Is Global Warming Real?

[jordan179]

With the revelation of the British hoax regarding global warming, an obvious question is "Do you think that anthropogenic global warming is real?" And here's my answer:

Comments

[jordan179]

Fluctuations in solar output clearly do have the dominant effect on Earthly climate, followed in no particular order by albedo and greenhouse effect. The reason why we focus on CO2 is that it is the main way that human activity can affect the global climate.

The current short-term cooling phase (which we entered around a year ago) is entirely due to reduced solar output -- the Sun is in a "quiet" phase (an earlier and more dramatic example being the famous Maunder Minimum of the mid- to late-17th century, which intensified the Little Ice Age). The thing is, this quiet phase will end, and if we've ramped-up CO2 too much in the interim, we will be right back to global warming, and at an accelerated rate.

IMO the long-term solution to global climate problems is for Man to take charge of the global climate through a system of orbital shades and mirrors, to reduce or increase insolation on the Earth as required. When this happens, we will no longer be at the mercy of climate fluctuations (aside from the very long-term brightening of the Sun, which will render the Earth a rather uncomfortable place to be a few hundred million years from now. But then, that's enough time to move the planet, assuming that we still care.

[gothelittle]

Unless, of course, the ice ages and global warming periods are in some way necessary for the health of the planet. Your orbital mirrors idea reminds me of continuous hormonal birth control. It'll stop the cycle, but that cycle is natural and there are problematic side-effects when it's forced to not happen.

[jordan179]

That's quite possible. On the one hand, we've only had regular glaciation cycles for the last 2.58 million years: most of the Age of Mammals has been uniformly warm by modern standards. On the other hand, "the last 2.58 million years" covers most of the time that Genus Homo has existed, and our species has spent most of its life during glaciations. So who knows?

[tekroo]

But advances are only made during periods of warmth. Living during periods of glaciation are matters of pure survival. If you compare the Australian Aboriginal tribes in the "red center" to those in the tropical zones in the North, you'll find that, despite what the tourist shops try to sell you, there was no development of "recreational" items like didgeridoos in the central desert because they were too busy just barely surviving in a dry, difficult climate. In the wetter tropics, food was easier to come by so there was more time for leisure. Sure, I can survive a Wyoming winter without power but I'm sure as heck not going to get my sprinkler system finished! I don't even want to go outside and put my Christmas lights up right now... Ewwww... cold and windy...

[jordan179]

My personal hope is that, by the time the climate changes significantly, most of humanity and most of human industry will be off Earth anyway, so Man's future won't be dependent on what happens on just one of our many worlds.

[tekroo]

"Greenhouse warming" is located mostly within the Troposphere. One leading atmospheric scientist whose name I could look up later, whose jobs is to pretty much monitor the Troposphere, has found little to no unusual warming at all and disagreed strongly with the IPCC's report on greenhouse warming. They listed him as a contributor to the report nonetheless so they could brag about how many scientists contributed to the report. They refused to remove his name until he threatened to sue them and they finally complied.

Carbon dioxide levels will continue to rise for probably the next 750 years regardless of what we try to do about it. Carbon dioxide levels have ALWAYS lagged temperatures by around 800 years because the oceans will continue to warm once the heat source starts to decrease in a sine/cosine relationship. Carbon dioxide is less soluble in a liquid as the temperature of that liquid increases. Compare a warm soda to a cold one for a simple example.

Who says warmer temperatures are bad anyway? Far more species are found near the equator than near the poles. Great advances in civilization, art and culture have always occurred during warm periods.

Plants LOVE carbon dioxide! There was a time when almost all of the available carbon was above ground contained within the plants, animals and atmosphere. Lush plantlife existed even in what we now consider deserts. So abundant was this plant growth that huge herbivores were able to evolve, with huge carnivores to hunt and eat them. There was NEVER a "tipping point" like Al Gore likes to talk about. Sounds to me like much, much, MUCH higher levels of carbon dioxide would result in food for all!

[jordan179]

There is virtually no scientific doubt that "greenhouse warming" occurs, because if it didn't our planet would be a lot colder. Earth's climate is warmed about 25 degrees Centigrade by this effect. The question is if and to what extent the climate is trending warmer, and if and to what extent this is resulting from human activity.

I agree regarding the lag effects of oceanic heat sinks. Too many popular versions of climate science assume that we can change the climate rapidly on a human time scale with current infrastructure -- we can't. We'd need orbital sun shades and/or mirrors to do that.

The problem with severe global warming is the transition, which is likely to be violent and both economically and ecologically destructive.

