They're already charging their customers in Georgia over $10/month to help pay for them even though it's years until they come online.
Bardarbunga is a very large volcano and potentially capable of a huge eruption. At this point it's impossible to tell how large an eruption may occur or even if it's actually going to erupt enough to break through the ice cap over it. This is a different type of volcano than Tambora. The volcanoes on Iceland are formed because the Earth is splitting apart along the mid-Atlantic Ridge and the magma tends to be runny flowing magma. Tambora is located near a subduction zone where two plates are pushing together. The volcanic eruptions along those areas tend to be more explosive.
So, at this point it's impossible to tell how big an eruption Bardarbunga might have. It could be nothing or it could be immense. All you can really do is prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Thanks for the support but I don't care much about how someone mods me. Besides my karma's been pegged on excellent for longer than I can remember. I've considered starting to troll just to see how long it would take to drop it back down but I'm not a troll at heart :)
It always surprises me how the nuclear power fanboi's are so unrealistic about the cost of nuclear power. I'm not against nuclear power per se but unless they can cut the cost by more than half and still operate safely they don't have much of a chance to compete against oncoming renewable power sources.
It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out once (if?) they complete the new nuclear power plants in Georgia and South Carolina.
LOL
I like planting trees but I'm under no illusion that it will solve the problem. We're burning fossil fuels in a few centuries that took 10's to 100's of thousands to millions of years to lay down. I would expect it to take a similar amount of time to reverse the CO2 levels.
DO NOT DO THIS. If it works and you overshoot, you'll induce another ice age, which can happen in as few as a couple of years.
No, an ice age is not something that can happen in a couple of years. The thermal capacitance of the oceans pretty much guarantees that. If you look at the records of past ice ages (glaciations) over the past million years the drop into them is usually much slower than the rise out of them.
Besides that, nothing about geoengineering is long lasting. It pretty much requires that you keep doing it to maintain the effect. That will be an ongoing expense without any clear end.
Too late for me. Grandma's cookies are something I've always had a Jones for.
The problem with nuclear power is simple ignorance. Most people don't understand it, and basically just think: Nuclear? as in the bombs? I don't want that in my back yard.
The problem with nuclear power is the cost. It's more expensive than most other ways of producing electrical power and unlike solar and wind which still have a downward price curve nuclear is getting more expensive.
Hmm... I wonder how much EWEB would have to raise their rates to cover the cost of building a nuclear power plant?
Some part of the surplus is probably stuff that's been replaced by newer upgraded stuff, not just excess inventory.
Don't you think the inability to negotiate a status of forces agreement that gave US soldiers immunity from Iraqi law had something to do with it? Should we have forced ourselves on them and violated their sovereignty?
When it comes to government bureaucracy how much of it is due to the need to document everything so they can prove that they're not wasting taxpayer dollars? It seems like a no-win situation for them. If you're not going to trust that people are doing their jobs conscientiously then you have to live with the inefficiency that all of that documentation requires.
Yea, it only took our instructor a couple of days to tell us to stop too but by that time everyone was wise to it anyway.