Here is a story about a study published in Nature last year on that very subject. It appears that phytoplankton (that includes algae) have declined by 40% since the 1950's.
When the year to year increase in atmospheric CO2 is a little less than half of the yearly emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels and the ocean is acidifying, that is absorbing more CO2, you're going to have to come up with some pretty extraordinary evidence that all human emissions are being absorbed somewhere and natural sources are the cause. We are adding carbon to the carbon cycle and that creates a new balance between the reservoirs of carbon in the atmosphere, oceans, biospere and geosphere.
Ok but there's no indication that is happening at this point and ocean acidification has been going on ever since carbon levels started increasing, particularly since the 1960's when CO2 really started shooting up.
Well, I wasn't the one who brought up the holding water analogy, I was just going with it. In a brick wall there may well be some keystone bricks but other than those a missing brick here or there just weakens the wall some but doesn't cause it to fail.
Some parts of the science are settled and others are not. You can't dispute that CO2 has certain absorption characteristics in the IR band. You can't dispute that atmospheric CO2 levels are higher now than they have been in at least 500,000 years (and probably 2-3 million years). It's nearly impossible to dispute that the cause of the rise in CO2 is mostly due to human burning of fossil fuels. On top of that broad canvas this study is filling in the details.
Too many of them are denying that human activities have anything to do with climate change. Often overreaction is better than underreaction. If the "alarmists" are right and we address the problem then we've avoided some potentially dire problems. If they are wrong then we've wasted some money but we have a cleaner environment and we've moved away from fossil fuels sooner than we otherwise would have been forced to by depletion of the resource. If the "deniers" are wrong and we don't address the problem then we've opened ourselves to even bigger problems that will cost us far more in the long run than any other course of action.
It appears to me that Anthony Watts is overstating the meaning of that particular research and much more work needs to be done before solid conclusions can be made. Here's another take on the study. It doesn't sound like this relatively preliminary work is particularly applicable to the real world yet but will point the way toward further research. I look forward to future results from this group.
Some "missing bricks" may cause some leaks but doesn't necessarily cause the whole thing to collapse.
but the idea that the globe is warming and the net result is more deserts between the tropics (which seems to be the layman's view) is really rather preposterous and totally unjustifiable by facts.
The expansion of deserts in the subtropics is most likely due to Hadley cell expansion driven by warmer temperatures. The descending branch moves poleward while the ascending branch remains in place at the equator. Nothing preposterous about it.
Less than 30 years ago, scientists were telling us that we were about to enter a new ice age.
You really need to forget about the "new ice age" story. It's like an urban myth. A survey of peer reviewed papers from 1965 to 1979 found over 40 on global warming and less than 10 on global cooling. The cooling meme just got more publicity in the general public. And actually it was about 1976 so 35 years ago.
Hmm... Natural chaotic systems are only chaotic within limits. Climate describes the limits of the chaotic weather system. Is that what you were getting at?
it's not obvious why surface-emitted IR warming of the atmosphere would make make difference to surface temperatures.
When the atmosphere captures IR from the surface it sooner or later re-radiates it equally in all directions. That means nearly half of the re-radiation heads back to the surface and gets recycled. More greenhouse gases means more IR captured and hence more energy recycled thus warming the system. Essentially a higher concentration of GHG's slows the radiation heading out of the atmosphere forcing a higher temperature to re-balance with the incoming energy.
LOL. I've had some pretty interesting reactions on other forums when I've mentioned this fact before. Then I really confuse them by mentioning that a small part of the stratospheric cooling is also because of the loss of ozone in the ozone layer. The reduced concentration captures less incoming ultraviolet radiation which goes on to the surface.
I didn't say it was sufficient in itself for everything but it's fairly definitive in saying the forcing for the warming isn't coming from increased solar radiation or some other external source. There isn't any one thing that's going to prove or disprove the whole theory. It's like a brick wall and stratospheric cooling is just one of the bricks. That's why I said to jmorris in another thread that there isn't any one thing that proves or disproves global warming but hundreds of things taken together.
What's useful about it is that it's evidence that the warming we're getting is caused by increases in greenhouse gases rather than increased solar radiation. IOW it's useful to the science. It's probably pretty meaningless to those other things you mentioned.
Yes, the SO2 had a much more immediate effect on global climate but it drops out of the atmosphere in a few years whereas CO2 lasts for decades or centuries. The total SO2 from Pinatubo was about 20 million tonnes.
