methane

A Question For Next Debate: How Will the US Catch Up With the Clean Power Plan?

gregladen — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 07:04:26 +0000

A Question For Next Debate: How Will the US Catch Up With the Clean Power Plan?

The US is already behind in its agreed to commitment to clean power

A study just out in Nature climate Change suggests that the US is already behind in its commitments to reduce the use of fossil fuel as an energy source, and the concomitant release of climate-warming greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

The paper, by Jeffery Greenblatt and Max Wei, says:

Current intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs)are insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature change to between 1.5 and 2.0◦C above pre-industrial levels, so the effectiveness of existing INDCs will be crucial to further progress. Here we assess the likely range of US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2025 and whether the US’s INDC can be met, on the basis of updated historical and projected estimates. We group US INDC policies into three categories reflecting potential future policies, and model 17 policies across these categories. With all modelled policies included, the upper end of the uncertainty range overlaps with the 2025 INDC target, but the required reductions are not achieved using reference values. Even if all modelled policies are implemented, additional GHG reduction is probably required; we discuss several potential policies.

The authors note that we can reach the targets, if we do something about it soon. There is time. The main problem seems to be methane, emissions of which will be higher than previously estimated. Chris Mooney talked to the authors, reports that here, and notes:

Earlier this year, the U.S. EPA increased its estimate for how much methane is being emitted by the oil and gas sector, and by the U.S. overall, in recent years. The new study has more or less done something similar.

“We made some corrections to the 2005 and 2025 estimates for methane,” says Greenblatt. In particular, he said, in 2005 these changes added 400 million additional tons of carbon dioxide equivalents emitted as methane.

Greenblatt emphasized that assumptions of higher methane emissions aren’t the only reason that the U.S. could miss its goals, but that it’s a significant one. “An increasing amount of methane emissions is part of the story,” he said.

Another problem, of course, is the yahoos who live in conservative states, the self-interested fossil fuel industry, and presidential candidate Donald Trump. These nefarious actors are trying to force the US EPA Clean Power Plan out of existence because, well, I guess they want to see all of our children grow up in a post apocalyptic world.

John Upton at Climate Central notes:

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has embraced the fight against global warming started by President Obama. Republican nominee Donald Trump has vowed to end it, such as by disbanding the EPA and abandoning international commitments.

Polluting industries and conservative states are suing the EPA in an attempt to overturn its new power plant rules, arguing that the agency overstepped its legal boundaries. The rules haven’t taken effect yet, but they’re the linchpin of American climate policy.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear opening arguments in the case Tuesday, with an eventual ruling likely from the Supreme Court. A judicial appointment by the next president could tip the Supreme Court against or in favor of environmental regulations, such as the Clean Power Plan.

So, the question I'd love to see asked in the next Presidential Debate is this: "A recent peer reviewed study indicates that the US is not on target to meet the promised reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This is mainly due to methane release being greater than previously thought, but other factors matter as well. What will you do as President to get us back on track?"

More about the Clean Power Plan:

gregladen Tue, 09/27/2016 - 03:04

Tags

Climate Change

Election 2016

energy

Global Warming

"How Will the US Catch Up With the Clean Power Plan?" The answer is obvious: it will not. Perhaps you meant "How could the USA....." etc.

This cracks me up:

"Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has embraced the fight against global warming started by President Obama."

Yeah, started by Obama. LOL!

The clean power plan is not authorized under existing law.

This is being hashed out in the courts right now and it is very likely the act will be ruled invalid.

To do what the act wants you need a new law - which President Obama didn't get out of congress - so he instead tried to implement it with an EPA rule, which is probably invalid.

Bottom line - if you want to start regulating CO2 emissions, you need a new law - you cannot just use the old ones.

The clean power plan, no matter how great some think it is, is an invalid plan if it goes beyond the current EPA laws (which I think it does).

With CFC's, there was a treaty, which was ratified, which gave the EPA jurisdiction.

Here we have nothing to support the plan except a naked assertion of power.

We will see if this plan was a good idea once the courts are done ruling on its legality.

I think it would be much better to focus on building as many 4th generation nuclear power plants as quickly as possible to provide baseload power which doesn't produce CO2.

But that is just one person's opinion.

"Bottom line – if you want to start regulating CO2 emissions, you need a new law – you cannot just use the old ones."

Why did the hyper-conservative United States Supreme Court state the existing laws are enough?

I'm starting a company. I'll be located upwind of RickA's house. My company will have to release hydrogen cyanide gas as a byproduct, but since there's not a specific law regulating hydrogen cyanide emissions, it can't be controlled by an EPA rule, since RickA says that's "probably invalid".

So RickA will need a new law, and cannot just use the old ones to try to prevent my company from poisoning his family. (In this Congressional environment, good luck RickA. I think it would be much better for you to focus on investing in gas masks.)

"I’m starting a company. I’ll be located upwind of RickA’s house. My company will have to release hydrogen cyanide gas as a byproduct...."

And if RickA doesn't like he (i.e., he hates freedom), he can damn well leave the USA!

RickA will try to make the bullshit argument that HCN is toxic, and so the EPA can regulate its emissions, then make the claim that CO2 is "harmless" and therefore the EPA cannot regulate it. Of course, the truth is that both these gases will do him and his children harm -- just at different rates -- and the EPA's regulation of CO2 as a "toxic pollutant" is perfectly valid and within their purview.

The difference is that dealing with the CO2 threat imposes an "inconvenience" to him personally, so he'd rather cause millions to suffer rather than have to make a small compromise to his "cherished lifestyle".

RickA doesn't hate freedom, except to the extent that it encompasses anyone else's freedoms: Freedom from gun violence, freedom from environmental destruction, freedom to have a life in the future, etc.

Desertphile said "Why did the hyper-conservative United States Supreme Court state the existing laws are enough?"

They didn't.

What they did was rule that the EPA had to decide if CO2 was a pollutant. The EPA ruled it was. This will be overturned at some point - because the EPA relied on other peoples science, when by law they are supposed to do their own.

Also, CO2 is not a pollutant as that term is used by the EPA - in that it doesn't cause medical health harm to humans. Like lead or mercury, etc.

The EPA might as well start regulating O2 or H20 or Nitrogen.

Regulating CO2 because it is increasing sea level is not what the clean air act was designed for. What one president did by executive order, another can undo.

If you want to regulate greenhouse gas emissions you need a new law or a ratified treaty.

Eventually the courts will undo the clean power plan or a future president will undo it, or undo the EPA endangerment finding as to CO2.

Which is why you need a new law if you want to regulate something we all breathe out, and plants breathe in.

"in that it doesn’t cause medical health harm to humans."

I don't know whether you are as stupid as you seem or whether you believe that if you tell an incredibly bold lie you won't get called on it. Despicable, in either case.

http://www.blm.gov/style/medialib/blm/wy/information/NEPA/cfodocs/howel…

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/co-010908.html

it is no wonder you lean libertarian: a "philosophy" that has nothing but disdain for education, honesty, and critical thought would die if it weren't for people like you.

the EPA relied on other peoples science

There is only one "science". All else is opinion, fantasy, dishonesty, psychosis, etc.

You don't get to redefine "science" just because it disagrees with your "opinions" and desired outcomes.

Reality: You take what it dishes out. You have no alternative, ESPECIALLY if you don't like it. You change your ideology instead.

RickA shares that particular ignorance with Christopher C. Horner, who wrote in 2007, "If the hydrocarbon fuel is incompletely burned, it can give off poisonous carbon monoxide. Ideally, hydrocarbons are transformed entirely into energy and the odorless gas carbon dioxide. (The distinction between CO—poisonous carbon monoxide—and CO2—benign carbon dioxide—is one lost on my hatemailers who urge me to asphyxiate myself with the latter.")

See page 69 of The politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.

Indeed, it is conceivable that a factory emitting HCN could be less lethal downwind than a power plant releasing CO2, although it requires a very unlikely set of circumstances. That sort of CO2 lethality, AFAIK, remains the province of nature, in cases like Lake Nyos.

"...as stupid as seems..."

I think we tend to underestimate the role of social intelligence in the ability to form reasoned arguments outside of one's personal silo.

There's probably a reason why someone would gravitate to and perhaps do well in engineering and then patent law while being completely inexpert at handling the lines between rhetoric and logic outside of those areas.

RickA seems to think that since the best he can do is pull ideological 'opinions' out of his arse end, the same must be true for everybody. It's a singular lack of the kind of imagination required for perspective taking needed in many fields.

Given the field that RickA is in (and which is true for politics as well), the matter-of-course distortion of "truth" and "reality" that is perpetuated in order to "win" in the course of one's pursuit of self-satisfaction should not be surprising.

What passes for "logic" in his workaday world is "whatever I can get away with arguing sufficiently persuasively" to get some type of official agreement. He then gets money and and his ego strokes. (Maybe he gets a banana, too.)

RickA's intellectual stumbling block is that he applies this same "logic" to everything in his life, including his morals. (I soooo wanna see him try to argue his way through dem Pearly Gates. Ha ha)

So it's really not surprising that RickA believes that if he has a strong enough / long enough argument about why his opinion of science and reality should prevail, he will actually "win" and get to define scientific truths for us.

Ha ha. No.

"the US is already behind in its commitments to reduce the use of fossil fuel as an energy source"

The United States has made no commitment. It is possible that a delegate appointed by Barack Obama made a commitment that, unfortunately, is not binding on a few hundred milion Americans.

How about asking whether or not we're going to stop Fukushima and clean up the Pacific Ocean?

http://tinyurl.com/zf97gm4

ron: "How about asking whether or not we’re going to stop Fukushima and clean up the Pacific Ocean?"

Huh? Fukushima has been stopped. As for cleaning the Pacific Ocean, there are huge engineering problems with removing the trash (mostly plastic) from the Pacific.

"http://tinyurl.com/zf97gm4"

Idiot. What the bloody anal fuck does NOAA's tsunami sea level graph have to do with radiation? Good fucking grief.

ron suggests that someone else ask this question; not him of course: "How about asking whether or not we’re going to stop Fukushima and clean up the Pacific Ocean?"

Should it happen that someone asks this question then I'll point out that there is no "we". Also, Fukushima is a city if I remember right and I am curious how Ron proposes to "stop" a city, or clean up the Pacific Ocean, or what constitutes "clean" (whales pooping in it might not be considered clean). If he wants to do that, well, get out there and do it.

The United States has made no commitment. It is possible that a delegate appointed by Barack Obama made a commitment that, unfortunately, is not binding on a few hundred milion Americans.

Well, it has ratified, and there isn't far to go before the Paris accord goes into force. At which point, I think, the US commitment becomes binding on the US administration.

Let me explain this to our British friends.

"White House senior adviser Brian Deese said the president has the legal authority to ratify the accord without the two-thirds Senate vote required for treaties. He said the pact negotiated by 195 countries in December is merely an executive agreement."

It is not a treaty and it is not binding on the United States. The agreement is between Barack Obama and whoever wishes to make agreements with him.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/29/obama-will-bypass-senat…

Only the Senate can ratify a treaty.

Obama says he is doing it himself - but I believe that is not permitted under the Constitution.

The way Obama is doing it, the treaty is not binding on the USA.

Rickasshole: "Only the Senate can ratify a treaty."

Who claimed otherwise?

Obama says he is doing it himself – but I believe that is not permitted under the Constitution.

Idiot.

The way Obama is doing it, the treaty is not binding on the USA.

Is this official? Is there a government source confirming this?

BBD:

No - this is just me opining based on my knowledge as a lawyer.

Desertphile:

BBD said it was ratified.

Michael 2:

Your explanation is also for Americans.

My comments were assuming this was a treaty, which I now see it is not - it is an executive agreement.

Executive agreements are never binding and do not have the force of law.

RickA writes "My comments were assuming this was a treaty, which I now see it is not – it is an executive agreement."

Yes. The treaty bird was never going to fly; so it is an agreement with the executive branch which in a few months will become a new executive that may or may not honor this agreement, but it is not a "binding" in the sense that BBD thinks the United States has agreed to something.

But it is a lot more than nothing. If you google it you will see that nearly every news story portrays it as a treaty, trying for a "fait accompli" in the minds of the public, as if not only the science but the debate is settled.

Thanks for the link.
It continues:

“The president will use his authority that has been used in dozens of executive agreements in the past to join and formally deposit our instrument of acceptance, and therefore put our country as a party to the Paris Agreement,” Mr. Deese said at a White House press conference.

He noted that both presidents announced in March that they “would seek to formally join the Paris Agreement in 2016.”

“That’s a process that is quite well-established in our existing legal system and in the context of international agreements and international arrangements,” Mr. Deese said. “There is a category of them that are treaties that require advice and consent from the Senate, but there’s a broad category of executive agreements where the executive can enter into those agreements without that advice and consent.”

Then there's a collective howl from the usual denier claque (Ebell, Morano, Nova, Inhofe) claiming that this won't result in a legally-binding agreement. But these people lie constantly so it seems at least plausible that they are lying about this now.

Is there no official government source supporting the claim that ratification is "between Barack Obama and whoever wishes to make agreements with him"?

That's what I asked for. I couldn't give a rat's arse what the liars are howling.

BBD writes "I couldn’t give a rat’s arse what the liars are howling."

On the contrary. You follow such howlings and so do I; for you cannot be sure who is lying and who is telling the truth so we listen to all of it (but not perhaps in equal amounts) until it becomes a bit more clear who is telling the truth.

But in the end what matters is whether a legislature believes one way or another, or an armed force believes one way or another, for in the end it is guns and butter; mostly guns, that decide whether the United States is going to decarbonize unwillingly.

The Executive can make any agreement he wants; the problems then start with the House of Representatives deciding to pay for Obama's adventures (or not).

As your stories eventually reveal, and you are right about liars but they seem mostly to be the "media", if this is not a treaty then Congress is not bound to it and neither, therefore, the people of the United States. The President of the United States neither neither king nor god; the principle ruler of the people of the United States is Congress. President Obama is merely the CEO of the government; he rules government but not the people.

I suppose for discussion a comparison of your Prime Minister versus the President of the United States. My understanding of your PM may be as good, or weak, as yours of the US President.

My understanding of the PM is that he's still a member of parliament; chosen from among his peers. The corresponding position in the United States would be Speaker of the House or so it seems to me. Now in the US, Speaker of the House isn't that big a deal; he's not the Head of State, BUT as the weilder of the Purse quite influential.

The President of the United States is the Head of State, but in truth he's simply the chief executive and governs government itself, not citizens. There's a very large number of things he would do but isn't permitted; and he pushes the envelope regularly trying things that he's not permitted.

For instance, no law allows him to regulate carbon dioxide, but as he is the CEO of government, he can decree that one of his agencies label carbon dioxide as "pollutant" and suddenly it comes under the purview of a law Congress intended for dirty air and dirty water. It's a word game and fairly effective since a government agency can simply re-define any word to be any thing and suddenly it is in compliance with the letter of the law, although clearly not with the spirit of the law.

This necessitates Congress to issue a new law more finely tuned to their intentions hoping that a rogue president cannot twist their words. Good luck with that!

But it seems your Prime Minster has a lot more power insofar as being head of parliament AND head of government; all neatly wrapped into one package with no "checks and balances" to stop really bad ideas.

