Global Warming III

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Bill Glasheen
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Global Warming III

Post by Bill Glasheen »

As I was trolling articles in USA Today for comments, I came upon one "pro global warming" article which suddenly hit the motherload of forum comments from a fairly sophisticated readership.

The political bent of this poster is unmistakable. That aside, much of what he says is similar to what I posted in previous threads.

- Bill
sinderso wrote: 43d ago

Your article in yesterday’s edition touting man-made global warming is about as ill-informed a puff piece for the climate-change alarmists that I have seen. It obviously assumes that climate-change science is complete and that man-made CO2 is the cause of global warming. This is simply not true; the science is not complete and there are compelling reasons to say that other, natural forces are the dominant cause of global warming. Your article cited new studies predicting dire consequences, but nowhere could I find any dissenting opinions, which abound in the current literature. One piece of apparent nonsense that you cite stated that the oceans are going to become more acidic if the CO2 level keeps going up. That would be true if warming waters could absorb more CO2, but that defies the gas laws that say warm water holds less gas than cold water. I submit that if the earth is warming for any reason, then the ocean will also warm and in so doing will release CO2 and become less acidic. In fact, there is abundant evidence, ignored by the IGCC that shows that over hundreds of thousands of years the peaks in CO2 have lagged the peaks in temperature by hundreds of years, clearly showing that CO2 in the atmosphere is the result of warming, not the other way around.

You have ignored the most recent research by Henrik Svensmark, presented in “The Chilling Stars, A New Theory of Climate Change”by Swensmark and Calder, that shows how cosmic rays are the trigger for the formation of low-level clouds that are a major controlling factor in the earth’s temperature. Even the climate-change modelers, the alarmists, admit that they don’t do a good job of modeling the clouds. Their models, for instance, predict that both north and south poles should be warming, when in fact the south pole is cooling. The Svensmark cloud-effect explains this paradox. Two other references are of major importance: “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years”, by physicist Fred Singer and economist Dennis Avery presents a massive amount of real data that show that the sun is the likely cause for a mild warming and cooling cycle that has been occurring about every 1500 years for at least a million years. This reference proposes that low-level clouds controlled by cosmic rays that are in turn controlled by the sun are the real cause of global warming. Swensmark proves the mechanism by which the clouds are formed. Together these two books make a compelling case that at the very least, it is way too early to make drastic changes in our economy in the vain attempt to control CO2. As an early researcher said, “a poor climate prediction is worse than none at all”. Much of this is brought together in a Channel 4 documentary from England “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, which was online on YouTube, but now not available there.

The current climate models that the IGCC uses as support for its alarmists claims are unverified, for they don’t even predict the recent well-measured earth temperatures correctly, without denying the well-documented world-wide medieval warming, and have several other major inconsistencies. Garbage in; garbage out, as they say. The “science” of man-made climate change has become a political, even a religious, movement bent on bringing down capitalism, which the most radical left think is the cause of all evil in the world. We know it has become political because anyone who speaks against the man-made climate change theory, any skeptic, is ostracized, even threatened by the politically correct. This attitude is shown well in Svensmark’s book, where his difficulty in getting a hearing and research funds for his theory is documented. Science is not served well by closed minds, whether it is scientists or ill informed writers.

There is a very important unintended consequence of the drastic action that the alarmists would have us do. Controlling CO2 in the extreme will weaken our economy and that of most of the western world (China and India are not likely to stop their development.) to such a degree that we will be severely limited in our ability to defeat the Islamo fascists that threaten our very way of life, indeed our very life as a nation. Many, especially the left, have their head in the sand when it comes to this threat, apparently believing despite al Qaeda’s declaration, that there is no war at all, 9/11 really didn’t happen. I believe it is real and serious. We are in a war that is going to last generations and cost lots of money if we are going to retain our freedom. Stopping our economic development could doom us to life under an Islamic despot.
- Is Earth near its 'tipping points' from global warming?
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mhosea
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Post by mhosea »

I'm not sure what to make of it all. I don't have the time to examine the whole issue with the attention it deserves. It seems to me, hoever, that climate change scientists have damaged their credibility by allowing themselves to be perceived as pawns in the policy debate. Was just reading the Hadley Center's "Myths" page, and IMO the way it expresses the ideas is not what I expect from objective scientists. It's not what they say, it's how they say it. These scientists believe in their models, and they say so with their matter of fact phraseology. Setting aside the issue of funding, they might think that this kind of thing is what society requires of them under apparently dire circumstances in which they are purveyors of critically important information, but I think, rather, that it is inherently polarizing to express the most probable matters as unqualified certitudes.
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Post by 2Green »

"Tipping Point" is the new buzzword de jour, being a popular current book title.
Now, everything has to have a tipping point.