I'm never sure of just what sort of "tipping point" Gore speaks, but I have noticed that he claims knowledge far above his understanding. It is highly improbable that we could push the Earth above, say, Paleocene maximum climatic levels with simple burning of fossil fuels, and in fact it's unlikely that we'd even get that far.

[tekroo]

Just going off and doing stuff about a perceived "problem", especially if there is an ulterior motive involved, can be devastating. Chairman Mao's "War Against the Sparrows" is a fine example. Mao used the excuse that sparrows were eating the grain that the Chinese people needed to be come a strong nation and encouraged the people to band together to destroy the pest. Really, all he wanted was to bring people together in the spirit of "comradeship" and it worked! Villagers came together and even competed against other villages to see which village could kill the most sparrows.

...and then the locusts, unchecked by sparrows, wiped out the crops and resulted in famine. Gotta love those Commies!

[jordan179]

Just going off and doing stuff about a perceived "problem", especially if there is an ulterior motive involved, can be devastating.

Oh yes. I agree. If, for instance, we crash the global economy in order to avoid global warming, there could be terrible consequences -- including environmental ones, especially because we would be culturally self-selecting against concern for the environment, and handing the world over to the Powers who least bought into the carbon dioxide reduction efforts.

[unixronin]

Orbital shades and mirrors are one of those ideas people love to talk about when they haven't done the math on the carbon load and the sheer COST of the necessary number of launches. Sure, it's a theoretically feasible way to modify the planetary climate ... and it's one that's utterly and totally infeasible as long as we rely on chemical rockets to put payloads into space. The mass ratios of any chemical-fueled reaction-drive booster are appalling. And it's not just putting a shade up there; there would be maintenance flights required to keep replenishing it.

It's in a similar vein to the atmospheric scientist who proposed carbon sequestration by dumping powdered limestone into the Pacific. When you do the math, it turns out the quantities of limestone he's talking about - in order to MAYBE start having a measurable effect on atmospheric CO2 levels thirty years from now, and eventually reduce atmospheric CO2 by, iirc, a massive 6% a hundred years from now - require something like two thirds of the total global supertanker fleet to be loaded full of powdered limestone and set sail from West Coast ports headed for the North Pacific. EVERY DAY. For a hundred years. And that's not even getting into the environmental damage and - oh, wait, what was that word again? Oh yes, the sheer monetary cost of mining literally millions of tons of limestone per day, powdering it, and hauling it to ports to load it onto supertankers. And on top of all this, it turns out he didn't actually bother to study the probable effect on the ecosystems of the North Pacific resulting from dumping billions of tons of powdered limestone into it. That's not his field, you see.

We may be able to consider climate modification via solar shades and orbiting mirrors in the future. Maybe as soon as a hundred years from now, if we're lucky. maybe more like a thousand, if we're not. But at the moment there's no point in even talking about it, because it is multiple generations of technology beyond our capabilities. It's complete pie-in-the-sky from an engineering viewpoint, and talking about it only diverts our attention and efforts from what we can do.

(Like, for example, as you observe, replacing fossil fuel usage as much as we can with nuclear fission, solar and the like, continuing to work on fusion power, continuing development of high-temperature superconductors to reduce power lost as waste heat, etc, etc.)

[jordan179]

Orbital shades and mirrors are one of those ideas people love to talk about when they haven't done the math on the carbon load and the sheer COST of the necessary number of launches. Sure, it's a theoretically feasible way to modify the planetary climate ... and it's one that's utterly and totally infeasible as long as we rely on chemical rockets to put payloads into space. The mass ratios of any chemical-fueled reaction-drive booster are appalling. And it's not just putting a shade up there; there would be maintenance flights required to keep replenishing it.

Given the timescales involved in building enough infrastructure to make it possible, what makes you think I'm assuming continued reliance on chemical rockets as the primary launch systems? I think that by the end of this century we'll have at least one space elevator operating, and numerous catapults launchers, of various types, to handle routine mass-to-orbit cargo hauling.

Yes, I'm talking long-term. I think that before we have the capability to do much orbital-based climate modification, we will have replaced our fossil fuel power generation system with a nuclear fission system, and be well on our way to be replacing the nuclear fission system with one powered by nuclear fusion.

[x_eleven]

"It's in a similar vein to the atmospheric scientist who proposed carbon sequestration by dumping powdered limestone into the Pacific".

That "scientist" is an idiot. What is limestone? CaCO3, calcium carbonate. It has already reacted with CO2, and it won't react with more. Furthermore, calcium carbonate will dissolve in water, though not to a great extent, however, the amounts proposed will add considerable calcium carbonate to the water. Adding more CO3-2 ions will reduce the solubility of CO2. It's like trying to dissolve sodium chloride in concentrated hydrochloric acid. It just won't happen since there's no place for more Cl- ions.