First, there's the compulsion of international visibility, which is not easily dismissed. Second, If the science-denying right obstructs US participation in Paris Accord commitments, it will simply be deepening its grave with its own hands. As climate impacts on US citizens increase in frequency and severity, they will, of course, remember who vetoed action.

It didn't have to be this way, but my sense is that the right signed its death warrant years ago by pursing a policy of science denial. But stupidity has consequences, every time. Just watch the Donald.

BBD writes "my sense is that the right signed its death warrant years ago by pursing a policy of science denial."

There is no "right"; whatever it is (a blend of various not-lefts) are merely the atheists of scientism. As such this coalition of not-lefts regularly morphs as it reacts to the left; drawing in and spitting out various factions.

There is no death warrant nor anyone to serve it but violent metaphors seem to be nearly obligatory for leftists.

Real, honest-to-gosh science is loved by some of the not-lefts. No hero worship. Reproducible measurements. The ultimate in argument settling power.

The left is not really all that interested in science. I cannot think of a single leftist in my extended family (and nearly all of them are leftists) that could name so much as four elements from the periodic table. They tend to be more interested in social phenomena and recreational behaviors traditionally considered harmful or immoral. The not-lefts include those more interested in human reproduction and the survival of the species in that manner; where the left tends to be the empathetic element necessary for societies to form.

So (figuratively speaking) the left went to Walmart, bought some stickers that say "science" and stick it on things they wish society to accept. There was a time when the pope's imprimatur served the same purpose.

By happy coincidence, the Paris Agreement crossed the 55% emissions threshold this very day and will go into force in 30 days time:

With today’s European Parliament approval of the Paris Agreement ratification – in the presence of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the United Nation's Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the President of COP 21 Ségolène Royal – the last hurdle is cleared. The political process for the European Union to ratify the Agreement is concluded.

[...]

So far, 62 parties, accounting for almost 52 % of global emissions have ratified the Paris Agreement. The Agreement will enter into force 30 days after at least 55 parties, representing at least 55% of global emissions have ratified. The EU ratification and deposit will cross the 55% emission threshold and therefore trigger the entry into force of the Paris Agreement.

If the climate-denying right goes against what is effectively the rest of the world, the climate-denying right will be buried.

BBD writes "and will go into force in 30 days time"

There's the key word: Force!

Maybe.

"the climate-denying right will be buried."

By whom?

For a man that seems to admire science you could and ought to be more precise. I doubt anyone denies "climate".

So you might consider "Some of the people that doubt some of the claims made by some climate scientists are likely to be disappointed by the political outcomes likely to exist in the future."

<blockquote.There is no “right”; whatever it is (a blend of various not-lefts) are merely the atheists of scientism.

Typical rubbish from you. The right is the right and accepting the scientific evidence is *not* scientism. Do you actually know what this word means? It seems not. Either that, or you deliberately misrepresent the situation with the dishonesty typical of the science-denying right.

BBD writes "The right is the right"

And blue is blue. I understand tautology. However, as used in this immediate discussion, the right, while being right, is not a useful description. That is why you chose to write "the right is the right" rather than something more descriptive (and, in your case, probably inaccurate; so stick with the safe tautology).

"and accepting the scientific evidence is not scientism."

To become a Catholic, one of the first things you accept is the Trinity. It isn't yet an "ism" until it becomes a philosophy and you start to make non-related (non-scientific) decisions based on that acceptance.

For over a thousand years the Catholic church was the "science" of its day; there was no other science and serious consequences existed for suggesting otherwise.

The Catholics held, and still hold, a dominion greater than that of the Roman army. The army controlled physical assets; the Catholics control minds. Today, "science" is the religion that controls peoples' minds; but as with God, science does not speak -- people speak for science/god and it is those people that become the prophets of doom. As with various religions, a charismatic and skilled public speaker moves public opinion and belief. That is why the "97 percent" meme was created by a psychologist rather than a scientist. People may or may not believe Kieth Briffa, but huge numbers of people subscribe to charismatic Al Gore (a political "scientist") and Stephan Lewandowsky: Shapers of the Message.

I love science; but it is not my religion. You see, I already have a religion and thus science cannot displace it. But I write as poorly as you; "science" is not a thing. It is a container for claims; some of which are more likely true than others.

Your acceptance seems to be automatic. It is for you as it is with a Good Catholic; what the pope decrees must be true. It is not an option to believe *some* claims of Catholicism and not others while remaining a "good Catholic".

*I* can certainly believe some claims and not others because I have made no claim of being a good Catholic.

I can also believe some scientific claims and not others because I make no claim of being a "good science believer" or acolyte or disciple of "science".

It is this quality of moral virtue being signalled by your acceptance of certain tenets of "science" that makes it an "ism". I see a catechism of science, a priesthood of science, philosophers of science, acolytes and evangelists of science. In what way is this NOT an "ism"?

"dishonesty typical of the science-denying right."

You can do better than that. Even WOW does better than that. Review DailyKOS and Huffpo for some epithetical ideas. Be creative and invent entirely new epithets for people you've never met but wish to deprecate in some way.

30 days.

By whom?

The rest of us.

For a man that seems to admire science you could and ought to be more precise. I doubt anyone denies “climate”.

Away with your nonsense now.

BBD writes: "The rest of us."

For whom do you speak?

Does anyone else on Planet Earth know you have arrogated to speak/write on their behalf?

Probably not. You speak for you. While it is plain to see that a hive exists (many, actually) it is not clear that you are the appointed speaker for it. Still, I've seen the Borg episodes on Star Trek and realize that any of the Borg speak for the entire hive since they have only one mind among them; that of the queen, but there's an emergent property; a collective mind that is created by millions of mini-minds and what this collective mind things tends to drift a bit since it isn't anchored.

On a slightly different note, I really do enjoy and appreciate your (BBD's) intelligence and willingness to discuss things. I am fascinated by the hive mind, a thing I see exists and wonder sometimes what it would be like to be enveloped by it. The hive never chose me and I never chose the hive. But as with bees, they have a fine and instinctive sense of who belongs and who does not.

People, or drone bees such as Wow, sense I do not belong in this hive and immediately go on the attack (as he supposes). DailyKOS is an example of a hive; if they sense you do not belong then the banhammer is swift.

So what is interesting to me is not so much the existence of hive, which is obvious, but how its members determine acceptance and what is the optimum size of a hive steering committee.

I see exactly the same phenomena at work with significant consequences of employment to fail to grasp the existence of these little cliques, cabals, gangs, cohorts.

An emergent phenomenon, "groupthink", arises and starts to control the creativity and thought processes of its members. This is very bad in situations calling for creativity. The hive mind is not designed for creativity; it is designed for conformity.

I think it will interesting to see if an energy policy based on executive actions (executive orders, executive agreements), will work - or be a waste of time.

We know passing laws "works". But the clean energy plan is under attack in court and may be struck down as not enabled by any law (such as the clean air law). The executive agreement is not binding - and it will be interesting to see how that plays out over the next few years.

"Today, “science” is the religion that controls peoples’ mindsbut as with God, science does not speak — people speak for science/god and it is those people that become the prophets of doom. "

Only a fool asserts that science is a religion.

As demonstrated by the person who made that post.

And stop with the lie that you appreciate science: you've repeatedly demonstrated you do anything but appreciate (or even have a basic understanding of it).

dean writes "Only a fool asserts that science is a religion."

Fortunately you are not the definer of the English language. I wonder how many fools therefore exist?

Google "science is a religion": About 263,000 results

Science and religion have a common purpose: Describe the world and our place or roles within it. Both are container words. You cannot point to science and you cannot point to religion; neither exists of itself but instead are words that describe a class of things considered "scientific" or "religious" and both words are remarkably difficult to define.

Here's a pretty good list of 10 similarities
[http]://listverse.com/2012/12/15/top-10-reasons-science-is-another-religion/

1. Science Requires Faith.

5. Science Has Its Own Priesthood.

8. Science Reveres Its Own Saints

9. It Casts Out Heretics and Persecutes all Other Religions

"And stop with the lie that you appreciate science: you’ve repeatedly demonstrated you do anything but appreciate (or even have a basic understanding of it)."

Telling me what to do or not do is not science; it is religion. Judging me is not science, it is religion.

Followup to Dean.

Consider faith in science. When I measure voltage, I have faith that my DMM is portraying the actual voltage. I also have faith that my understanding of voltage is useful and meaningful.

I have faith that things I cannot see, such as radio waves, actually exist and can be produced and controlled in useful ways.

I have faith that the PN junction of a diode behaves as described by people more expert than me so that I can use diodes without having to make my own.

I have faith that the existence of cone shells in rock means that long ago animals lived in those cone shells and the rock was mud, and under the sea, whereas now it is at 7000 feet elevation above sea level.

II have faith in various dating methods, particular radiocarbon dating and geological dating methods.

So I have a lot of faith in science; but that faith would not exist if I did not have sufficient knowledge to create faith.

Knowledge comes first then faith! It is so with my religion as well. Knowledge came first.

Excessive faith in science leads to fraud. I've been approached by a neighbor trying to sell me a water ionizer. Water doesn't ionize, but how many people know that? I doubt he was deliberately trying to defraud me, he believed in his product and uses it himself not realizing it is a fraud.

I've recently (last week) seen this device that presumably scans your body, senses vibrations and displays on a computer screen vivid images of blood cells, organs and so on as if a pair of headphones could actually do that.

[http]://www.templeofwellness.com/diagnostic.html

[http]://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/how-one-mans-invention-is-part-of-a-g…

Generalized science knowledge (broad based) is good protection from these scams; but highly specialized scientific training confers no special resistance to fraud outside of your specialty; and might actually make you more vulnerable since you suppose yourself superior, smart, and invulnerable.

Faith in science is misplaced. Science is about knowledge, not faith. What you know is not the entirety of science. No one person can know "science"; you are compelled to believe in the rest of it if you are a believer (and it seems you are) or skeptical about the rest of it if you are a skeptic (as I am), or say a "pox on all their houses" if you are a denier. But a denier is also vulnerable to whatever is the opposite of science. All people embrace something (in my opinion, obviously) and if it isn't "science" it is going to be something else. But how do you embrace "science"? You cannot; you can embrace a particular discipline, maybe two or three -- and then believe the rest.

m2: "Excessive faith in science leads to fraud."

That is an excellent example of what Dr. Mann described as "bad faith debate." The sub-sub-sub-genius "Michael 2" cannot refute observed reality no matter how desperately he wants to, so he wants to change the subject while pretending he did not do so. This is why science communicators should ignore these cultists.

Desertphile writes "no matter how desperately he wants to"

Why do you assume I am a "he"?

You can do better than that.

No, 'exhibits dishonesty typical of the science-denying right' is fine.

BBD wrote "No, ‘exhibits dishonesty typical of the science-denying right’ is fine."

I suppose you proofread your own writing, too. ;-)

In other words, of course you think your words are fine, you wrote them! I'm suggesting they aren't very effective, in addition to having no meaning. You can make them sharp and articulate while still having no meaning.

The meaning is crystal clear, M2, and your pretense that it isn't demonstrates the problem perfectly.

BBD writes "The meaning is crystal clear, M2, and your pretense that it isn’t demonstrates the problem perfectly."

Hvað segir þú?

Those words are crystal clear to me, but not perhaps to you. Even if you google translate you will obtain only the translation of the three words but not perhaps what those three mean when strung together in that order.

Effective communication requires clarity, which I interpret as meaning a lack of ambiguity so that it is not possible for me to be uncertain what the words themselves are saying; but that may still not be what you meant.

That aspect is correctness and exists on two levels: One level is whether I correctly understood your meaning, and the other is whether your words are correct, as in having made a true claim.

So let us examine this supposedly clear statement of yours.

"exhibits dishonesty typical of the science-denying right"

The immediate unclarity or ambiguity is the adjective or limiting clause "science-denying". Do you intent to limit your criticism to that subset of the right that denies science? Or is the clause descriptive, a way for you to assert that all of the right is science denying? Perhaps it is simply your way of defining an attribute of the right; whereas my definitions will almost certainly differ.

Your factual problems start with "exhibiting dishonesty". How exactly is that done? How do you discern between people that (1) are mistaken, (2) know the truth but say otherwise? Either way, their words are identical; but the dishonest person knows the truth and chooses to say otherwise. This requires mind reading ability and I doubt you possess this skill.

If your focus is on error, then it is not necessary or useful to invoke "right"; as if science-denying LEFT is exempt from your criticism, and yet, that is very likely exactly the case. Snowflakes, GMO opponents, and so on; all members of the left, deny science. But as they are on your team, you have expressely excused them.

That part of your commentary does seem to be clear. Left good, right bad!

Now then, for the right to exhibit dishonesty, they must know the truth; and that is a fine thing right there. I am glad that you believe the right possesses the truth; for without it they would simply be mistaken, not dishonest.

So the real problem seems to be honesty. Do you agree? All this about "right" is superfluous, science-denying is virtue signaling, and your real concern is about honesty.

Blah, blah, blah.

BBD writes "Blah, blah, blah."

Now that was meaningless; or was it? Where one blah would suffice, you used three! That's probably significant. Maybe it will become clear as I read the rest of the comments.

Groupthink, scientism, science-as-religion, the hive, hive mind, the Left

See where it gets you, M2?

BBD writes "See where it gets you, M2?"

In front of a computer.

Science and religion have a common purpose

No they don't. Science seeks to understand nature as it is; religion is an arbitrary, fictitious narrative.

BBD writes "Science seeks to understand nature as it is; religion is an arbitrary, fictitious narrative."

That is how you define those words; seeking to find differences rather than similarities; which is okay since differences do exist as otherwise we wouldn't have two words for one thing, neither word being a thing anyway.

Religion also seeks to understand nature as it is; but extends the scope beyond that which can be measured by a digital voltmeter (as an example of instrumentation confined to "matter").

As it is used, science provides the foundation for social policy, but so does religion.

Science evolved from religion; it is a different fork of a common ancestor. If it can be measured it is science. Thus science becomes a subset of religion; that portion of "what exists" that can be measured with a manufactured instrument. An advantage of science is that it is difficult (but certainly not impossible) to argue measurements.

Where a thing cannot be measured it is easy to argue; hence we have two main lines of theory in physics but thousands of lines of theory in religion.

It is so with my religion as well. Knowledge came first.

No, it didn't. You are either lying or confused.

BBD writes "No, it didn’t. You are either lying or confused."

I have written accurately with little chance of confusion. Knowledge precedes faith. Probably in all cases for every person but certainly in my case.

It is your dogmatism that blinds you. You have such strong faith in your belief system that you cannot accept that my experience is different.

You exemplify a point I am trying to make -- dogmatism. Your mind is shut, your eyes are closed. Your cup is full, nothing more can be added. To the extent I feel emotions about other people, for you I feel pity.

"Google “science is a religion”: About 263,000 results"

Thousands of people believe vaccines cause autism - they take it on faith. Science shows that there is no link

Thousands (probably more by an order of magnitude) believe the earth is only a few thousand years old. Science shows that is not the case.

Many people believe science is a religion, with prophets and has a priesthood (nope) and saints - saints as used in the religous world.

The people who believe vaccines cause autism have no evidence to support their stance.
The people who believe the earth to be a few thousand years old have no evidence to support their stance.
The people who equate science to religion have no evidence to support their stance.

You can say people in each of those groups are ignorant about the nature of the things they believe, or they are lying, or both.

