The scientific solution is to stop increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. The answer one way or another will have to be political. If you don't like the things you list then what is your answer to the problem?
Congratulations for understanding why ice floats. But when it floats the water it displaces is the volume of water it will occupy when it melts. Of course when ice that is sitting on land melts it flows into the ocean thereby increasing the volume.
Simple solutions for simple minds. There is no feasible way to remove water vapor from the atmosphere to any great extent. To do that you'd have to stop or at least slow down evaporation from the oceans. It ain't going to happen. And how do you propose to make clouds which have a slight positive effect on global warming anyway.
Problem is from 1965 to 1979 there were over 40 peer reviewed papers published on global warming and only 7 on global cooling. The global cooling meme got a big writeup in Time and Newsweek but it was never prevalent in the scientific community. Here is a study on that.
A preliminary analysis of 2% of the Berkeley Earth dataset shows a global temperature trend that goes up and down with global cycles, and does so broadly in sync with the temperature records from other groups such as NOAA, NASA, and Hadley CRU.
I'll admit they have a lot of analysis yet to do but I'd bet money they won't find anything drastically different when they're done than what has been reported by those other groups.
After commenting on the Kelvin issue I had to respond to AC.
Perhaps we've used half the relatively easily available petroleum but we haven't used anywhere near half the coal or natural gas. And that's not even considering things like oil shale and tar sands. The problem is self limiting but not at any CO2 level below 1000 ppmv.
They are able to pick that signal out of natural variation by the fact that the known things like ENSO and PDO are cyclical and tend to wash out over longer time periods.
An IR photon absorbed by a CO2 molecule is later re-radiated in a random direction and often at different wavelengths. Nearly half of that re-radiation heads back to the surface to be radiated again. Some of that re-radiated energy will be absorbed by another CO2 molecule before it hits the surface or leaves the atmosphere and the process repeats. By increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere you increase the density of CO2 thus increasing the chances that a re-radiated photon will be absorbed again. In effect it slow the photon's path out of the atmosphere which is reflected by an increase in temperature.
To be fair to the AC, he/she is right. If you're going to use percentages on temperatures then you have to use an absolute temperature scale like Kelvin. Using 300 K as an approximation is reasonable as the average surface temperature is about 288 K.
Try the Global Historical Climate Network: (weather station records from around the world, temperature and precipitation) as referenced at RealClimate.
Are you willing to pay for the instrumentation it would take to actually observe the heat in the oceans? Say one probe for every 100 square miles of ocean? That would amount to nearly 1.4 million probes.
As the article you linked said there is a gap between the incoming sunlight and the outgoing radiation as measured by satellites. All of the energy in that gap has to be going somewhere. If it isn't the deep oceans then where is it? It hasn't left the planet or the satellites would have seen it.
CO2 absorbs infrared radiation. That is easily shown in the lab. You have to show why it doesn't do that in the atmosphere and show that another mechanism is responsible for the warming that has been documented.
I think AC if right about tracking down the west coast of the Americas. It looks like the first big city you see is probably Vancouver, BC, Canada, then the Puget Sound region, on to Portland. I live in Oregon and the placement of the cities south of Portland look just right to me. If you look at a globe the 53 degree inclination is about right to track down the coast. Here is a page that shows the ISS track.
Not all physics is climatology but most of climatology is physics with a bit of chemistry thrown in. Climatology is fundamentally a study in thermodynamics, the transfer of energy by radiation, convection and conduction in the atmosphere, oceans and geosphere. It's complicated by a lot of other stuff but that's what's at the center of it.
Back at ya! At least we're not yelling past each other.
I'm not expert on clouds either. But I do know that clouds are totally a product of water vapor in the atmosphere and that temperature controls the level of water vapor in the atmosphere. If the atmosphere cools then water vapor in the atmosphere is reduced (if there was sufficient humidity to begin with). That's why you get dew in the morning. Things like ocean currents or ENSO/PDO don't have much effect on the total heat energy in the Earth system. They just affect where it is by moving it around.