In the 70's they were positing "Global Cooling" with an impending Ice Age coming.
The global cooling meme got a lot of publicity in Time and Newsweek but if you actually look at peer reviewed papers published from 1965 to 1979 there were more than 40 on global warming and less than 10 on global cooling.
Take a look at this graph of 10 different recent temperature reconstructions for the past 1000 years. Does Mann's 1998 Hockey Stick graph stand out from the others? Does it really have the MWP and LIA removed? Considering it was one of the first attempts at such a reconstruction it's not surprising that it may not be as good as it can be.
The trees on Vancouver Island and interior BC matter a whole lot more than a few trees in the city.
It's not the toxic qualities of CO2 that matter until you get up in the 2,000-3,000 ppmv range (although the current level causes dissolved CO2 in the ocean to reach levels that are somewhat toxic to some sea life). It's the radiative properties that cause the problem. Without any greenhouse effect the average temperature on the surface of the Earth would be about -18 C (0 F). With the greenhouse effect the average temperature is around 14.5 C (58 F). CO2 accounts for around 20% of the greenhouse effect. If temperatures rise 2-3 C on average it's going to be very disruptive to human civilization from changes in weather patterns and growing seasons. It will take a big effort to cope with that.
Humans are a very adaptable species so as long as there is air to breath we will probably survive as a race. The population might go under a billion though.
Humans are very adaptable so I'm not one of those who expects the human race to go extinct anytime soon. But we could easily end up with a quarter of the population we have now or less if we don't do something about global warming. Of course that will pretty much take care of the problem by itself but there will be a lot of suffering and death in the mean time.
Well, based on the last million years of the planet's life the level of CO2 has varied between about 180 ppmv and 300 ppmv so I would say what is normal for the current biome is whatever is commensurate with that level of CO2.
Nobody's going to fool a fool like you, right? If you want to simulate what happens when the ice on Greenland and Antarctica starts melting then take your ice tray out of the freezer and put a couple more ice cubes on top of it and let that thaw out. Does the water rise then?
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Here is a story about a study published in Nature last year on that very subject. It appears that phytoplankton (that includes algae) have declined by 40% since the 1950's.
When the year to year increase in atmospheric CO2 is a little less than half of the yearly emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels and the ocean is acidifying, that is absorbing more CO2, you're going to have to come up with some pretty extraordinary evidence that all human emissions are being absorbed somewhere and natural sources are the cause. We are adding carbon to the carbon cycle and that creates a new balance between the reservoirs of carbon in the atmosphere, oceans, biospere and geosphere.
Ok but there's no indication that is happening at this point and ocean acidification has been going on ever since carbon levels started increasing, particularly since the 1960's when CO2 really started shooting up.
Well, I wasn't the one who brought up the holding water analogy, I was just going with it. In a brick wall there may well be some keystone bricks but other than those a missing brick here or there just weakens the wall some but doesn't cause it to fail.
Some parts of the science are settled and others are not. You can't dispute that CO2 has certain absorption characteristics in the IR band. You can't dispute that atmospheric CO2 levels are higher now than they have been in at least 500,000 years (and probably 2-3 million years). It's nearly impossible to dispute that the cause of the rise in CO2 is mostly due to human burning of fossil fuels. On top of that broad canvas this study is filling in the details.
... happen to be people whose cure ... involves solutions that align with their political views.
The cures people choose nearly always align with their political views. Duh.
Too many of them are denying that human activities have anything to do with climate change. Often overreaction is better than underreaction. If the "alarmists" are right and we address the problem then we've avoided some potentially dire problems. If they are wrong then we've wasted some money but we have a cleaner environment and we've moved away from fossil fuels sooner than we otherwise would have been forced to by depletion of the resource. If the "deniers" are wrong and we don't address the problem then we've opened ourselves to even bigger problems that will cost us far more in the long run than any other course of action.
It appears to me that Anthony Watts is overstating the meaning of that particular research and much more work needs to be done before solid conclusions can be made. Here's another take on the study. It doesn't sound like this relatively preliminary work is particularly applicable to the real world yet but will point the way toward further research. I look forward to future results from this group.
Some "missing bricks" may cause some leaks but doesn't necessarily cause the whole thing to collapse.
No "will" about it. Ocean acidification is occurring. It's been measured.