You are in the "both" camp: you have no clue about the functioning of science (or statistics, not surprising for an engineer) and are willing to lie about many other things.

That is how you define those words;

FFS not this again. You do this every single time your rubbish gets called out. The meaning is unequivocal and you can stop pretending otherwise right now.

Religion also seeks to understand nature as it is;

No it doesn't. Science and religion do not have a common purpose and you were wrong the first time.

"Science evolved from religion"

Your monumental stupidity and lack of knowledge of the meanings of words means there is no hope of you ever being a rational person.

dean wrote "there is no hope of you ever being a rational person."

What a relief! Still, it is unlikely we use the word "rational" in the same way. A rational person, to me, does not deprecate other persons -- there is no profit in doing so. It does not improve breeding opportunities or personal security to insult one's opponents and total strangers. Perhaps I have been mistaken all these years and insulting other people is exactly the way to get ahead; but only in certain cultures (hives) of which I am already not a part.

I see you as a person so common on blog comment sections that hasn't really got much to offer and substitutes insulting others.

Science represents a shedding of magical and superstitious thinking in favor of evidence and logIc. So in a sense, yes, astronomy grew out of astrology in the same way that some of us grew out of other childish behaviors and ideas.

Obstreperous Applesauce writes "Science represents a shedding of magical and superstitious thinking"

That is not its purpose. It can be a consequence but not the intended consequence. I have no difficulty possessing scientific AND magical thinking. Very likely so does everyone else here.

"in favor of evidence and logIc."

Evidence foremost. Logic, by itself, is merely a method that can work on evidence *and* magical thinking. Science is thus well suited where evidence is abundant, and useless where evidence is not abundant.

For instance, it is trivial to invoke logic and God; if there's an omnipotent, omniscient God, and he wished us to think a certain combination of things, then that is what we would think, for that is the meaning of omnipotent. In such logic, everything that exists is proof of God since you can reverse the logic (induction) and arrive at "God" as the ultimate unknown cause of life, the universe and everything.

Logic usually (maybe always) contains a conditional, something that must be assumed to be true but is not known to be true. Then you work through the process and out the other end pops a conclusion.

"So in a sense, yes, astronomy grew out of astrology in the same way that some of us grew out of other childish behaviors and ideas."

Once again you insert your prejudice into a circumstance. Astrology was never childish; it was taken with utmost gravity by many ancient cultures. Stonehenge being an example and rather a lot of ancient Sumeria relied upon astrology. From that we get the 360 degree circle, the 60 minute hour, things like that.

There is no "growing out of" astrology; it is a preference thing. If you prefer to know where stars actually are, what they are really doing, why they exist; then you turn to astronomy. It profits little and that's probably why astrologers outnumber astronomers. If my mother was still alive I'd invite you and her to argue your cases. Hers is rich with fantasy and purpose; yours is pretty much confined to nuclear processes of hydrogen fusion and the occasional blast into space of heavier atoms. Her astrology gave her happiness; how much happiness do you obtain from astronomy? If some, good for you.

But it also deprived her of liberty or free will since she believed her behaviors each day were governed by stars and planets. To me that is the pinnacle of absurdity to suppose some star 400 million light years away had the slightest impact on my choice of ice cream.

But you understand my point better than the remaining persons here; Chemistry grew out of Alchemy. Science has evolved but principally through "forking" since astrology still exists and I suspect so does alchemy and some ancient religions are making a comeback which I don't understand but probably relates to failed expectations of "science" as if it also was just another magical thinking designed to create purpose and happiness. It doesn't. Happiness is irrational; you obtain it through irrational means.

I have written accurately with little chance of confusion. Knowledge precedes faith.

This was bollocks yesterday and is still bollocks today. You do not know if God exists or not. Therefore your belief is an act of faith. Okay, you are confused, not lying, but you still have your head up your arse on the epistemology.

It is your dogmatism that blinds you.

No, that's you.

You have such strong faith in your belief system that you cannot accept that my experience is different.

Because you are confused (see above).

for you I feel pity.|

GFY.

BBD writes "GFY."

Thanks, not that I needed your permission to do so ;-)

I love you, too. My world would be less without a BBD in it. To think I have to correspond with someone on the other side of the planet to have serious discussions about things. The internet is still amazing to me.

BBD writes "You do not know if God exists or not."

Sure I know; he's you! Your own omnipotence in knowing what I know and don't know is matched only by God and no one else. While your thoughts may be echoed by others here, they have the good sense not to pretend to their own omniscience.

I don't care to argue the particulars; what I know for sure becomes mere words in a blizzard of words when it crosses the Atlantic arriving in your computer.

" A rational person, to me, does not deprecate other persons — there is no profit in doing so."

You are mistaking my intent. Your many comments have shown you to be an idiot, a person who denies science and lies about it, and who doesn't show any willingness to either understand complex issues or take responsibility for the grossly incorrect things you repeatedly say.

Those aren't insults, those are facts.

dean writes "Those aren’t insults, those are facts."

Why do you believe a thing cannot be both? All good insults ARE facts (duh). It is the tone and the purpose that turns a fact into an insult; I could precisely identify the color of your hair and turn it into an insult.

But we are discussing rational human beings. What is your rational reason for spending a few minutes of your life issuing insults to anyone, particularly a name on a screen?

in a group setting where mates and food is scarce, you insult others as a way to direct the animosity of the group and kill or exile the designated target thus leaving more food and mates for the remainder. You repeat the process until hopefully you are the only one left with all of the food and mates.

It is your instinct to keep doing this even when no conceivable benefit can accrue to you.

So, I invite to you provide the rational reason for your behavior.

Sure I know; he’s you! Your own omnipotence in knowing what I know and don’t know is matched only by God and no one else. While your thoughts may be echoed by others here, they have the good sense not to pretend to their own omniscience.

I do not claim omnipotence, M2. I simply rely on your own written statements:

Knowledge comes first then faith! It is so with my religion as well. Knowledge came first.

Since you cannot know that God exists then you are... epistemologically confused.

BBD writes "I do not claim omnipotence, M2."

Well that's something!

"I simply rely on your own written statements"

It seems that you do not.

"Since you cannot know that God exists..."

Says the omniscient BBD :-)

I see that I used "omnipotence" where I ought to have used "omniscience".

The only person that knows what I know is me. Not you. It is irrational for you to presume what I know and do not know. It would be better for you to simply assert disbelief; that would be rational.

M2's capacities in reading comprehension, reasoning, and general knowledge are very poor. Factor in his lack of intellectual integrity, his dysfunctional need for attention and control, and his infatuation with the sound of his own voice, and you have someone with whom it's a complete waste of time to engage. He's basically just a wind-up, bullshite engine.

IMO, FWIW, DNFTT.

----

M2,
Just so you know, I check in here on the comments of dean, BBD, and others. What I post are notes intended for them. I barely even skim the comments you address to me-- if I read them at all. The rest of your stuff I now simply ignore.

OA writes "The rest of your stuff I now simply ignore."

As should they. It is disruptive of the hive. But as you can see, their reasons for being here are not your reasons for being here. You wish to tell them how to behave, they, in turn, wish to tell me how to behave.

"M2’s capacities in reading comprehension, reasoning, and general knowledge are very poor. "

It even acknowledges that fact itself. Yet it won't stop proclaiming fact or truth despite this self-admitted failure of not understanding anything.

This is why it is a "student" of Brad Keyes, not See Noevo or Chelle (though I'm not definite about the latter...).

Wow writes "Yet it won’t stop proclaiming fact or truth..."</I.

Yep. It is a game. Behavior that persists is being rewarded. What you get out of it is feelings of superiority. What I get out of it is increased understanding of human nature of the more instinctively motivated instances of the species.

“Google “science is a religion”: About 263,000 results”

And google science is not a religion, about 141,000,000 results.

If proof by google count were valid, the conclusion is plain.

Wow writes "If proof by google count were valid, the conclusion is plain."

Indeed it is. Thanks for playing!

But let's test your assertion. Perhaps you forgot the quotes.

"And google science is not a religion, about 141,000,000 results."

With quotes: About 200,000 results

I win!

#68. +1
What Desertphile said!
That's it in a nutshell: Bad faith.

Obstreperous Applesauce wrote "What Desertphile said! That’s it in a nutshell: Bad faith."

I see that you are still ignoring me ;-)

Now, back on topic. These past few comments should illustrate why the United States is unlikely to "catch up" to goals a few persons set for everyone else. People are not the same. Really, really not the same. The Unitted States in particular was populated from all other nations and self-selected because the ancestors of Americans did not fit into the societies of Europe primarily.

Australia is somewhat similar but drawn primarily only from England.

The result is that insufficient number of "sheep" exist in the United States for a small cabal to control. You can do that in Europe, but not the US. Not yet. Coming soon to a theater near you however.

YET ANOTHER FINE EXAMPLE:

----------

Michael 2
October 6, 2016

Desertphile writes “no matter how desperately he wants to”

Why do you assume I am a “he”?

Desertphile writes "YET ANOTHER FINE EXAMPLE"

Be grateful I am here to give you something to talk about :-)

Since there is no empirical evidence for (or against) the existence of God, you cannot know that God exists. Your assertion that it does is an act of faith (look up the definition of faith, M2).

Stop posting bollocks.

BBD writes "Since there is no empirical evidence for (or against) the existence of God, you cannot know that God exists."

I see. Do you know what you had for supper yesterday? I will assume "yes". Is there any empirical evidence of it NOW? Probably not. You could perhaps produce some empty packaging, but that is proof only of empty packaging. It is evidence of a meal, but proof only of packaging.

Therefore while you know what you ate you cannot prove it to anyone else. This may be surprisingly normal; how little of everything you know can actually be proved to another person.

I have asked many times but I'll probably die of boredom or old age before an atheist answers the simple question of what exactly would you accept as "empirical evidence" for God? While we are at it, perhaps a definition of God would be appropriate since some are more likely than others. Perhaps a definition is itself not appropriate; it's just a word used to describe the "things not seen" for which evidence exists.

I have in the past used a metaphor of two fish, one arguing for the existence of "water" and the other mocking the first. The one asserting "water" is curious and scientific; accepting the challenge of proving the thing that is everywhere present. The other's purpose in life is to mock. It hardly matters what or who.

"Your assertion that it does is an act of faith (look up the definition of faith, M2)."

Yes, let us look up the definition.

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." [https]://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+11%3A1&version=KJV

The evidence of things not seen. The packaging from your last meal is evidence, the meal itself is no longer visible. Scars on a lightning rod are evidence of a thing no longer seen and certainly not presentable to other people.

Well, he can't logically know, but he can have belief. There's people out there who KNOW they're Napoleon. They're wrong, but hell, they know different, because they're bloody lunatics.

HOWEVER, what M2 is trying to pretend is somehow that faith that makes you "know" god is real is the same as evidence that lets you "know" that electrons all have the same electrostatic charge. Which is, as BBD says, bollocks.

After all, where would M2 be without the pointless lies to promote more argument for the moronic troll to prattle around in self-resplendant idiocy?!?!

Wow, straining at gnats, writes "There’s people out there who KNOW they’re Napoleon"

Likely so. "There are 9,706 people in the U.S. with the first name Napoleon."
[http]://howmanyofme.com/people/Napoleon_Harris/

"They’re wrong, but hell, they know different, because they’re bloody lunatics."

No, they are simply named Napoleon.

"After all, where would M2 be without..."

No matter where I go, there I am.

Wow writes "Well, he can’t logically know, but he can have belief."

Trivially true. I do not know things by logic. Logic starts with what you know, massages it in various ways, to argue for the existence of a thing you don't know. But logic is not the foundation of what you know to start with.

i believe what I know. The alternative seems to be to NOT believe what I know, and that seems strange to me. Not impossible, but strange. Many of your arguments seem strange.

Knowledge implies or includes belief, but belief does not imply (or exclude) knowledge.

Logic is useful in understanding faith. You start with something you know, and through the processes of logic arrive at something you don't know, but have faith "must be so" because of the proper application of logic to knowledge.

Therefore while you know what you ate you cannot prove it to anyone else.

A forensic pathologist could confirm the details.

The problem here is that you are flat-out wrong (again) and (again) are too dishonest to admit it in good faith.

As a consequence, your discourse is worthless.

BBD writes "A forensic pathologist could confirm the details."

To some degree, yes, by inspecting residue if any exists.

But that merely moves the point of faith from what you claim to be true to that of the forensic pathologist making claims.

If he saved some samples, then you can inspect the samples, but now you have the problem of having faith that it came from you.

As you can see, it is likely that all people operate on faith regularly; using some things known for sure, by you, to anchor many things accepted on faith.

I sense that we are converging on understanding and that you assume that I am more opponent of your beliefs than is actually the case.

Reducing gas emissions...from cows

dr. dolittle — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 00:14:39 +0000

Reducing gas emissions...from cows

No joke: California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill to regulate 'gas' emissions from cows along with other sources of greenhouse gases, of course. According to an interview from NPR, dairy cows are the number one producer of methane in California. The problem with methane is that it is a major component of smog, although according to scientists at the University of California Santa Barbara, it is not the leading cause of global warming. In fact, agriculture-related methane and carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for only 6-7% of greenhouse emissions.

Researchers at Penn State Extension have come up with some ideas for reducing cow emissions that focus on making food easier to digest including:

Feeding higher quality foods that are easily digestible, although producing grains and transporting them also leads to emissions.
Using food additives to improve efficiency of feeding, which some studies show to reduce methane production by 10%.
Even simply grinding up food and making pellets has been shown to reduce emissions by 40%. But I am sure you can imagine how costly it would be to create 'cattle kibbles'.
Adding fats to the diet can reduce emissions by 37%, although too much fat intake can lead to health problems in cows.
Some researchers are even exploring the option of creating a vaccine to reduce methane-producing bacteria in the gut.

Does anyone know if Gas X works on a cow?

Sources:

NPR

Penn State Extension

UCSB

Video from YouTube

dr. dolittle Wed, 09/21/2016 - 20:14

Tags

I've heard of this fact when I was searching about geoengineering. Then, there was a part implying that everything should be in natural levels.

Nice effort although for only 6-7% of greenhouse emissions.

Best Regards
Kimia SMA

Fracked Over for Natural Gas

milhayser — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 12:44:53 +0000

Fracked Over for Natural Gas

Research makes it increasingly clear that along with drilling for oil and mining coal, extracting natural gas from deep underground causes serious damage to the environment and to public health. On The Pump Handle, Kim Krisberg examines the contamination that may result from dumping fracking wastewater into disposal wells, writing "about 1,000 different chemicals are used in the fracking industry, with more than 100 being known or suspected endocrine disruptors." Researchers collected water samples downstream from wells in West Virginia, and after "exposing both female and male mammalian sex hormones to the water, researchers found that the water blocked the hormones’ normal processes." In another study, researchers found "fracking wastewater disposal wells in southern Texas are disproportionately permitted in areas with higher proportions of people of color and people living in poverty." Meanwhile, air pollution around fracking sites may contribute to skin conditions and respiratory disease. While the science surrounding pollution from hydraulic fracturing is far from settled, many fingers point in the same direction: fracking is bad news for communities and for the planet.