The growing and shrinking of the polar caps on Mars is due more to CO2 than water ice. Yes, in a pure nitrogen atmosphere there would be some evaporation of water from the oceans but it wouldn't add enough warming to bring the temperature anywhere close to what it is now. The level of water vapor in the atmosphere is primarily determined by the air temperature. The 20-30% of greenhouse warming that comes from GHG's such as CO2, methane and the others gives water vapor a bump that it couldn't sustain on its own.
When I said precipitation I meant falling out of the sky in the form of rain or snow. Clouds are condensed water vapor but the droplets/ice particles are still small enough to float in the air. As the air cools under your "50% increase in albedo" scenario more water vapor continues to condense out until the droplets get heavy enough to precipitate out of the atmosphere.
Ok, 0.001 C is probably accurate. But in a dynamic continuous system like the Earth a one time 4 degrees of warming is unrealistic. A better question would be "If you forced a continuous 4C increase in lower troposphere temperatures what would be the rate of ocean warming? How much would it warm in a year?" One other note, that 0.001C of average warming over the whole ocean would be concentrated in the surface region to start with and would probably take on the order of 1000 years to propagate through the whole ocean.
Finally, being the pedant I am, I have to say "degree" Kelvin is a misnomer. Kelvins are absolute physical values tied to absolute zero (a physical constant of the universe) that by definition have a unit size the same as Celsius degrees. Celsius values are in degrees because they are values relative to the freezing point of water under specific conditions.
Slashdot Mirror
The scientific solution is to stop increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. The answer one way or another will have to be political. If you don't like the things you list then what is your answer to the problem?
Congratulations for understanding why ice floats. But when it floats the water it displaces is the volume of water it will occupy when it melts. Of course when ice that is sitting on land melts it flows into the ocean thereby increasing the volume.
Simple solutions for simple minds. There is no feasible way to remove water vapor from the atmosphere to any great extent. To do that you'd have to stop or at least slow down evaporation from the oceans. It ain't going to happen. And how do you propose to make clouds which have a slight positive effect on global warming anyway.
... swell foop ...
Heh! Was that on purpose or did you commit a spoonerism?
Problem is from 1965 to 1979 there were over 40 peer reviewed papers published on global warming and only 7 on global cooling. The global cooling meme got a big writeup in Time and Newsweek but it was never prevalent in the scientific community. Here is a study on that.
You must be pretty wealthy if you think you can afford to sue a power company over their coal plants. That's not a option for most people.
Too bad yourmommycalled has such low karma. What (s)he said there is accurate.
BerkelyEarth.org's initial findings show:
A preliminary analysis of 2% of the Berkeley Earth dataset shows a global temperature trend that goes up and down with global cycles, and does so broadly in sync with the temperature records from other groups such as NOAA, NASA, and Hadley CRU.
I'll admit they have a lot of analysis yet to do but I'd bet money they won't find anything drastically different when they're done than what has been reported by those other groups.
After commenting on the Kelvin issue I had to respond to AC.
Perhaps we've used half the relatively easily available petroleum but we haven't used anywhere near half the coal or natural gas. And that's not even considering things like oil shale and tar sands. The problem is self limiting but not at any CO2 level below 1000 ppmv.
They are able to pick that signal out of natural variation by the fact that the known things like ENSO and PDO are cyclical and tend to wash out over longer time periods.
An IR photon absorbed by a CO2 molecule is later re-radiated in a random direction and often at different wavelengths. Nearly half of that re-radiation heads back to the surface to be radiated again. Some of that re-radiated energy will be absorbed by another CO2 molecule before it hits the surface or leaves the atmosphere and the process repeats. By increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere you increase the density of CO2 thus increasing the chances that a re-radiated photon will be absorbed again. In effect it slow the photon's path out of the atmosphere which is reflected by an increase in temperature.
