The temperature rise as a result of doubling CO2 that is referenced in IPCC reports is the steady state result. It will take several decades for the earth to reach that new equilibrium, due to enormous heat capacity of the oceans.
By the way, where did you get the numbers for the noise ?
It's not like there will be no risk for the next 85 years, and then all of a sudden they'll be exposed to flood risk. Rather, the risk will gradually increase as the sea level rises, depending on their exact location and many other factors.
The difference is that nuclear is often situated at the coast to get access to plenty of cooling water, as well as limiting risk of radiation exposure over land.
The other things have been identified and quantified. The biggest one is the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which is an effect that fluctuates fairly unpredictably over multi-year time scales. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... for pretty graphs. During La-Nina years, the extra heat is stored in deeper ocean waters, so on the surface it appears cooler. However, during El-Nino years, the stored heat rises again, and heats up the atmosphere.
Because the ENSO effect is oscillating around the mean, it only provides a temporary relief from CO2-caused warming. The long term trend is still rising.
All the information to understand the thermal expansion of ocean water is available with a few google searches, so why should you lean back and wait for somebody to enlighten you ?
Depends on where you look. Part of the heat has temporarily gone into the oceans. This becomes clearer when you separate the La-Nina years from the El-Nino years, and plot separate trend lines for them: http://blog.chron.com/climatea...
You must have missed the Cryosat data, then.
Antarctic sea ice is pretty much irrelevant in the discussion. It is mostly seasonal, and it has negligible impact on sea level. What we care about is the the grounded ice, and we care about the volume, not the area.
No, most lay people are not smart (or educated in the subject) enough to correctly analyse the data. And the people are capable of analysing the data, are also capable of finding the data. It's not that well hidden, actually.
That is only partially true. As you increase temperature from 0 to 4 degrees C, you are correct that water contracts. But for temperatures above 4 degrees, the water starts expanding again. Above 8 degrees, water takes up more volume than ice.
I bet climate scientists will be shocked to hear water can also evaporate. I'm sure nobody has ever considered that. You'd better start working on your Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
I don't think there's much useful ice volume data before special satellites were used to measure it. However, we can look at historical sea level data, and observe that levels have not been significantly higher in any period since the last ice age. We can also look at the temperature data, and try to model the ice sheet based on those. Since temperatures before 2005 have been lower, it is very unlikely ice loss was as great as it has been in the recent years.
There's probably an error bar mentioned in the paper that was left out of the BBC article. Still, it's only 2 significant digits, so it's not even very precise.
Actually, this recent study claims that in the years 2005-2011, contribution from melting ice was 3 times as high as thermal expansion of the oceans:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/jou...
Of course, there's more than just Antarctic ice melting, but more importantly, it is likely that the melting rate will accelerate as the planet keeps warming.
I believe that in your estimate of the speed of human workers on Mars, you forgot to allocate for the time it would take to get them there alive and well, including the development of a landing module, habitat, an exploration vehicle, and optionally a return rocket. And of course, a big rocket to get all that stuff to Mars and land it on the surface without breaking it.
For new matter that interacts with common matter, it would require more energy than current particle accelerators can produce, otherwise we would have already found it.
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The temperature rise as a result of doubling CO2 that is referenced in IPCC reports is the steady state result. It will take several decades for the earth to reach that new equilibrium, due to enormous heat capacity of the oceans. By the way, where did you get the numbers for the noise ?
It's not like there will be no risk for the next 85 years, and then all of a sudden they'll be exposed to flood risk. Rather, the risk will gradually increase as the sea level rises, depending on their exact location and many other factors.
The difference is that nuclear is often situated at the coast to get access to plenty of cooling water, as well as limiting risk of radiation exposure over land.
The 17 graph is still showing a positive trend. http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...
The other things have been identified and quantified. The biggest one is the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which is an effect that fluctuates fairly unpredictably over multi-year time scales. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... for pretty graphs. During La-Nina years, the extra heat is stored in deeper ocean waters, so on the surface it appears cooler. However, during El-Nino years, the stored heat rises again, and heats up the atmosphere.
Because the ENSO effect is oscillating around the mean, it only provides a temporary relief from CO2-caused warming. The long term trend is still rising.
All the information to understand the thermal expansion of ocean water is available with a few google searches, so why should you lean back and wait for somebody to enlighten you ?
Depends on where you look. Part of the heat has temporarily gone into the oceans. This becomes clearer when you separate the La-Nina years from the El-Nino years, and plot separate trend lines for them: http://blog.chron.com/climatea...
You must have missed the Cryosat data, then. Antarctic sea ice is pretty much irrelevant in the discussion. It is mostly seasonal, and it has negligible impact on sea level. What we care about is the the grounded ice, and we care about the volume, not the area.
No, most lay people are not smart (or educated in the subject) enough to correctly analyse the data. And the people are capable of analysing the data, are also capable of finding the data. It's not that well hidden, actually.
But temperatures are rising. Your argument is invalid.
If CO2 is following temperature, what is your explanation for the fact that CO2 is now at a milion-year record high ?
And despite bitter cold temperatures on Antarctica, it is losing ice at an accelerating rate. Please explain.
That is only partially true. As you increase temperature from 0 to 4 degrees C, you are correct that water contracts. But for temperatures above 4 degrees, the water starts expanding again. Above 8 degrees, water takes up more volume than ice.
Sounds like somebody needs to learn the big difference between Antarctic sea ice and grounded ice.
I bet climate scientists will be shocked to hear water can also evaporate. I'm sure nobody has ever considered that. You'd better start working on your Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
I don't think there's much useful ice volume data before special satellites were used to measure it. However, we can look at historical sea level data, and observe that levels have not been significantly higher in any period since the last ice age. We can also look at the temperature data, and try to model the ice sheet based on those. Since temperatures before 2005 have been lower, it is very unlikely ice loss was as great as it has been in the recent years.
Where do you get that this prediction is easily testable ? Have you read the article ?
There's probably an error bar mentioned in the paper that was left out of the BBC article. Still, it's only 2 significant digits, so it's not even very precise.
Actually, this recent study claims that in the years 2005-2011, contribution from melting ice was 3 times as high as thermal expansion of the oceans: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/jou...
Of course, there's more than just Antarctic ice melting, but more importantly, it is likely that the melting rate will accelerate as the planet keeps warming.
I believe that in your estimate of the speed of human workers on Mars, you forgot to allocate for the time it would take to get them there alive and well, including the development of a landing module, habitat, an exploration vehicle, and optionally a return rocket. And of course, a big rocket to get all that stuff to Mars and land it on the surface without breaking it.
Maybe they should consider meta moderating ?
Robotic exploration is several orders of magnitude cheaper and easier. It's also much quicker.
Can you suggest a $1.5 billion project that would cure the Earth of disease or fix other global issues ?
For new matter that interacts with common matter, it would require more energy than current particle accelerators can produce, otherwise we would have already found it.