At The Nation, Bill McKibben reports that unbeknownst to the EPA, "US methane emissions increased by more than 30 percent" between 2002 and 2014. The culprit? Leaky natural gas infrastructure. Although methane lingers in the atmosphere for less time than carbon dioxide, it traps heat much more efficiently. McKibben says the true extent of methane leaked from fracking means that the rate of greenhouse gas emissions during the Obama administration has been higher than previously estimated, and could actually be increasing. Fracking is also a technology that the U.S. has pushed worldwide, and we can expect to see both its local and planetary effects multiplied many times over. As McKibben concludes, "we need to stop the fracking industry in its tracks, here and abroad."

milhayser Thu, 04/28/2016 - 08:44

Tags

Global warming's effects are coming on faster than previously thought.

gregladen — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 12:28:36 +0000

Global warming's effects are coming on faster than previously thought.

Arctic sea ice decline happened faster than expected. This has the effect of accelerating global warming because less of the Sun's energy is reflected back into space by ice.

Northern Hemisphere snow also sends some of that energy back into space. The amount of snow cover we have is also declining.

Difference from average annual snow extent since 1971, compared to the 1966-2010 average (dashed line). Snow extents have largely been below-average since the late1980s. Graph adapted from Figure 1.1 (h) in the 2012 BAMS State of the Climate report.

The warming of the Arctic region is also probably causing an increase in the amount of CO2 and Methane, previously frozen in permafrost or offshore, that is going into the atmosphere. For this and other reasons, Methane, along with other greenhouse gases, are increasing. I quickly add that stories you've heard of a civilization "methane bomb" in the Arctic are not supported by the best available science. But these additional greenhouse gases still count.

Global average abundances of the major, well-mixed, long-lived greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, CFC-12 and CFC-11 - from the NOAA global air sampling network are plotted since the beginning of 1979. These gases account for about 96% of the direct radiative forcing by long-lived greenhouse gases since 1750. The remaining 4% is contributed by an assortment of 15 minor halogenated gases including HCFC-22 and HFC-134a (see text). Methane data before 1983 are annual averages from D. Etheridge [Etheridge et al., 1998], adjusted to the NOAA calibration scale [Dlugokencky et al., 2005].

Now we are learning that glacial ice, in particular in Antarctica, is melting faster than expected.

That video is from a recent post by Peter Sinclair, who has more on glacial melting.

We knew a lot of the additional heat (from global warming) was going into the oceans, but now we have learned that a LOT of this heat is going into the ocean. This heat goes in and out, so what has been going in will likely be going out (into the atmosphere).

90% of the Earth's energy balance involves the ocean's heat, shown here. Note that there is no current pause, and that surface temperature estimates (see graph above) tend to underestimate the total amount of anthropogenic global warming because much of this heat, routinely, goes into the ocean. We can expect some of this heat to return to the atmosphere in coming years.

(See also this post by Joe Romm.)

This causes me to look at a graph like this ...

Figure SPM.5. Solid lines are multi-model global averages of surface warming (relative to 1980–1999) for the scenarios A2, A1B and B1, shown as continuations of the 20th century simulations. Shading denotes the ±1 standard deviation range of individual model annual averages. The orange line is for the experiment where concentrations were held constant at year 2000 values. The grey bars at right indicate the best estimate (solid line within each bar) and the likely range assessed for the six SRES marker scenarios. The assessment of the best estimate and likely ranges in the grey bars includes the AOGCMs in the left part of the figure, as well as results from a hierarchy of independent models and observational constraints. {Figures 10.4 and 10.29}

... and figure that warming over coming decades will be at, near, or even above, the range previously estimated.

gregladen Thu, 01/22/2015 - 07:28

Tags

Climate Change

climate change graphics

climate change graphics

Looks like it is time once again to adjust the ocean heat content scale upward again. Or we can just watch Senator Jim Inhofe again, and not worry about it.

I think the Congressional Oversight committee has required that NOAA/NASA can not have a vertical scale greater than +20 * 10^22 on Ocean Heat Content graphs.

Heh! Like North Carolina. Any day now Congress will outlaw the metric system because it causes air craft to not fly.

Why shouldn't Congress outlaw those like Jim Inhofe because they cause Americans not to think? Wait... That IS what they want to happen, isn't it?

Why shouldn’t Congress outlaw those like Jim Inhofe because they cause Americans not to think?

The USA Republican Party already has an entire cable network working to make sure Americans don't think.

This is precisely the place where we don't want the ocean warming up. There's a lot of methane up there. There have been studies. Some say methane is/will be a huge problem. Others say not to worry. I think the scientists telling us not to worry are using the best data they can find to limit the impact of the methane problem. But then I've read some pretty nasty reports on the methane problem. I think the scientists refuting those reports are trying to keep mass hysteria from breaking out.

What would a scientist do if he had information that a major methane event was eminent off the West Coast of America? Who knows what the effects are of such an event? Should they evacuate? Should no one light a match? Will there be a mass asphyxiation? There is evidence that vast amounts of methane have begun to seep out of arctic regions, under the sea and in the tundra. Once that process starts, it doesn't stop. And once it starts, it accelerates global warming. It's times like this that I really, really want to believe the scientist that tell me not to worry about the methane.

My response to this is a string of expletives.

Not because I don't accept the science and reality here but because its is so much worse than we thought and happening much faster and, yes, I am scared about what this means for us all in the future. Make that present.

does not the albedo effect referenced in regards to the arctic also apply to the Antarctic?... especially because the extent of the ice extends further from the pole, resulting in more direct sunlight being reflected.

The albedo effect works on both ends of the planet, but has very different levels of significant since the vast majority of the "landscape" in the Antarctic is continent covered with ice. So the variation due to sea ice is very small there.

Thank you for another great article Greg. This is one worth sharing.

greg, thankyou for your response. I think I must have asked my question incorrectly. I believe that the expanding Antarctic ice has a more substantial albedo effect because of the solar angle.

I had been doing some star gazing years ago and found an article on increased albedo of solar system bodies. That was around ten years ago but I don't know how old the article was.

The Soviets had at one time experimented with warming up areas in Siberia by spreading soot from power plants to melt ice and permafrost.
They also tried deploying huge Mylar mirrors to reflect sunlight to lengthen growing seasons.
There's a neat video of the mirror coming apart under centrifugal force. Could be the spars couldn't handle the torque.
Anyway it was a grand effort.
A recent study of glaciers on an island up north told of layers where soot and ash from wild fires had been deposited, the ash coming from forest fires thousands of miles away.
Don't remember the name of the island, but part of what they were studying was the effect of increases in geothermal activity under the ice at some locations.

I figure that with the present world situation the coming nuclear winter will off set the effects of Global Warming.
Then we can emerge from our shelters and start building flying cars and robot maids once again.
Either that or become wandering bands of hunter gatherers and start over from scratch.

@tony watson

Tamino did some detailed analysis
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/sea-ice-insolation/

"... the global climate forcing from Arctic sea ice changes would be about +0.13 W/m^2."
"... the global climate forcing from Antarctic sea ice changes would be about -0.02 W/m^2."

Perhaps some contingency plans are in order.
There is an island in the Pacific that's partly artificial. Ages ago the people who lived there wanted more room so somehow they transported basalt columns there and used these to increase the surface area and strengthen the shoreline.
If people who had not invented the wheel could do that I figure we could figure something out to protect coastal cities.
The Dutch built an entire country using stone wood and wind power.

Have there ever been any realistic studies on just how our civilization would adapt to the worst case scenario of climate change?

Its not that I don't believe that something could be done, that's always a possibility, it just that I don't believe anything actually will be done.
Too much effort has gone into selling the idea, and too little effort has gone into providing workable answers.
Once politics became a factor things went off the rails.

tony, good question. The sun shines on the entire pole for a oeriod if time so i'm not sure about that. The fact that we've seen more amplification of heat in the Arctic sugests the Arctuc is still more affected. Also the Antarctic remains as a cold, shiny core while the Arctic is a warming sea.

MikeH, thanks.

GY you should look into the Dark Snow project.

"
Greg Laden

January 24, 2015

MikeH, thanks.

GY you should look into the Dark Snow project"

Thanks that something I can sink my teeth into.

This
"Scientists estimate that if all of Greenland's ice sheet were to melt, the global sea level would rise by 23 feet (7 meters)."
Sounds a bit exaggerated.
Granted the ice sheet is very thick, but the surface area is tiny compared to the surface area of the worlds oceans.

I don't know how reliable this site is
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/RainMake.htm#N_7_
But it has some information and references for the Russian projects
"A more feasible scheme would be to spread particles in the atmosphere, or perhaps directly on the ground. Beginning around 1961, Budyko and other scientists speculated about how humanity might alter the global climate by strewing dark dust or soot across the Arctic snow and ice. The soot would lower the albedo (reflection of sunlight), and the air would get warmer.(7) Spreading so much dust year after year would be prohibitively expensive. But according to a well-known theory, warmer air should melt some snow and sea-ice and thus expose the dark underlying soil and ocean water, which would absorb sunlight and bring on more warming. So once dust destroyed the reflective cover, it might not re-form. "

"Sounds a bit exaggerated."

No, it is not an exaggeration. This is not that hard to measure. See this for more information: http://gregladen.com/blog/2015/01/how-high-can-sea-level-rise-if-all-gl…

The part of New Jersey I've had to spend time in caring for my family (near Princeton) is part of what used to be a sea, with the Sourland mountains being the end of the mid-Atlantic rift valley (not the African one). Sea levels were 200+ feet higher. Also look up the Laurentide flood.
http://honeybeesandhelium.com/tag/laurentide-ice-sheet/

The amount of ice in Antarctica and Greenland is staggering, and although with the weight removed the land will rise, once it all begins to melt it will all go.

The idea that time will stop somewhere around 2100 is just silly. People born today may be alive then, though if we continue to neglect events and infrastructure, perhaps we won't be able to live so long.

In Cornwall near Land's End, the "raised beach" is visible at about 22 feet above sea level.

The fact that we’ve seen more amplification of heat in the Arctic sugests the Arctuc is still more affected.

Anybody got the Cliff's notes on why the Arctic should be more sensitive to 'global' anthropogenic climate change?

For now, I'll just go ahead and stick that little factoid into my *metabolic imbalance* (between respiration/photosynthetic -- CO2/O2) column and call it a day also add PCBs to my 'short list' of culprits:

In the 1960s, when initial research results were released, traces of PCBs could be detected in people and animals around the world – not only in heavily populated areas such as New York City, but also in remote areas as far as the Arctic.

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/pcbs.html

http://climatestate.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/o2-oxygen-decline-co…

And Glyphosate? "AMPA has low toxicity which is comparable to that of glyphosate and it is therefore considered to be of no greater toxicological concern than glyphosate itself." <-- That should reassure any concerned potted plant life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aminomethylphosphonic_acid
-------------------------------------------

If the C02 is causing a temperature rise, according to the models, you should see it very dramatically in the atmosphere - in the deep atmosphere that we measure. It's just not there**. It's not happening in the real world.

http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2015/01/noaa_says_2014_was_…

**Shirley, he's talking about the heat. Apparently, this guy misunderstood:
http://priuschat.com/threads/it%E2%80%99s-official-2014-was-the-hottest…

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf

"Tim

January 24, 2015 "

I remember seeing that one years ago. They must have been frantic.
I remember an article from the 30's where a guy gave a very convincing argument that sharks never attacked humans, that all records of shark attacks were due to misidentification and that Barracuda and Sea Bass had been responsible for all those attacks.

If the sea levels were to rise to any great extent I can just see land speculators looking for property a mile or so inland with terrain that would make it a good harbor or port city in the future when water filled in the valleys and ravines.

These mountains were islands in the distant past, they have dug up fossil sea life at high elevations.
Guess I'll start drawing up plans for a marina.

There was talk in the news maybe ten years ago about Russia trying to secure claims to mineral wealth of arctic sea areas now unreachable due to ice cover.
Maybe some cabal of old die hard commie scientists are sitting about making toasts to the success of that climate modification scheme they started in the 1960's.

"Anybody got the Cliff’s notes on why the Arctic should be more sensitive to ‘global’ anthropogenic climate change?"

Maybe a bit poorly worded, but the arctic is expected to warm more than the global average. It also has a biosphere that is most likely to undergo massive changes upon warming. Some basics here:
http://acia.cicero.uio.no/factsheets/1_arctic_climate_trends.pdf

During the Medieval Warming Period Greenland and Iceland were more affected by warming than most places.
At least thats what records would suggest though other regions did warm up to some extent.

I wonder how much of the Greenland ice cap might have melted during that period and what the effect was on sea levels. There was not much arctic sea ice then either.

GY, how do you know "there was not that much arctic sea ice then either"?

This is what Polyak et al found:
http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/jbg/Pubs/Polyak%20etal%20seaice%20QSR1… (see figure 12).

Here is a summary of Kinnard et al that goes back a bit further:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Arctic-sea-ice-hockey-stick-melt-unprec…
It is the first figure

Ever seen a Knarr?
How far do you think you'd get sailing from Norway to Iceland in a Knarr if there was much sea ice?

Of course there were no satellite photos so we can only go by surviving accounts of the voyagers.

"But the chain of communities connecting mainland Scandinavia with the New World did not long survive. Archaeologists who have examined L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland tell us that this settlement lasted just a few decades, perhaps only a few years. Subjected, after 1300, to increasingly cool summers and greater amounts of sea ice, the Greenland colony, numbering between 3,000 and 5,000 souls, fell on hard times and died out by about 1450."

So sea ice increased towards the end of the warming period and is considered to be a factor in abandoning the Greenland settlements.

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/htmlsite/master.html?http://www.natura…

http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/jbg/Pubs/Polyak%20etal%20seaice%20QSR1…

Maybe you should read that PDF more closely.
They recognize evidence of warming and decreased sea ice around the time of the MWP with open channels. They don't say Medieval Warming Period they just give the dates of 1000 and 500 AD.

If a 400 yr period of retreating sea ice is to be ignored then we might as well ignore the last century of retreating sea ice as well.

At the end of the MWP after Greenland settlements were abandoned when sea ice began to return to earlier levels the Norwegians began combining elements of the design of the slower but more sturdy Cog with their traditional lighter built Knarr.
The Cog and the Hulc were no ice breakers to be sure but they were sturdy with heavy cross bracing and better able to withstand an occasional slow speed impact of drifting sea ice.

In the 1960's sea ice increased around Iceland nearly destroying the economy, even modern steel hulled vessels with powerful engines were at risk.

The decreased sea ice and warming of the artic around Greenland that is in part the basis for this claim that the effects of Global Warming are being felt ahead of predictions suggests that the predictions and models need to be re examined.

Whatever caused the MWP may be at work and since all attention has been directed at greenhouse gases they aren't looking for the true cause.
Perhaps both mechanisms are working their mischief at the same time. Then we might really have something to worry about.

I just want to remind everyone that part of Europe were very warm during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (no properly called the MWP for a couple of decades now though historians probably use that). But this is very different than modern day Arctic amplification, both in terms of the anomaly itself and the global context.

The MWP is not a climate period, it is not an exceptionally warm global period. It is a horse. A dead one. Not worth beating.