There have already been some reviews of the paper. Here are a couple:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/misdiagnosis-of-surface-temperature-feedback/
http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/global-warming-debunked-or-not/
but the idea that the globe is warming and the net result is more deserts between the tropics (which seems to be the layman's view) is really rather preposterous and totally unjustifiable by facts.
The expansion of deserts in the subtropics is most likely due to Hadley cell expansion driven by warmer temperatures. The descending branch moves poleward while the ascending branch remains in place at the equator. Nothing preposterous about it.
Less than 30 years ago, scientists were telling us that we were about to enter a new ice age.
You really need to forget about the "new ice age" story. It's like an urban myth. A survey of peer reviewed papers from 1965 to 1979 found over 40 on global warming and less than 10 on global cooling. The cooling meme just got more publicity in the general public. And actually it was about 1976 so 35 years ago.
Hmm... Natural chaotic systems are only chaotic within limits. Climate describes the limits of the chaotic weather system. Is that what you were getting at?
it's not obvious why surface-emitted IR warming of the atmosphere would make make difference to surface temperatures.
When the atmosphere captures IR from the surface it sooner or later re-radiates it equally in all directions. That means nearly half of the re-radiation heads back to the surface and gets recycled. More greenhouse gases means more IR captured and hence more energy recycled thus warming the system. Essentially a higher concentration of GHG's slows the radiation heading out of the atmosphere forcing a higher temperature to re-balance with the incoming energy.
LOL. I've had some pretty interesting reactions on other forums when I've mentioned this fact before. Then I really confuse them by mentioning that a small part of the stratospheric cooling is also because of the loss of ozone in the ozone layer. The reduced concentration captures less incoming ultraviolet radiation which goes on to the surface.
I didn't say it was sufficient in itself for everything but it's fairly definitive in saying the forcing for the warming isn't coming from increased solar radiation or some other external source. There isn't any one thing that's going to prove or disprove the whole theory. It's like a brick wall and stratospheric cooling is just one of the bricks. That's why I said to jmorris in another thread that there isn't any one thing that proves or disproves global warming but hundreds of things taken together.
What's useful about it is that it's evidence that the warming we're getting is caused by increases in greenhouse gases rather than increased solar radiation. IOW it's useful to the science. It's probably pretty meaningless to those other things you mentioned.
Yes, the SO2 had a much more immediate effect on global climate but it drops out of the atmosphere in a few years whereas CO2 lasts for decades or centuries. The total SO2 from Pinatubo was about 20 million tonnes.
In the 70's they were positing "Global Cooling" with an impending Ice Age coming.
The global cooling meme got a lot of publicity in Time and Newsweek but if you actually look at peer reviewed papers published from 1965 to 1979 there were more than 40 on global warming and less than 10 on global cooling.
Take a look at this graph of 10 different recent temperature reconstructions for the past 1000 years. Does Mann's 1998 Hockey Stick graph stand out from the others? Does it really have the MWP and LIA removed? Considering it was one of the first attempts at such a reconstruction it's not surprising that it may not be as good as it can be.
The trees on Vancouver Island and interior BC matter a whole lot more than a few trees in the city.
It's not the toxic qualities of CO2 that matter until you get up in the 2,000-3,000 ppmv range (although the current level causes dissolved CO2 in the ocean to reach levels that are somewhat toxic to some sea life). It's the radiative properties that cause the problem. Without any greenhouse effect the average temperature on the surface of the Earth would be about -18 C (0 F). With the greenhouse effect the average temperature is around 14.5 C (58 F). CO2 accounts for around 20% of the greenhouse effect. If temperatures rise 2-3 C on average it's going to be very disruptive to human civilization from changes in weather patterns and growing seasons. It will take a big effort to cope with that.
The carbon monoxide in the exhaust will get you before the CO2 does.
Humans are a very adaptable species so as long as there is air to breath we will probably survive as a race. The population might go under a billion though.
Humans are very adaptable so I'm not one of those who expects the human race to go extinct anytime soon. But we could easily end up with a quarter of the population we have now or less if we don't do something about global warming. Of course that will pretty much take care of the problem by itself but there will be a lot of suffering and death in the mean time.
Well, based on the last million years of the planet's life the level of CO2 has varied between about 180 ppmv and 300 ppmv so I would say what is normal for the current biome is whatever is commensurate with that level of CO2.
Nobody's going to fool a fool like you, right? If you want to simulate what happens when the ice on Greenland and Antarctica starts melting then take your ice tray out of the freezer and put a couple more ice cubes on top of it and let that thaw out. Does the water rise then?