And yes, it's true that not everyone believes that man-made emissions are raising CO2 or global temperature levels, although we are producing pollution. (CO2 is not a pollutant.)

Plants live on CO2, and produce oxygen as they grow and breathe... the higher CO2 content favours the proliferation of GREEN plant life.

There's no question that politicians are "mixing in" generous levels of poorly-understood science to gain public favour, from a public which also understands the science poorly.

Unfortunately, due the above, it's considered very heretical nowadays to even question the concept that "Man's CO2 is killing the planet".

------------------------------------------------------------------------

If I may also mention a related item: Compact Flourescent Lamps (CFL's)

Like a growing number of places, my province is soon banning the sale of conventional incandescent bulbs in favour of CFL's.
The idea is, a 26-watt CFL gives the same light as a 100-watt IL (Incandescent Lamp).

The IL has few components: A brass base, two support wires and a tungsten filament in a thin glass vacuum shell.
Over its lifetime it generates mainly heat, producing light as a byproduct.

The CFL has a thick-glass coil, mercury gas, a circuit board, a complement of electronic components including a transformer, capacitors, diodes, resistors, and multiple lead-solder contacts.
There are at least thirty components mounted to the circuit board.
All these components have to be manufactured in a factories somewhere, and transported and assembled into a rather complex unit, the CFL.

I would like to see the REAL big-picture "net gain" that these units are supposed to endow, becasue it seems to me that the energy and resources required to manufacture them are huge compared to an IL, simply "displacing" the energy use from the user back to the factories.

But, once a gain, the government gets on the green-board, and starts promoting this, banning that, even distributing free in our case, two CFL's per household in a rush to appear "GREEN".

There are no disposal plans in place, and let me tell you that when one of these things burns out in the light socket, it's VERY noxious smoke, and it burns for well over a minute.

---------------------------------

I predict that by the time their supposed 5-year life has ended, CFL's will be rendered obsolete by the VERY fast-developing LED technology anyway.


~N~
The music spoke to me. I felt compelled to answer.
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Post by f.Channell »

If I remember right one of Thomas Edison's lightbulbs he made over 80 years ago is still working fine in his museum.

How many lightbulbs are in landfills across the world when they can be made to last for 100 years?

The bulb is switched off and on daily also.

F.
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Post by Bill Glasheen »

I have a lot of the flourescent bulbs around my house. I don't mind the lower electricity bill, and not having to replace them so much.

I am however looking forward to LED technology replacing all of this. I expect it to be found in auto lights next. That's good for me, as I drive with my lights on all the time (for safety). I burn out a lot of bulbs.

- Bill
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Post by IJ »

"That would be true if warming waters could absorb more CO2, but that defies the gas laws that say warm water holds less gas than cold water. I submit that if the earth is warming for any reason, then the ocean will also warm and in so doing will release CO2 and become less acidic."

I don't want submissions, I'd prefer math. There are competing processes at work:

--warming, which reduces dissolved gas (ahem, including oxygen, which some living things like to breathe)
--higher CO2 concentrations, which would push dissolved CO2 up.

These things could be calculated and we'd know whether the coming changes will affect acidity or not. Also, if we don't fuly understand climate change and its not CO2, then the warming could cease tomorrow, the CO2 WILL rise, and acidity WOULD increase.

I also don't think it's quite fair to say that the left thinks that al qaeda doesn't represent a threat. I can't recall hearing anyone say that, actually--at least for 4 years.
--Ian
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Post by RACastanet »

mercury gas
This is a huge environmental issue. People just dropping the old CFLs in the trash will be adding enormous amounts of toxic heavy metal to the environment. Industrial and commercial facilities already must pay special fees to dispose of the old bulbs. Four years ago, when I was last in the industrial workplace, the disposal fee was $3 per flourescent bulb.

Forcing a switch to CFLs will have a negative consequence the 'greens' have not forseen.

Rich
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Post by Bill Glasheen »

I agree, Ian, that the models can and should be done.