There are several papers on the subject, and the last I read is that the MCA was #1 not global and #2 Earth was cooler then than this decade, and the previous decade, and the previous decade. Some papers:

http://muller.lbl.gov/TRessays/23-Medievalglobalwarming.html

http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html

http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/MannetalScience09.pdf

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.noaamergedtemp.html

http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc%5Ftar/?src=/climate/ipcc_ta…

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/moberg2005/moberg2005.html

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=R1

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5957/1256.abstract

http://www.springerlink.com/content/a42l382370422365/

http://www.geosociety.org/positions/position10.htm

http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1579/0044-7447-29.1.51

http://climateknowledge.org/figures/Rood_Climate_Change_AOSS480_Documen…

"The MWP is not a climate period, it is not an exceptionally warm global period. It is a horse. A dead one. Not worth beating."
I never said it was due to a Global Warming scale event. But its not to be brushed aside either when the un predicted levels of sea ice retreat in the Arctic is at least part of the subject.

The Medieval Warming Period is an historical fact regardless of whether the effect was global.
There have been studies on the historical ranges of plant species in China that suggest that the Warming Period was not confined to Europe.
I'm no historian but I have read and studied the Icelandic Eddas and other sources that deal with this period in Europe when I was younger.
Everything I've read on the subject indicates that there was a much less sea ice during that period than before or after, and that this allowed the settlements in Iceland and Greenland. Iceland didn't go the way of Greenland true enough, but sea ice became more and more of a problem after Greenland was abandoned.

I've also long been interested in sailing and the designs of wooden sailing ships through out history.
The Cog was primitive compared with the merchant vessels of later centuries but it had a sturdy hull with cross beams that extended beyond the hull. It could handle minor impacts with drifting sea ice. The Norwegians seem to have used the Cog and Hulc more in the late 15th and early 16th century when significant drifting sea ice once again became a factor in the Norway sea and much more of a problem the closer they got to Iceland.
These days sea ice hasn't been nearly as much of a problem in the Norwegian sea due to the warm Norwegian current, but Iceland has had on again off again serious problems with sea ice even when sturdy modern vessels with powerful engines are the norm.

I can find any information on the effect of the MWP on the Greenland ice and whether there was a rise of sea levels somewhere else.
There were news stories of ancient fortresses along the coastlines in Scandinavia and in low lying areas inland being uncovered by falling sea levels some years ago. Those predate the MWP and may be related to an earlier period where some Roman era trading cities on the European coastline disappeared under the waves after massive storms that make any we've seen in this century pale by comparison.

Either I'm missing your point or you are missing my point. Let me explain your point back to you and you can tell me if I have it right. You are saying that retreat of sea ice around Greenland and the general vicinity of the North Atlantic during the MCA was similar in extent of recent retreat of sea ice. This, you claim, means that the current retreat of sea ice not anything special, because it happened before, recently.

Is that what you are saying?

Regarding Chinese plants, if you are going to mention a study to make an important point, cite the study. If you can't cite the study it can't be considered, for obvious reasons. In any event, there were a number of places that were warmer during the MCA including areas near china and also north america. It was not confined to Europe.

There was no rise of sea level during the MCA.

GY,
I might speculate that the Gulf Stream, being very dynamic and somewhat chaotic, may have done a little contortionist act and gotten part of itself sort of quasi-stable 'herniated' between Labrador and Greenland back then.

http://marine.coastal.edu/gulfstream/p5.htm

... The extent and duration of the two 2011 warming events combined with the high salinity observed by the researchers suggested the cause was not a transient warm core ring, but the Gulf Stream itself that carried warm, salty water to the outer shelf. ...

... It is unclear what might have caused this shift in the Gulf Stream path ...

http://www.whoi.edu/main/news-releases?tid=3622&cid=152829

GY, Polyak et al indeed acknowledge some periods with lower ice than average, but not periods that are similarly low compared to today.

"Ever seen a Knarr?"

Yes.

How far do you think you’d get sailing from Norway to Iceland in a Knarr if there was much sea ice?"

That's a rather difficult question to answer, other than by saying that even when there was a lot of sea ice, Iceland would still be largely free from sea icea. There may have been problems with icebergs and other floating ice sheets, but those would primarily be a problem in winter and early spring. Remember that the Vikings travelled mainly from May to September. Autumn and winter travels were very uncommon (and then likely through the insular route via the Faeroe Islands).

There was indeed an expanse of sea ice in the late 1960s, but that was primarily North of Iceland and was short-lived.

But all this is somewhat beside the point of arctic sea ice extent, as it focuses on a rather narrow region. Polyak et al covers the whole arctic.

"The Medieval Warming Period is an historical fact regardless of whether the effect was global."

A big problem in the literature (yes, dear colleagues, you listerning?) is that the MWP or MCA is often time-wise very poorly defined. That is, you can find papers that say MWP! and you find it was from 800-1000 CE, and then another paper that says MWP! with the time period 1100-1300. There's a nice database on CO2science (which I am not going to link to) of papers that report a "MWP". Of course, our friends the Idso's use it to claim there was a global MWP, but if you go through the paper you quickly find out all those MWP's are spread out over many centuries, and you can easily found a cold period in area X of the world matching a warm period in area Y of the world. It's also a pattern seen in ice cores: those in Greenland and Antarctica tend to be opposite in their thermal behavior (excluding around the glacial-interglacial transition).

So it is possible that there have been periods in the distant past where sea ice around some regions of the arctic matched those of today for some period of time. There is, however, no credible evidence - and in fact contrary evidence from scientific studies - that arctic sea ice extent has been as low as today in at least the last 1500 years.

"Is that what you are saying?"
Nope.

China
https://www.google.com/url?q=http://faculty.fgcu.edu/twimberley/EnviroP…

BTW
The Cog was braced with cross beams in much the same way as Roman era ingot/ore carriers of the Gauls.
The Romans wrote that these ships were not vulnerable to damage by ramming because of the cross beams one foot thick.
The Romans adopted this design for merchant ships sailing in the Atlantic. The "Asterix Ship" now under study is the best known example.
Most modern maps of the Norway Sea that I've seen show Iceland pretty much surrounded by sea ice except for the eastern tip.
Greenland seems to have been little troubled by sea ice till aprox 1300 about the time that sea ice became a concern in Iceland. As sea ice increased the Greenland settlements became unsustainable. The cargo ships, even the sturdiest, just stopped coming, it wasn't worth the risk.
Dunwich was inudated by an epic storm and partly destroyed in 1286, another massive storm pretty much completed the job in 1347.

The cities and town in Britain and on the coast of the continent destroyed by storms during and towards at the end of the Roman era are harder to pin down, some sliding into myth.
Earlier the Romans had written of the seas around Albion being unusually calm and easy sailing.

The subject is whether the effects of Global Warming are being felt earlier than predicted.
If more than one factor is at work then why not investigate any possible contributors.
Generally unexpected events are due to a combination of factors.
Look in one direction too long and we might get blind sided.

The greatest storms, the ones that destroyed cities and inundated the countrysides destroying other towns and villages driving inhabitants inland seem to have come towards the end of those warming periods.

When all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

"Most modern maps of the Norway Sea that I’ve seen show Iceland pretty much surrounded by sea ice except for the eastern tip."

If you mean the Norwegian Sea, I'd love to see those maps, because the Norwegian Sea formally does not include Iceland and the Norwegian Sea is considered ice-free all year round.

Also remember that deep in winter there may be some drift ice floating through the Denmark Strait which means ice may be pushed towards Iceland. There is also ice coming from some of the glaciers. And yet, none of this means there was any problem with sea ice for those poor Vikings in their small boats, since they travelled primarily in spring and summer.

"If you mean the Norwegian Sea, I’d love to see those maps, because the Norwegian Sea formally does not include Iceland and the Norwegian Sea is considered ice-free all year round."

I'll dig up links to a few.
The maps of the Norwegian sea include the eastern tip of Iceland, not the entire island. Maps like this don't stop at the demarcation they show the limits of the sea and surrounding waters. Land for some distance beyond the NS is shown as far as Greenland.

"Also remember that deep in winter there may be some drift ice floating through the Denmark Strait which means ice may be pushed towards Iceland. There is also ice coming from some of the glaciers. And yet, none of this means there was any problem with sea ice for those poor Vikings in their small boats, since they travelled primarily in spring and summer."

They didn't travel to Iceland at all before the 9th century.

The Greek who first saw "Ultima Thule", believed to be one of the Norwegian islands further south, described it in terms that modern mariners recognize as being surrounded by plate ice impassable for sailing ships of that day.

So was the Norwegian sea always free of significant sea ice before the 7th century?
Irish Monks had reached Iceland in the 6th century, and it was warm enough for them to set up a settlement. How much ice did they have to contend with?

In 1695 Iceland was completely locked in ice, the inhabitants were in peril.
That on the edge of the warmer Norwegian Sea.

The main point is the ice around Greenland. That we know became impassable at the end of the Medieval Warming Period.

The Norwegian sea as I said didn't have much sea ice, and neither did the Greenland sea during the MWP.

The Cog was the safer choice when drifting sea ice returned .
Besides its sturdy cross beam braced hull that could better withstand impact with drifting ice, the crew and cargo were better protected from the elements , and the Cog had a primitive but effective bilge pump to handle sea water that reached the hold during storms at sea.

During the MWP passage to Iceland and Greenland, not to mention navigating around the entire island of Iceland as the first Viking explorers had done, was a cake walk compared to later centuries, until more recent times at least.

Here's a rough map without ice
http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/norwegiansea.htm
Note only the very eastern tip of Iceland touches the Norwegian sea.

As listed here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Sea
The "Basin Countries" are Iceland and Norway.

I'll add a few sea ice maps later.

I love the idea that Greek (or Roman) writers or travelers did actually make it to distant lands and such, but my understanding is that Pytheas is generally not considered a trusted source.

It would not be surprising to see a lot of sea ice in 1695, as that was a relatively cool period in the Northern Hemisphere:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/new-remperature-reconstruction-vindicat…

"my understanding is that Pytheas is generally not considered a trusted source. "

Only because his vocabulary was not up to describing sea ice, which he had never seen before.

There's an old story about an African sent to observe a missionary preaching to his flock.
The African reported to his people that a man wearing a dress held a black bird with speckled wings in his hands and when the wings were spread God talked through the man in the dress.
The African had no words in his vocabulary for Book, pages, printed words, reading , etc.

There have been recalculations that took into account previous errors in calculations and the island was pinpointed.
The odd description has been recognized to mean that the ship could not make land fall due to drifting pancake ice and debris and thick mist or fog.
Similar descriptions of fog making it hard to tell where the sea ended and sky began are found in much later tales of the sea, but are more easily understood.

I'm no scholar, I just had a strong interest in history, and the less that was known for certain the more my curiosity was peaked.
Legends often have a basis in fact, and this is an example.
The Icelandic Sagas are more than a cut above legends and are in the realm of historical facts and observations.

Great disasters leave their mark in legend, written accounts, and in modern archaeology.
Sifting through this to find truth is not always easy, but taking the easy way out by simply ignoring it all because it would be inconvenient to your world view is not very honest.

When events were written down long after the fact there were procedures in use since Ancient Greece to get at the truth.

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://msi.nga.mil/MSISiteContent/StaticFi…

"Pytheas visited an island six days sailing north of Britain, called Thule. Probably Thule was (part of) the Norwegian coast, although Iceland, the Shetland Islands and Faeroe Islands have also been suggested by historians. Pytheas says Thule was an agricultural country that produced honey. Its inhabitants ate fruits and drank milk, and made a drink out of grain and honey. Unlike the people from southern Europe, they had barnss, and threshed their grain there rather than outside.

He said he was shown the place where the sun went to sleep, and he noted that the night in Thule was only two to three hours. One day further north the congealed sea began, he claimed. As Strabo says (as quoted in Chevallier 1984):

Pytheas also speaks of the waters around Thule and of those places where land properly speaking no longer exists, nor sea nor air, but a mixture of these things, like a "marine lung", in which it is said that earth and water and all things are in suspension as if this something was a link between all these elements, on which one can neither walk nor sail.

The term used for "marine lung" actually means jellyfish, and modern scientists believe that Pytheas here tried to describe the formation of pancake ice at the edge of the drift ice, where sea, slush, and ice mix, surrounded by fog.
After completing his survey of Britain, Pytheas travelled to the Shallows on the continental North Sea coast. He may also have visited the Baltic Sea, but he did visit an island which was a source of amber, probably Helgoland.

No record survives of his return voyage. He may have returned by the way he came; or perhaps by land, following the Rhine and Rhône rivers. "

http://www.fact-index.com/p/py/pytheas.html

I have heard some saying that global warming is rapidly increasing because the amount of greenhouses gases produced in the atmosphere are depleting the ozone layer yearly by 0.5%, is this true?u13127846

Statistically it is said that the ozone layer is depleting at a rate of 0.5% yearly. The CFC concentration in the atmosphere is increasing at an alarming rate and is as a result having detrimental effects on the ozone layer, which is a protective barrier from ultraviolet rays. Without this protective barrier, ice in the Arctic will melt more rapidly thus a rise in sea levels will be expected. This is a dangerous phenomenon and may have large impact on the nearby continents.

Last Week on ResearchBlogging.org

milhayser — Sun, 23 Feb 2014 11:02:24 +0000

Last Week on ResearchBlogging.org

Researchers observed tiny voids forming in silicon used for solar panels; these voids provide physical evidence of the Staebler-Wronski effect, "which reduces the solar cell efficiency by up to 15 percent within the first 1000 hours."

Using an online avatar with a skin color other than your own makes you less racist in real life; playing a hero makes you less cruel, and playing a villain less benevolent.

Old mouse muscles exhibit "elevated levels of activity in a biological cascade called the p38 MAP kinase pathway" which prevents stem cells from dividing and repairing muscle damage. By blocking this pathway with a drug, researchers grew a new generation of potent stem cells in a petri dish and transplanted them back into old mice. "Two months after transplantation, these muscles exhibited forces equivalent to young, uninjured muscles."

Continuing its exhaustive penetration into the ecosphere, plastic has been observed built into the hives of urban bees. The researcher notes, "although cells made with plastic may not hold together as well—and might have other, unseen effects on developing bees—they could have advantages too" such as keeping parasites away from eggs.

A protein normally necessary to shut down inflammation is undetectable in triple-negative breast cancer cells. Without the protein, these cells can proliferate rapidly, but a new drug treatment can prevent the protein degradation.

Boys playing football is not the only recipe for head trauma: girls playing soccer are also at risk. A total of 351 players were observed for one full season, and cumulatively suffered 59 concussions, mostly from player-to-player contact, heading the ball, and goal-tending.

A study surveying "leaky valves and pipes in the rapidly growing natural gas industry" observed 50% more methane leakage than expected, but the extra atmospheric contribution still causes less global warming than coal.

An isopod that infects California fish is the only known parasite to functionally replace a host's organ. The bug latches on to a fish's tongue and sucks out the blood, causing it to atrophy. After latching on to the diminished tongue it settles in for a life of "holding food up against the small teeth on the roof of the fish’s mouth" while also getting first dibs on all that fish food.

In the courtroom, weak evidence is strengthened by arbitrary precision. Precision (along with body language) communicates confidence, which makes people "more likely to believe what you are saying."

Engineered viruses can deliver instructions for making crucial growth factors to stem cells; when seeded onto a polymer scaffold incorporating the viruses, stem cells can achieve self-sufficient growth and replace the scaffold with (for example) a tailored piece of cartilage.

Alternatively, we could soon be able to print a piece of cartilage: researchers have "successfully printed two types of rat neural cells from the retina" through a piezoelectric inkjet printer without killing or sterilizing the cells.