To be fair to the AC, he/she is right. If you're going to use percentages on temperatures then you have to use an absolute temperature scale like Kelvin. Using 300 K as an approximation is reasonable as the average surface temperature is about 288 K.
Try the Global Historical Climate Network: (weather station records from around the world, temperature and precipitation) as referenced at RealClimate.
Are you willing to pay for the instrumentation it would take to actually observe the heat in the oceans? Say one probe for every 100 square miles of ocean? That would amount to nearly 1.4 million probes.
As the article you linked said there is a gap between the incoming sunlight and the outgoing radiation as measured by satellites. All of the energy in that gap has to be going somewhere. If it isn't the deep oceans then where is it? It hasn't left the planet or the satellites would have seen it.
CO2 absorbs infrared radiation. That is easily shown in the lab. You have to show why it doesn't do that in the atmosphere and show that another mechanism is responsible for the warming that has been documented.
How exactly is AGW falsifiable?
Show that an increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere won't cause an increase in energy retained by the Earth.
It's true that correlation != causation but often it's a big hint that the relationship should be investigated.
I think AC if right about tracking down the west coast of the Americas. It looks like the first big city you see is probably Vancouver, BC, Canada, then the Puget Sound region, on to Portland. I live in Oregon and the placement of the cities south of Portland look just right to me. If you look at a globe the 53 degree inclination is about right to track down the coast. Here is a page that shows the ISS track.
According to Wikipedia there are 44 +/- 5 lightning bolts per second on the Earth.
Despite all of the idiot posts I see here I think the demographics would show /.er's to be well above average.
G&S is still entertaining though.
Yes, but he did call bullshit on climate science deniers a couple of months ago.
Not all physics is climatology but most of climatology is physics with a bit of chemistry thrown in. Climatology is fundamentally a study in thermodynamics, the transfer of energy by radiation, convection and conduction in the atmosphere, oceans and geosphere. It's complicated by a lot of other stuff but that's what's at the center of it.
Back at ya! At least we're not yelling past each other.
I'm not expert on clouds either. But I do know that clouds are totally a product of water vapor in the atmosphere and that temperature controls the level of water vapor in the atmosphere. If the atmosphere cools then water vapor in the atmosphere is reduced (if there was sufficient humidity to begin with). That's why you get dew in the morning. Things like ocean currents or ENSO/PDO don't have much effect on the total heat energy in the Earth system. They just affect where it is by moving it around.
:) Yeah, maybe I got it backwards.
:) That's true. It would probably be more cost effective to mine it from one of Jupiter's moons though.
The growing and shrinking of the polar caps on Mars is due more to CO2 than water ice. Yes, in a pure nitrogen atmosphere there would be some evaporation of water from the oceans but it wouldn't add enough warming to bring the temperature anywhere close to what it is now. The level of water vapor in the atmosphere is primarily determined by the air temperature. The 20-30% of greenhouse warming that comes from GHG's such as CO2, methane and the others gives water vapor a bump that it couldn't sustain on its own.
When I said precipitation I meant falling out of the sky in the form of rain or snow. Clouds are condensed water vapor but the droplets/ice particles are still small enough to float in the air. As the air cools under your "50% increase in albedo" scenario more water vapor continues to condense out until the droplets get heavy enough to precipitate out of the atmosphere.
Ok, 0.001 C is probably accurate. But in a dynamic continuous system like the Earth a one time 4 degrees of warming is unrealistic. A better question would be "If you forced a continuous 4C increase in lower troposphere temperatures what would be the rate of ocean warming? How much would it warm in a year?" One other note, that 0.001C of average warming over the whole ocean would be concentrated in the surface region to start with and would probably take on the order of 1000 years to propagate through the whole ocean.
Finally, being the pedant I am, I have to say "degree" Kelvin is a misnomer. Kelvins are absolute physical values tied to absolute zero (a physical constant of the universe) that by definition have a unit size the same as Celsius degrees. Celsius values are in degrees because they are values relative to the freezing point of water under specific conditions.
Won't it just taste like chicken?