So yea, we can do the modeling. It doesn't take rocket science to form the series of simultaneous equations which show:
  • dissolved CO2 in equilibrium with CO2 in the atmosphere
  • dissolved CO2 in equilibrium with carbonic acid
  • Henry's law which dictates the amount of gas dissolved as a function of temperature.
The fact that someone AFTER THE FACT has to point this out shows how weak the case for doom-and-gloom from changing ocean pH really is. Moreover... As a mathematical modeler by profession though, I have a thought to share. In all but a few cases, most mathematical models show what the human eye and a reasonable person can plainly see.

It doesn't take much in the way of common sense to figure out that all fossil fuels once upon a time were once CO2 in the atmosphere. And these fossil fuels were created because under the original conditions (baseline CO2 in the atmosphere), plant and animal life were prolific. Furthermore, life as we know it on land came from the sea, and that happened over time under the conditions of peak CO2 concentrations. Add to that the phenomenon that CO2 concentrations in the air historically FOLLOW rather than LEAD temperature change. Before long, you begin to realize that the case is lost without pushing a pencil.

As for Ian's comment about the politics mentioned, well I brought that out up front before posting this gentleman's point of view. That being said, he DOES have a point. There is a brand of liberal fascism out there which is the reason for much of the unreasonable debate on this subject. If you want an entertaining read on the subject, I highly recommend the following Bernard Goldberg book.

Crazies to the Left of Me, Wimps to the Right: How One Side Lost Its Mind and the Other Lost Its Nerve


- Bill
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Post by IJ »

"The fact that someone AFTER THE FACT has to point this out shows how weak the case for doom-and-gloom from changing ocean pH really is."

No; no justification for that conclusion. For all I've read, perhaps someone DID do all the relevant math (shouldn't be that hard) and found that the oceans WILL be more acidic. Afterall, the temperature is only going up a relatively small amount. The amount of CO2 is increasing a lot more than that. Now, maybe that increase in acidity would be irrelevant or has occured many times without consequence. But we could very easily see this sequence of events:

1) someone does all the right math and models, predicts a rise in acidity, and the headline becomes, "rising CO2 will acidify oceans."

2) partially informed blogger assumes no one's thought about the temperature feature and writes that this is all nonsense

3) One reads the blogger and thinks something was insightfully poiinted out "after the fact," when it wasn't, and concludes mistakenly that the "doom and gloom" case for the ocean is weak (or heck, was there even a doom and gloom case made, maybe it was a reasoned, restrained, observation).

PERHAPS this acidity thing is a whole lot of overblown nonsense. One cannot conclude that based on what's been posted here. We do not have the source documents, just a blogger who will dismiss a theory without doing the relevant math or even noticing or acknowledging that the factors favoring CO2 dissolution are increasing relatively more than the warming of the ocean that disfavors CO2 dissolution (and has its own consequnces of less O2 in the water).

As for those wacky liberals, I still haven't heard how they've downplayed the terrorist threat, or how whatever eco or culture alarmists out there are representative of the entire left, just as I doubt that the deliberate distortions of Coulter, Limbaugh, Harrity, Rove, Bush & Co etc indict all conservatives or even all republicans. Franken even makes this point about a third of the way through "The Truth (with jokes)" if you're interested in catching something laboriously fact checked from the other end of the spectrum.
--Ian
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Post by Bill Glasheen »

Sounds like you might be catching a touch of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome). ;-)

The person I quoted isn't "just a blogger." His arguments are pretty well supported by a fairly reasonable bibliography which you have cavalierly dismissed without comment or cause.

And last I checked, causality requires a stimulus to lead rather than lag a response. Or maybe you know something about time series analysis that I haven't learned yet.

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Post by mhosea »

Bill Glasheen wrote:Sounds like you might be catching a touch of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome). ;-)
That's the one where Al Franken is "laboriously fact checked" and Sean "Harrity" (?!) engages in deliberate distortions, as if "fact checked" and "deliberately distorted" were mutually exclusive.
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Post by IJ »

"Sounds like you might be catching a touch of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome). "

Agreed, I disagree, so I must be insane. Clearly we have no cause to fault Bush.

"And last I checked, causality requires a stimulus to lead rather than lag a response. Or maybe you know something about time series analysis that I haven't learned yet."