Why oil spills are bad for fish: crude oil interrupts a cellular pathway "that allows fish heart cells to beat effectively," causing "slowed heart rate, reduced cardiac contractility and irregular heartbeats that can lead to cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death."

Following a stroke, exercise confers a 91% reduction in mortality risk, versus anticoagulants and antiplatelet therapy, which showed no statistically significant benefit.

Silicon nanoparticles packed into a carbon shell like seeds in a pomegranate (so as to prevent silicon degradation) may power a new generation of hyper-efficient lithium-ion batteries.

New fuel cell design can convert any biomass into electricity with a little help from sunlight or waste heat.

When responding to "virtual customer service agents," people showed equal social engagement with human images and animated helpers. The VCSAs were regarded as most helpful when they seemed most social.

Like mercury, ionic silver can build up in ocean-dwelling organisms. In algae cells, silver stows away on a transport protein usually used by copper, and once inside the cell membrane, continues to pose as copper, damaging many proteins including those critical to energy generation and photosynthesis. The cells do their best to get rid of the silver, but with silver added to everything from "air sanitisers to cleansing face creams to odourless socks," sea life may be fighting an upstream battle.

For more visit researchblogging.org.

milhayser Sun, 02/23/2014 - 06:02

Iconic Curves #2: On Exponential Curves, “Hockey Sticks,” and Environmental Crises

pgleick — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:35:56 +0000

Iconic Curves #2: On Exponential Curves, “Hockey Sticks,” and Environmental Crises

On April 2^nd, I posted three iconic graphs showing some of the clear observational evidence that we’re changing the climate. That post produced a substantial, and largely thoughtful response, and a request for more information and data along these lines.

Here are three more, along with a bonus fourth, all with a theme of exponential growth – the powerful force that is behind much of the concern about climate change and many other environmental and social challenges. Figures like these are increasingly called “hockey stick” curves, after the work of Professor Michael Mann and others in the climate community, but such rapid exponential changes, which often signify problems (unless your bank balance looks like this) are common in other scientific fields as well.

First: a root of the problem. Global population. Figure 1 shows the world’s population from 1300 to the modern era. Today’s population exceeds 7 billion.

Figure 2 from the 2013 US national climate assessment shows two thousand years of atmospheric concentrations for carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide: three of the most important and dangerous greenhouse gases.

Figure 3 shows over 10,000 years of carbon dioxide concentrations with measurements taken from ice cores (and a clear discussion at the website of Skeptical Science), and most recently from the Mauna Loa station (those instrumental data were shown, in more detail, in my April 2^nd post).

Figure 4 is a clear, albeit disturbing graph that includes recent key findings on ancient temperatures reconstructed by the paleoclimate community for the past 20,000 years, plus the most recent instrumental record, plus projections from state-of-the-art climate models, showing how the world is racing into uncharted waters.

More “significant figures” to come.

Figure 1. Global population over the past 800 or so years. Today's population is over 7 billion, and growing.

Figure 2. 2000 years of atmospheric concentrations of major greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, nitrous oxide), from http://www.globalchange.gov/HighResImages/1-Global-pg-14.jpg.

Figure 3. 10,000 years of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from paleoclimatic records, and recent observations. http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-measurements-uncertainty.htm

Figure 4. 20,000 years of global estimated temperature, from paleoclimate reconstructions, recent observations, and model projections. http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/global-temperature-change-the-bi….

pgleick Wed, 04/10/2013 - 10:35

Tags

Interesting to see that the CO2 levels were slowly rising over last 10000 years but the temperature slowly falling... Would be useful also to have the CO2 levels over last 20000 years to maatch the last graph.w

Sorry for the negative comment, but it's not accurate to call these "exponential plots". I know that presenting them in a linear scale causes more impact, but the only reasonable way to know if these graphs are exponential is plotting them in a log scale.

For example, the population plot (which has no attribution, but I believe the data comes from wikipedia) grows faster than an exponential. You can see in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_growth_%28lin-log_sc… that in the last 2000 years that the graph looks more like two or maybe three different exponentials.

This comment is not in any way to contradict the main point of your post. It's just that there are so many papers that incorrectly claim to show exponential growth or decrease, that I feel we should be more careful with it.

I plotted the gain of atmospheric moisture from data found in the EPICA-C ice core. It has a similar shape to the CO2 projection.. So, I project that moisture was just as important in the PHT as CO2 and other GHGs.
However, the real problem is in the population and that is not going to change without a catastrophic event. And, global warming may well be that event. I identified what the Dansgarrard-Oescheger Events were in my text book and that puts them in a cyclic nature. They added about 5 degrees C to the temperature when they passed this first known time. after 100 ka. Apparition after global warming has leveled out, will add at least 2 degrees C to the then high temperature. Imagine what that means. Keep in mind there are 25 of these masses in orbit. But, they may have been a one time event. That is they had terminal paths or were ejected into outer space. What are they? That is one the theories in my text on Poly-Celestial Structures ( PCS ) and The End of The Last Ice Age. Search on that..

Greenhouse Gas Levels Reach New Record High

gregladen — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 07:37:44 +0000

Greenhouse Gas Levels Reach New Record High

You may have heard that the release of greenhouse gases has recently gone down, to match levels of several years ago. Why, then, do we have someone saying that greenhouse gasses have reached a new record high?

There are two, maybe three, reasons.

First, even though CO2 release from the US may be lower now than it has been in a few years, it is still high (it was high a few years ago, so we've reduced to a level that is high!). More importantly, the US has reduced its release of CO2 primarily for incidental economic reasons. With a recession/depression going on, there is less money being spent on things that burn fuel. But, we are also producing more fossil carbon-containing products that we send to other countries, where that fuel is burned, thus releasing the CO2. So, globally, CO2 release is probably as high as it has ever been, more or less.

Second, the greenhouse gasses stay in the atmosphere for a long time. Releasing less does not make what is there go away, really. So if we add less for a couple of years, we still increase the amount.

Third, and less understood, and perhaps not even part of the current calculation of greenhouse gas release, is the extra methane that is being released at large but as yet understudied quantities from drilling operations including those that involve fracking.

So, with those caveats, we have this report from the UN's World Meteorological Organization:

Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Reach New Record: WMO Bulletin highlights pivotal role of carbon sinks

Geneva, 20 November (WMO) – The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2011, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Between 1990 and 2011 there was a 30% increase in radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – because of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping long-lived gases.

At this point I would like to pause and note something important. Here we learn that there has been a 30% increase in warming effects from 1990 onward. This does not mean, however, that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) started in 1990. You will often see Climate Science Denialists refer to events earlier in the last 100 years as evidence that global warming is not real. If global warming supposedly causes large storms, and there was a large storm in the 1930s, or if global warming supposedly causes droughts, and there was the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, then global warming is not real, the story goes. However, global warming is largely the result of the release of Carbon from the burning of coal and petroleum, and that (especially the coal) started way back in the 18th century and really took off in the mid 19th century. Global warming and its effects have certainly been much more significant over the last several decades, but the effects are much older than that. To return to the UN report...

Since the start of the industrial era in 1750, about 375 billion tonnes of carbon have been released into the atmosphere as CO2, primarily from fossil fuel combustion, according to WMO’s 2011 Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, which had a special focus on the carbon cycle. About half of this carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere, with the rest being absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial biosphere.

“These billions of tonnes of additional carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will remain there for centuries, causing our planet to warm further and impacting on all aspects of life on earth,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “Future emissions will only compound the situation.”

“Until now, carbon sinks have absorbed nearly half of the carbon dioxide humans emitted in the atmosphere, but this will not necessarily continue in the future. We have already seen that the oceans are becoming more acidic as a result of the carbon dioxide uptake, with potential repercussions for the underwater food chain and coral reefs. There are many additional interactions between greenhouse gases, Earth’s biosphere and oceans, and we need to boost our monitoring capability and scientific knowledge in order to better understand these,” said Mr Jarraud.
“WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch network, spanning more than 50 countries, provides accurate measurements which form the basis of our understanding of greenhouse gas concentrations, including their many sources, sinks and chemical transformations in the atmosphere,” said Mr Jarraud.

The role of carbon sinks is pivotal in the overall carbon equation. If the extra CO2 emitted is stored in reservoirs such as the deep oceans, it could be trapped for hundreds or even thousands of years. By contrast, new forests retain carbon for a much shorter time span.
The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reports on atmospheric concentrations – and not emissions - of greenhouse gases. Emissions represent what goes into the atmosphere. Concentrations represent what remains in the atmosphere after the complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere and the oceans.

CO2 is the most important of the long-lived greenhouse gases – so named because they trap radiation within the Earth’s atmosphere causing it to warm. Human activities, such as fossil fuel burning and land use change (for instance, tropical deforestation), are the main sources of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The other main long-lived greenhouse gases are methane and nitrous oxide. Increasing concentrations of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are drivers of climate change.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, quoted in the bulletin, shows that from 1990 to 2011, radiative forcing by long-lived greenhouse gases increased by 30%, with CO2 accounting for about 80% of this increase. Total radiative forcing of all long-lived greenhouse gases was the CO2 equivalent of 473 parts per million in 2011.

The report goes on to state that CO2 is the single most important human generated greenhouse gas, but also discusses methane, which I mentioned above, and discusses Nitrous oxide as well.

(Thanks to Brad Johnson for the info on hydrocarbon exports.)

gregladen Tue, 11/20/2012 - 02:37

Tags

a very scary future we face......even if we, humanity, immediately wakes up and takes action....I am fearful it will be mitigation of damage (which will first get those who didn't contribute to the damage as much) rather than prevention.....

Arctic collapse dramatically increases global warming?

stoat — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 07:25:53 +0000

Arctic collapse dramatically increases global warming?

Wosis then? Is it the sea ice? Ah, no. Someone else wants in on the limelight: "Parts of Arctic Siberia are releasing ten times more carbon into the atmosphere than previously thought, a University of Manchester scientist and an international team of researchers have found."

Its the usual stuff:

much more greenhouse gas is being released into the atmosphere than previously calculated, from and ancient an large carbon pool held in a permafrost along the 7,000 km desolate coast of northernmost Siberian Arctic – dramatically increasing global warming. As the temperature climbs carbon, stored in vast ice walls along this Arctic coast called Yedoma, covering about one million km2 (four times the area of the UK), is pouring into the Arctic Ocean in one of the world’s most remote and desolate regions. This region is experiencing twice the global average of climate warming. While satellite images reveal thousands of kilometers of milky-cloudy waters along the Arctic coast, suggesting a massive influx of material, the Yedoma has remained understudied largely due to the region’s inaccessibility. By studying the thaw-eroding slopes of a disappearing island, the team found that the tens-of-thousands year old coastal Yedoma carbon is rapidly converted to CO2 and methane, even before being washed into the sea

and so on. It is honest enough to say quietly that the present rate of carbon release from the NE Siberian coast is not substantially affecting the CO2 levels in the global atmosphere yet - but then how can you possibly reconcile that with the headline? Or indeed the following text the scale of the release of both CO2 and methane into the atmosphere will have a huge effect. This will have consequences for the temperatures all over the world. There are various nutters pushing the "methane emergency" line. And although that in itself doesn't discredit more serious people, the serious people need to talk sense and not just grab headlines, if they want to be taken seriously.

None of which says anything about the quality of the science, which sits quietly paywalled by Nurture. Its quite likely a valuable, if minor, contribution to our knowledge of carbon fluxes in the Arctic. It just doesn't deserve the headlines it is offering.

And speaking of, errm, overenthusiasm, don't get me started on Wadhams The entire ice cover is now on the point of collapse... It is truly the case that it will be all gone by 2015. No, it won't be.

stoat Fri, 08/31/2012 - 03:25

Tags

climate communication

methane

I've been drawing simple bar graphs that track the minimum ice extent, area or volume for each year to date. With the PIOMAS August update (through 8/25) the results for ice volume are striking:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/Chiloe/12_Climate/sea_ice_PIOMAS…

Hi William,

was prof. Wadhams your boss?

[No. He was a SPRI, I was at BAS. We worked together a little bit -W]

Ted Scambos of NSIDC defined "ice-free arctic" as with 1 mil km2 of ice... and that, according to him should happen around 2030... but it seems too slow to me, according to PIOMASS (?)... whatever, global CO2 is still on the rise, despite economic contraction in USA, Europe and Japan, so given that arctic ice is doomed anyway (be it in 2030), will the cascading effects continue?

[I have money on no collapse, of course -W]

BTW, Paul Beckwith (still) stands with his prediction that current rate of arctic melting will continue till around end of september, effectively reducing arctic ice to... close to zero... :-)

[Don't know him. Got a link? -W]

Alex

And here is the link on Ted's interview:

http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/North/ID/2272677634/

Alex

Ok, me again, pointing to Stuart Staniford take in arctic ice volume: http://earlywarn.blogspot.cz/2012/08/arctic-sea-ice-volume.html

Alex

William, here is link on Paul Beckwith latest presentation:

http://arctic-news.blogspot.sk/2012/08/paul-beckwith-on-ice-speed-and-d…

Alex

[He really does seem to say that he expects it all gone by the end of this season. I'm 99.9% sure he is wrong, which is fine, because we'll find out in less than a month -W]

" And although that in itself doesn’t discredit more serious people, the serious people need to talk sense and not just grab headlines, if they want to be taken seriously."

This is a difficult subject to discuss because the implications are dire, but the knowledge base is weak. Of course a weak knowledge base doesn't mean there is or isn't something to worry about. Media bounces back and forth between silent and confused. This is something that should be fixed. Do you have a link to what you think is serious? I would say what Archer said a while back - short term not a problem known yet, but long tail effects a huge problem. Would you agree?

[I think the paper in Nature is serious. I'm sure the researchers themselves are serious. But they need to rein in their press people, and they need to make sure that they themselves aren't seeking cheap PR.

As to the long term effects of permafrost etc carbon release from the Arctic: my impression was that it was unlikely to be a first-order effect (and I thought that was what Archer had said, too) -W]

"The entire ice cover is now on the point of collapse… It is truly the case that it will be all gone by 2015. No, it won’t be."

Climate models predictions of sea ice look a little optimistic, to say the least. Starting with the great melt in 2007, then lack of recovery and continuing decline such as this year. The mainstream climate models sea ice, as far as I know, do not and would not show a decline like this until much later. Yet I'm just a part time reader of papers. Am I incorrect?

Based on the rate of decline, fall sea ice might be mostly gone by 2015, but I'm not a fan of "curve fitting science". Are there any updated models that will show a decline like we have seen from 2007-2012? If so, what do they predict for the ice out date?

[See Gavin's comment later down. I'm hoping RC will do a post on this, since I'm now out of touch with the latest modelling. You're right that AR4 type models don't really show the observed decline. OTOH only this year has it really become clear that 2007 wasn't a fluke, and even that still has some chance of being premature -W]

Clearly it's a serious issue. But in the absence of solid means of forecasting, the over-confident statements from Wadhams and Beckwith - based on nothing more than extrapolation that has no physical basis (or verification) - is foolish. I agree with William that they are very likely to be shown to be wildly erroneous, and then everyone else is going to spend the next decade being tarred with their brush.

The models in CMIP5 are better than they were in CMIP3 - at least what is happening is now within the model spread, but we still don't have a good way of honing the projections to produce a confident estimate (models that do equally well for today, still have big divergences on the summer ice free date).

>>Wadham's "It is truly the case that it will be all gone by 2015."
>William "No, it won’t be."

I agree that "***will*** be all gone" is wrong. But is "No, it won’t be" similarly wrongly certain (assuming we are talking of almost all gone for just a few days)?

(I accept there is bound to be some sheltered fjords with some sea ice, perhaps some clinging to remains of ice shelves and a few other random bits.)

Volume per PIOMAS down to 3.599 at 26 Aug and likely to lose say 0.35 as last year which is low for the time of year. That gets us down to a minimum of 3.25.

Last 10 years mimimum to minimum have changed:

Year, 1yr chg, 3 yr chg
2002-3, -0.6
2003-4, -0.3
2004-5, -0.7, -1.6
2005-6, -0.2, -1.2
2006-7, -2.5, -3.4
2007-8, +0.6, -2.1
2008-9, -0.2, -2.1
2009-10, -2.5, -2.1
2010-11, -0.4, -3.1
2011-12, -0.75, -3.65

Only 2 out of 8 of those 3 year periods show a decline of more than the 3.25 projected to be left this year. However another one is close and there appears to be an upward trend. Last 6 of the 8 3 year periods have all shown losses of over 2k km^3. This seems to suggest to me that we are likely to get down to 1k Km^3 and there is the possibility of albedo feedback continuing to be more important than the negative insulation effect which could practically wipe out that remaining 1k km^3.

So I don't think you should be so certain that it won't be all gone.

[I have $10k on If both NSIDC and IARC-JAXA September 2016 monthly average sea ice extent report are above 4.80 million km^2, RD pays WMC US$ 10,000. If both are below 3.10 million km^2, WMC pays RD US$ 10,000. In all other cases the bet is null and void - http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2011/06/26/betting-on-sea-ice-10000/. How much more certain would you like me to be? Mind you, given this year... -W]

William and Gavin,

what are the physical reasons for (significant) slow-down of arctic ice volumetric melting? Clearly, it has to happen, if the ice should melt significantly later than in 2020 or so...

Alex

[Do you mean slow-down, or failure to continue to follow the quadratic decline? Since there is no physical mechanism for the latter, what is the reason for expecting it to continue? -W]

Quess we'll panic when we have to panic...sorry, quess we should notice it all when we have to notice it.

"The models in CMIP5 are better than they were in CMIP3 – at least what is happening is now within the model spread, but we still don’t have a good way of honing the projections to produce a confident estimate (models that do equally well for today, still have big divergences on the summer ice free date)." (Gavin)

Would you please provide more information on the range of divergences? For example, do any runs of any of these models show a nearly ice free late summer anytime in the next decade?

Phil Hays,

Googling 'CMIP5 arctic sea ice' will give you some good links. Here's a couple with plots of CMIP5 September sea ice extent output: Stroeve and Massonnet.

In Stroeve's plot it appears a couple of model realisations predict "ice-free" conditions in the late-2010s. However, both (CanESM and GISS E2-R) begin at a much lower absolute extent than observed so I'm not sure how this should be interpreted.

One MIROC realisation produces some "ice-free" years in the early-2020s, but it looks like that happens with an abrupt drop of ~4million sq. km over about 3 years, followed by an equally rapid increase of 3 million sq. km.

The Massonnet paper plots 5-year means so the persistent trends are clearer. Models start being regularly "ice-free" in the 2030s.

People are getting ahead of themselves claiming the ice is going to disappear in a few years. There is too much "excitement".

Since 2000 CT minimum has only declined by about a third. It's entirely plausible, perhaps even probable, that it will take another 20 years or more to reach zero. That's short enough to be meaningful but people still try and push out the idea that it'll be gone in just a few years. Yes it *could* but if it doesn't and the ice is still around in 2020 it's going to make everyone look like a bunch of (dare I say it) alarmists.

While I am sure the deniers will have bigger problems by then with all their "global cooling" predictions failing, it still makes no sense to give them a hand by setting the "alarmist" target so low. Golden rule: if the ice trends anywhere above your target the deniers will crow about it. They are only in a bind at the moment because the ice trends are below a lot of past predictions and so they can't play that card.

Paul S.
Thank you, and I should have thought of that before asking.

Beckwith has an update: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByLujhsHsxP7VTlsczIyalpjNDQ/edit

In a FB post pointing to it, he mentions that ice coming from Greenland is replenishing the Arctic supply.

Beckwith's claim that Greenland ice is a significant source for the Arctic sea ice isn't reasonable. Ice from glaciers is odd shaped chunks ranging in size from tiny to mountains of ice, and sea ice is flat sheets of ice, with pressure ridges and such.
Not only that, look at MODIS image from today, good section of Northern Greenland is at the bottom of image, cloud free:
http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/imagery/single.cgi?image=cre…
No sign at all of major ice output from Greenland.

"Do you mean slow-down, or failure to continue to follow the quadratic decline? Since there is no physical mechanism for the latter, what is the reason for expecting it to continue?"

Then find the mechanism, because it is happening. The decline of Arctic sea ice is so very clearly non linear. Just how many data points do you need to see?

As the melting continues the freeze up has already begun, so we will not see zero sea ice this year. And perhaps that polar core will remain, all be it vastly reduced, for some years to come. Perhaps a Gomtrez fit will end up better.

But as for the bet, start saving.

What is a "Gomtrez fit"? Web search doesn't find it.

So I cannot spell
Gompertz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz_function

The slow start to the loss of ice, quick in the middle, and slow finish, if indeed it is a slow finish.

We don't have a physical mechanism to describe how the decline might continue on its present course, but on the other hand we also don't have a physical mechanism to describe why the ice is apparently vanishing far ahead of schedule. The very best effort to model the physics of the situation is obviously failing.

So we're all guessing what's going to happen, in the very short term. My meta bet is that William is going to just barely keep his money, based on events since 2007. Up, down, up, down, but down is 1.x up, where x !=0.

It is disconcerting that the global albedo losss attending the latest loss of Arctic ice approximates the gain that might be had by painting all the roofs in the hemisphere white.

Yeah, but if you paint all the old roofs white, then you get condensation on the undersides of those that aren't perfectly insulated with a good vapor barrier, and the roofs rot out.
/search?q="cool+roof"+condensation

Tony,
"Then find the mechanism, because it is happening. The decline of Arctic sea ice is so very clearly non linear."

I found this paper to be interesting, and you might as well.

http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~bitz/massonnet_etal_GRL_SUBMITTED.pdf

[Yes it is. Worth posting on I think -W]

Gavin wrote "the over-confident statements from Wadhams and Beckwith – based on nothing more than extrapolation that has no physical basis (or verification) – is foolish."

I would accept that there isn't a satisfactory physical basis worthy of being published but to suggest no physical basis at all seems to be overdoing it.

It isn't hard to review the literature and gain an impression that the major feedbacks altering the heat budget are a positive albedo feedback in summer and a negative insulation feedback in winter. From phyiscal reasoning, we don't know which is going to turn out to be a stronger feedback as they both seem likely to strengthen as ice retreats earlier and as the ice gets thinner. However we can look at the graphs and gain the impression that so far the acceleration seems to be downwards. While there is no sign of this acceleration slowing down yet, this does not meant that it won't slow down. Given the shapes the models show, I think it is sensible to expect a slow down at some point. However, not only do I not see a lot of time available for this to come to the rescue and prevent an ice free few days occurring within the next few years but it also has to arrive suddenly with a surprisingly strong effect. I therefore prefer gompertz fit to an exponential fit.

I think I can see limits to the negative insulation feedback which mean this isn't going to save us from an ice free few days in next few years. Later start can mean we rapidly catch up in thickness but this is not going to lead to thicker maximum thickness. While that may mean there is little reduction in thickness in the centre of the pack, around the edges a later start to freeze season is likely to make more difference. There could be other feedbacks that also assist the insulation feedback. However, GHG continue to rise and so does temperature of incoming Atlantic water.

Not publishable but it is within the relms of what can sensibly be bet upon. I have 4 bets with William.

Saying we have to stick with 2040-2100 per model which involves ingoring the bias in models rather than attempting to correct for the bias seems extraordinarily bizarre to me.

Using an exponential fit without considering a slow down is also bizarre but if we are not contrained to just what is publishable (as for instance in betting), I think we can do better than these two bizarre extremes.

It would be helpful to have an Arctic Ocean surface temperature anamoly product.

crandles
"Saying we have to stick with 2040-2100 per model which involves ingoring the bias in models rather than attempting to correct for the bias seems extraordinarily bizarre to me."

It seems to me that there might be ways to reduce the amount of bias in the models. Perhaps data assimilation, in several different ways?

[That requires a different way to run the models, which I think people would not be keen on, except for special purposes -W]

From over on Tamino's, UAH gives 0.53 degrees Celcius per decade for the Arctic ocean.

>"It seems to me that there might be ways to reduce the amount of bias in the models. Perhaps data assimilation, in several different ways?"

Yes there are probably several ways. PIOMAS is of course already doing data assimilation but Dr Schweiger seems to have rejected extrapolations of PIOMAS data. I haven't seen what PIOMAS does into the future without assimilation; that would be interesting to see.

Long extrapolations are obviously dodgy. But there has to be some short period for which extrapolations are as good if not better than clearly biased models. When that short period includes the extrapolations either getting to a few ice free days or within natural variability thereof then it is time to say: No, we must not stick with model projections of 2040 to 2100.

That short period may well be less than three years and we may not quite be at that point yet, but I suggest we are getting very close.

"Long extrapolations are obviously dodgy"

Short extrapolations are obviously dodgy. Model output varies a lot between runs, and if we could rerun climate in the real world I suspect there would be a lot of variation between experimental runs. For example on model output variation, if you look at "Massonnet et al. (submitted)" figure 1b MRI-CGCM3 curve, this model run is somewhat similar to the historical record from 1980, including a rapid drop to just below 4 x10^6 km^2 at about 2010 (note that this is a five year running mean). This model run then bounces back up to about 5.5x10^6 km^2, and finally reaches ice out in roughly 2050. I see no strong reason to call this model 'clearly biased' based on past history. It is a bit below the historical record, so if anything it might be biased a bit to lower sea ice extent. Do you have a reason to think that this model is not a reasonable estimation of reality? I see no reason why an extrapolation based on the recent history of the historical record will be any more accurate than this specific model run. Do you? An extrapolation of the first 30 years of this model run might lead to a projected ice out before 2020, but the model does not follow the extrapolation, and if this model run is at least a fair to middling representation of reality, then it appears to me that the same is likely to true of reality. In other words, I think that reality isn't more likely to follow an extrapolation, even a short one, than a specific model run, as long as the model is at least fair quality.

>"I see no reason why an extrapolation based on the recent history of the historical record will be any more accurate than this specific model run. Do you?"

Are you serious? Do you want to bet on whether the average of NSIDC September extent for 2013, 2014, and 2015 will be nearer to the values that model gives for those three years or to a gompertz extrapolation of historic extent measurements?

You continue to impress this "skeptic" with your skepticism.

At what point would you concede that anthropogenic CO2 wasn't worth worrying about?

If there is no data point that would convince you, what has made you certain of the need to constrain greenhouse gas emissions?

[I'm not saying that at all. I'm trying to convince responsible people to behave responsibly and not let their PR folk speak rubbish and pollute the world with nonsense. GW itself remains a serious problem that needs to be treated seriously. And the way to do that (as I said somewhere recently) is to start from the IPCC science summary, and not waste our time talking about the nutters. And then impose a carbon tax -W]

Lance:

At what point would you concede that anthropogenic CO2 wasn’t worth worrying about?

Heh. Lance has been denying AGW on ScienceBlogs for at least five years. He still thinks it's a conspiracy led by Al Gore. Nothing's ever going to convince him that anthropogenic CO2 is worth worrying about, but he still calls himself a skeptic. DFTT.

"Do you want to bet on..."

No, but I might bet on something more subtle. Give me a bit to collect all I need.

gavin will never answer the question whether the models predict any ice-free summer periods in the next 10 years since - of course - he is not willing to take any risks to his reputation

[Gavin takes many risks to his reputation. What you don't like is that those risks pan out for him. You're not even prepared to risk you full name whilst criticising others, which is cowardly -W]

kai,

Model outputs are what they are, and have been widely documented. I can't see how simply reporting on model behaviour would affect Gavin's reputation in any way.

If you actually want to know, there are at least two links in this thread which contain plots of what various models predict for future September Arctic sea ice extent.

Phil Hays writes: Short extrapolations are obviously dodgy. [...] An extrapolation of the first 30 years of this model run might lead to a projected ice out before 2020, but the model does not follow the extrapolation, and if this model run is at least a fair to middling representation of reality, then it appears to me that the same is likely to true of reality. In other words, I think that reality isn’t more likely to follow an extrapolation, even a short one, than a specific model run, as long as the model is at least fair quality.

OK, you're making an argument that one (carefully selected) model run might provide "at least a fair to middling representation of reality". So its short-term predictions might be expected to be reasonably close to reality, at least in comparison to the many other model runs that don't do a good job of replicating the observed sea ice trend.

But nothing in there gives a basis for suggesting that that particular model run, or any model run, would be significantly less "dodgy" than simple extrapolation over the short term (say, the next couple of years). You assert that "short term extrapolations are dodgy", but don't explain why.

Short-term extrapolations are based on the assumption of persistence, the idea that current and recent conditions will generally tend to persist at least a short while into the future. So far, that's generally been the case -- if you use data from years [X-1 ... X-10] you can do a reasonable job of predicting sea ice extent in year X.

So why do you say that "short extrapolations are obviously dodgy?" We all live our daily lives based on short extrapolations!

crandles writes: Long extrapolations are obviously dodgy. But there has to be some short period for which extrapolations are as good if not better than clearly biased models. When that short period includes the extrapolations either getting to a few ice free days or within natural variability thereof then it is time to say: No, we must not stick with model projections of 2040 to 2100.

That short period may well be less than three years and we may not quite be at that point yet, but I suggest we are getting very close.

Yes, that seems exactly right to me.

It's always humbling to realize that what I wrote wasn't even close what I meant to write.

Example: “short extrapolations are obviously dodgy” should have perhaps been written as “an extrapolation of a complex system, based on a short history, can be misleading, even for a short amount of time". Or something close to that.

I'm bothered by the extrapolations of Arctic sea ice extent and/or volume for the reason that I think that the system is far more complex than can be predicted by a simple extrapolation given the historical data on this system.

So what about Arctic sea ice? There is a rough record of extent going back in time for hundreds of years based on ships logs and on shore based observations, later based on aircraft observations, and more recently on satellite observations. The earlier parts of this record seems to be far too rough to use for realistic extrapolation. What seems to be mostly used is the 1979 to current satellite record, which is of much better quality.

So is the sea ice simple? The past record doesn't look that simple, as there is a lot of variation, and the amount of variation has also varied. Models of sea ice seem to also have large amounts of variation. Expert opinion (of which my opinion is not a member of) also seems support the idea that sea ice isn't a simple system.

So Arctic sea ice has both a short record, and reasons to suspect complex behavior. This leads me to suspect that a simple extrapolation is likely to be wrong. How this plays out isn't something I have much of an opinion on. It seems to me that both a much longer and a much shorter time to "sea ice out" (extent 1 million km^2) might happen than what the extrapolation predicts. Also the behavior near the time of sea ice out might be rather different than anything seen before. All of these possibilities are not reflected in an extrapolation.