To what do you refer? If you are speaking about the 800 year CO2 lag, I've said nothing about it recently, and my last comments elsewhere were that 1) the lag casts a whole lot of doubt on the idea that historically, CO2 causes temperature changes, and 2) that doesn't rule out the possibility that using before unseen technology to raise CO2 can't raise the temperature.

"His arguments are pretty well supported by a fairly reasonable bibliography which you have cavalierly dismissed without comment or cause."

Ah, I thought you had posted the relevant sections and hadn't followed the link. But my point was that either he's done, or read, the relevant math to balance the competing factors here, or he hasn't. If his bibliography contains the answer, or he did the math himself, why haven't the equations and answers been posted?

"That's the one where Al Franken is "laboriously fact checked" and Sean "Harrity" (?!) engages in deliberate distortions, as if "fact checked" and "deliberately distorted" were mutually exclusive."

Ah, true, they're not. However, the distinction I'm making is that there's a cottage industry debunking the outright lies or factual distortions of the likes of Limbaugh, Harrity, and Coulter, whereas with Franken, you have the opposite side of the political spectrum, but nothing that can be proven groundless or deliberately misleading. Or so he claims, and per him he has a crew of researchers working for him, and while I've never seen a mistake or lie from a text of his caught, the same is hardly true of the others. Bill's guy may be perfectly upstanding, haven't read his book.
--Ian
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Post by mhosea »

IJ wrote: Or so he claims, and per him he has a crew of researchers working for him, and while I've never seen a mistake or lie from a text of his caught, the same is hardly true of the others.
You may be right. I really don't know. I note that when I do a web search for "Franken lies", I get some interesting hits. Of course it's trivial to find some good hits on "Limbaugh lies", etc. I honestly don't care. My rule of thumb is to recognize political essays as exactly that, not as fair and objective accounts of the so-called truth. For example, I expect Franken to emphasize the whole dollar savings to the high tax brackets when attacking the 2001 Bush tax cuts, and I expect, say, Hannity to emphasize the percentage cuts. These choices suit their respective positions. Neither paints an accurate picture by itself. Now, I can either get my information from both guys and try to figure out the the truth, or I can pretty much ignore them both and go straight to the primary sources. I guess what I'm saying is that using any of these guys as your "researcher" yields predictable results. If you think Franken wouldn't lie to you, or distort the truth, you'll end up thinking what Franken wanted you to think, likewise Hannity, Limbaugh, or (God forbid) Coulter.
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Post by Bill Glasheen »

People let themselves get emotionally hijacked by these editorialists. What you may not realize is that this is what they do. They make a living attracting attention to themselves from people who think a certain way. This political flame throwing pays well, because some people have way too much emotional energy tied up in their narrow perspectives. And if you think all of this fluff only comes from one side of the spectrum, then that pretty much sums up your own (lack of) perspective.

I'm just happy that the yin and yang A-holes in the world balance each other out. 8)

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Post by cxt »

Personally I think there is "truth" and then there is "relevence."

Maybe the oceans are going to become slightly more acidic--maybe not.

The real questions should be how acidic are they going to become and what effect that might have?????

Another question would be "has this ever happend before?"

Like it or not we live in a dynamic system on an active energetic planet---things changed before and they are going to change again.

When our caveman anscestors were roaming the globe, much of it was encased in miles of ice--now its not.
The Sahara used to be a lush green plain--now its not.
At one point Greenland had a much warmer inviting climate--then it wasnt--then it was.
Sea levels have been riseing steadly for many 1000's of years--since the last Ice Age.

I think part of the problem is that we fail to actually learn the lesson history teachers about climate.

I'm sure that we have an effect on the enviroment---but when people freak out and fail to see that OTHER factors--utterly out of our hands are probably MOST responsible then all sort of mess happens.

Not saying that we shouldn't take steps to make things better--far from it.

Am suggesting that the more we focus on how "we" caused the problems the less time/effort there is to figure out what is really going on.

I have a buddy that often refers to the "Overwhelming hubris of the talking monkey."

He is speaking to the notion that "man" is somehow viewed as the center of the Universe--even the "old time" relgions painted humans as having a special place in "gods" heart.
The notion that we might be effected by natural forces beyond all the most basic controls is deeply disturbing to most people--at a very deep level.
They would rather accepet unearned blame than accept that they are not "masters of their fates."

Again, not saying that we don't have an effect--or that there is nothing that we can do to make things better.

Just think we need a lot more science and a lot less oratory.
Forget #6, you are now serving nonsense.

HH
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