@[Incivility redacted - W] connolley: i can assure you that your sorrowful mimic expressed by your face on the photo on top of this page, most probably attributable to your basic fearful and alarmistic co2 mood, should brightening up when i inform you that the extent of arctic sea ice melting in completely irrelevant regarding any meaningful sea level rise, as the arctic sea ice is already swimming in the water and melting it competely does not even give you a minimum of hope for sea level rise of a fraction of one millimeter. this must be a big disappointment for climate alarmists like youm gavin and paul.

you should rather look at antarcticta where there were extremely low temperature recordings this year and even from there there was zero contribution of ice melting resulting to any lea level rise. again a huge defeat for you and the alarmistic climate church of al gore, jim hansen, gavin, kevin and michael mann, the hockeystick inventor.

[That was a bit incoherent; but I've been travelling, so got a slow response, sorry.

As for the pic, its taken while I was climbing.

As for the sea ice, you're multiply wrong. Firstly the link between sea ice retreat and SLR is via albedo feedback, not the more direct ice melt. Secondly, "does not even give you a minimum of hope for sea level rise of a fraction of one millimeter" is wrong. RMG will patiently explain this to you at http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/ice-and-sea-level.html.

As for Antarctica, its warming there (as we all know) and I'm not aware of any very cold readings, other than the usual. Do provide references if you have any. And of course, as we know, the Pine Island glacier stuff shows ice melting in Antarctica and contributing to SLR.

I'm vaguely curious as to whether your being multiply wrong will affect your views at all, or if you're impervious to facts -W]

Kai is a poe, yes?

marco, also for you as a layperson, i officially inform you that your ridiculous belief on catastrophic flooding as a consequence of non-existent sea level rise is competely unsubstantiated. you just can give up this nonsense and do more meaningful things in your future life than advocating climate halluzinations. i wish you a quick recovery from your numerous climatological misbeliefs

Kai, I never mentioned anything about "catastrophic flooding", nor has anyone else on this thread. That sea level rise is supposedly non-existent...well, I guess you have to believe in a big conspiracy of all those people trying to measure changes in sea levels - and actually reporting it rises.

Kai.

And does this church include some of its first members? People like Gilbert Plass, Roger Revelle, Hans Suesse, Suyotoro Manabe? Wetherald? Bolin?, Keeling? Does it include the scientists who wrote the first report on the risk of Climate Change - in 1965. President Johnson made a speech to Congress on the subject.

Does it include the various Commandant's of the USAF GeoPhysical Laboratory that lead the research program into the EM radiation absorbing/emitting properties of a wide range of atmospheric gases in the atmosphere, including CO2. In the1 950's & 60's!. What about the commanders of US Nuclear submarines reporting back on changes in Arctic Ice thickness?

The nasa engineers building and launching satellites measuring atmospheric temperature changes, rising Tropopause, increased water vapour content. The Euroopean engineers that designed the GRACE satellites that are directly measuring the loss of Ice mass in the Arctic, Antarctica and glaciers globally - 500 billion tonnes a year? The research teams from several different countries that are measuring increases in ocean heat content, thining of the shells of pteropods in the ocean due to acidification, increases in the temperature of various major ocean currents, reductions in the speed of the Polar Jet Stream? The geologists reporting on the geological evidence for past warm periods, past major acidification events, etc. Or the geologists that can tell us how much higher sea levels were in the past, at the peak of the previous InterGlacial period, the Eemian. High enough that Scandinavia was turned into an island.

Are these folks part of that church too? Particularly some of the names at the beginning of the list who have to be classified as past members since they are dead.

That is one damn big church kai!

Are

William.

There are a few reasons why we might consider the conclusions from the models as perhaps unreliable at predicting the timing of the eventual demise of the Arctic Sea ice. And I am not trying to attack the models or modellers here. It is just that they are dealing with a complex subject, and the science takes time to advance.And it is just possible that they may well be overtaken by events before the science gets far enough advanced.

Unlike other areas of climate modelling, Arctic ice modelling has to actually model the vaniishing of the system being modelled. Atmospheric or Ocean modellers for example don't have to include within their models end stages where the atmosphere or the oceans vanish.

Let me state first, I don't know what the ice models actually model. So I am speaking generally about factors that may or may not impact on the quality of what the models can do, but I don't know for certain what they do.

The problem for ice modellers is that models that may be 'skillful' at modelling the physics producing the general trends for the ice over longer time scales may not necessarily have the same skill at modelling the physics of the terminal phase. Broadly speaking one would expect to see thermodynamic and fluid-mechanics type factors being the major components in any model of Arctic ice covering most of the past record - Air and water temperatures and stratification, wind speed & direction, water salinity profiles, ice thickness, ice thermal conductivity etc.

Equally they would be likely be modelling broad trends in these factors over time, with an implicit assumption that there is a natural variability in these factors which cannot be directly modelled, but the models can estimate the likely range of this variability.

What is harder to model, but may be a significant factor during the terminal phase of the ice decline is that some of these natural variability factors may begin to have disproportionate impacts in the terminal phase.

Some examples to highlight what I mean, and also point to some of the feedback factors that may well continue the current rate of decline.
- This year an eye witness account described a large ice flow, around 10 km^2. A series of waves associated with the large cyclone in early August passed under the flow and after they had passed it had all been broken up into pieces of around 100 m^2 each. The Ice this year has been described as a 'giant slushy'. If the ice had been much thicker it may not have broken up as much, or even the presence of lots of thick ice may even have supressed wave formation. But no longer.
- Storms such as the one this year smash the ice up a lot. They also overturn flows and wash salty sea water over the top of a flow. This saltier water has a lower freezing point so conversely accelerates melting above.
- Major storm activity turns the waters below over. During the melt season the sea water under the ice actually has an interesting vertical structure. Immediately below the ice it is fresher and colder. Further down it is more saline and a bit warmer. This vertical gradient of colder water over warmer water is possible because the density difference due to the salinity gradient counter-balances the buoyancy forces due to warmer water below cooler water; Use of controlled salinity gradients to supress convection was being trialled in the 1980's as a way of building 'solar' ponds that could store heat at the bottom of the pond without it rising. Hopefully ice models would include such a 'freshwater lens' effect. However, can they include the effect of individual storms that disrupt the lens, mixing warmer & saltier water that is further from its freezing point up to the underside of the ice, accelerating melt?
- If the ice is more broken up and thus potentially mobile, how much greater are the impacts of annual variations in weather patterns in moving ice over long distances. And particularly out of the Arctic. Ice can be lost either by melting in situ, or by flowing out of the Arctic, primarily through the Fram strait. How much the 'Fram Express' operates each year depends substantially on prevailing weather patterns that year. This year was a relatively low year for ice movement out of the Fram but still we broke every record.
- How well do ice models capture freshwater flows into the Arctic from rivers, and their geopgraphical impacts. In particularly the giant Ob river system. Freshwater from the land that is only a few degrees C is still substantially warmer compared to salty water just above freezing at -1 C. Some of the melt patterns betwen 80 & 87 North above the Laptev Sea this year look suspiciously like an influence from fresh water flows.
- Generally, as more of the Arctic melts earlier, more of that open water is able to warm by absorbing sunlight for longer. As the refreeze starts this accumulated heat has to be removed again before the freeze can start in earnest. So if this delays the refreeze, the total thickness that can accumulate before next summer is reduced. So it melts out earlier, allowing more time for sunlight the next year and so on - a classic positive feedback.

One final observation. The general shape of any curve tracking Area/Extent over time that one would expect to see based on the fundamental physics of all this is a moderate although perhaps increasing decline, with a precipitous decline at the end. This can be described simply with some basic physics. Arctic Sea Ice is essentially large flat sheets, some meters thick. Over the course of the melt/freeze cycle, these sheets thin and thicken, substantially because of that happens at the bottom surface of the ice, then to a lesser extent in summer by what happens on top. In terms of total volume of melt & freeze, most of it happens on the top & bottom surfaces, not the edges.

So for a large chunk of ice. If it is say 4 meters thick at the height of winter, it might melt down to 2 metres thick at the summer peak. It's area hasn't changed much even though its volume has halved. So measures such as Extent or Area won't record much change over the seasons. But what if succesively each year it starts at a lower thickness? 3.5, 3, 2.5, 2.0? At 2.5 metres nominal thickness, at the height of the melt season this has dropped to 0.5. Thin but still there. And only moderate changes in area/extent still. However, if it starts the year at 2.0 and melts by 2.0 to 0.0, its entire area is lost that season. Suddenly the Area/Extent measurements are reporting huge declines because the thickness at peak-melt has dropped below zero - completely melted. Even though the year before may have still had 0.5 residual thickness and only a 'normal' decline in Area/Extent.

Volume/Thickness is overwhelmingly the metric that lets us know when we are close to the point where the Area/Extent figures plummet. If the volume figures continue the trend they have shown now for many years, we are only 1-3 years away from the point where the Area/Extent numbers crash because too much of the ice has reached a simple state at the end of the melt season - negative thickness.

When I look at the data from PIOMas, even ignoring expnential vs geometric vs Gompertz fits, it is impossible to imagine those trends continuing for more that 1-3 years without large areas of the Arctic registering negative thickness in September.

And the PIOMas data shows no sign of reversing yet.

There are a range of positive feedback processes that can and perhaps already have driven accelerating volume decline. Many of these may well fly 'under the radar' of the existing Ice Models because they reflect secondary effects that escalate radically only under terminal phase conditions.

Ultimately, when I look at the PIOMas data, the model predictions just look unphysical. Because I can't see what would cause a cessation or reversal of the PIOMas decline. And that is what is needed for the models to pan out.

I'm not trying to diss the ice modellers, but I suspect they haven't been able to put the resources into terminal phase modelling needed because they are still working on the broader general models. And the Mother Nature has simply outrun them.

"Let me state first, I don’t know what the ice models actually model." Err, perhaps this might be a good first step? At least in a general way, maybe not down to the lowest level details?

conolley, so you define what is right and what is wrong?????

[In spelling and address, yes. You're being impolite because you can't be bothered to spell my name correctly. That level of slovenliness on your part is offensive. You're also being impolite in using my raw surname - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_M._Connolley/For_me/The_namin… -W]

do you yourself consider a teacher or because you are the blogmaster here then by definition you dispose of the truth or what?

who do you define incivility? does it also to you?

[I think you need to read the comment policy. In this case, as I understand it, you're objecting because I copied your spam to the spam thread. But spam belongs in the spam thread, so I'm not really sure what you're complaining about. If you have something new to say, then say it. If you haven't, don't -W]

william connolley, you are overly sensitive. i do not accept your self-authorization as referee regarding scientific topics, for instance which factors effect a sea level rise. when i explain to you that complete arctic sea ice melting does not at all result in a measurable sea level rise because the ice is already swimming in the water, this is plain truth and everybody knows it.

[No, its wrong. I've provided a link, in a previous comment; here it is again: http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/ice-and-sea-level.html Its no good you simply insisting that you're right and "everybody knows it". You need to read, patiently, what I've pointed you at; understand it; and then, if you can, point out the flaw in its reasonning. Alternatively, you can try to create a chain of reasonning to support your own assertion, in which case I'll tell you what is wrong with it. But merely stating that its true because you say so is pointless -W]

your remark about arctic albedo changes has to be scientifically investigated (real not only models). please cite references of peer-reviewed articles which demonstrate what you claim, i.e. that arctic albedo changes affect the mean sea level.

[I'm surprised you're so ignorant about this. The ice-albedo feedback is part of the reason that climate sensitivity to CO2 change is about 3 oC for 2xCO2 -W]

the problem with you is that you are not an expert regarding weather and climate. you are a computer programmer and not a meterorologist, therefore you have no profound understanding of the physical phenomena in the atmosphere and on the surface of the earth. i would recommend to you that you abstain from the temptation to position yourself as an weather and climate expert which you are not, as already said. stick to truth and honesty, please

[I'm a software engineer, not a computer programmer. But I *was* a climate modeller. But if you're attempting to restrict debate only to those people who are experts: why are you talking? You're clearly not one yourself, your own rules should force you to silence -W]

william connolley, you are guest on an american blog web site: hence behave accordingly. americans have no sense for and even hate your sticking to your snobbyish british formalism.

[Nah, you know the yanks, they just love our stuffy English class structure, it gives them a sense of depth of history they so badly lack. In fact even plebs like you like it really, or else why would you be here? -W]

in the land of the free and the home of the brave you are perceived as a weird foreigner,

[I should damn well hope so, there is nothing worse than being called normal -W]

overly focused on superficials things. i have never seen somebody like you who has created a special article on how to address his royal highness correctly. that's truly ridiculous.

[If you're a fan of the truely ridiculous, I recommend reading the rest of your comment. I was going to burrow it, but its too funny to deprive others -W]

some instructions to you, which you should learn thoroughly:

1: there is no difference between a computer programmer and a software engineer. a software engineer has to be able to write computer programs, and a computer programmer has to be able to design computer programs. so don't be too proud to name yourself a "software engineer". i own a series of flourishing companies, one of them working in the it area with many computer programmers (a few of them called senior technical consultants, others senior software engineers, etc.) so you should be silent when talking to me about computers.

2: what you don't know: i am a scientist you are not. but i understand that you want to be one and are suffering that you have not reached your goal.

3: you are extremely poorly informed about co2 climate sensitivity: direct co2 sensitivity is somewhere in the range between 0.7 and 1.2 degrees celsius, and feedbacks are scientifically not convincingly demonstrated: e.g. the ipcc third assessment report concedes a low scientific understanding of two major feedbacks: clouds, aerosols. hence your assertion that a doubling of carbon dioxide will result in a 3 degree mean global temperature increase is far from proven, or in other words highly improbable: you must learn what your own godfathers have tried to teach you: READ THE IPPC REPORTS, PLEASE!!!

4: your remark "You need to read, patiently, what I've pointed you att; understand it; and then, if you can, point out the flaw in its reasonning. Alternatively, you can try to create a chain of reasonning to support your own assertion. But merely stating that its true because you say so is pointless" is pure arrogance. you have to take note that YOU ARE THE LAYPERSON HERE AND NOT ME, even if you don't like this fact.

5: unfortunately, since you are no scientist, it is difficult to discuss with you in the manner which is usual among scientists. you are just a lobbyist of a climate side which appears to you emotionally "right" and you behave and argue only according to your preferred "truth": you are not able and willing to look at the weaknesses of your climate world, the methodological weaknesses of climate science in gathering objective data (temperature, sea level altimetry, other remote sensing) for instance: you think that everything from your alarmistic climate side is right because you are so profoundly convinced like a religious belief. you act partisan and not scientifically objectively. therefore you don't understand why modern climatology has to be blamed "postmodern" science because of compromising established principles of normal science (scientific methodologies, etc.): but unfortunately you are even not in the position to understand what i am telling you since you have no idea what science really is. and you are not willing to learn, not a little bit, on the contrary you are so stubbornly fixed on what you think is true: AND THIS IS NON-SCIENTIFIC BEHAVIOR BUT PURE RELIGIOUS BELIEF. like it ot not.

bill conolly, look how cold it is today in antarctica, and what a big difference there is to your unreflected above saying about antarctica (antarctica is getting warmer and things like that which correspond to your prejudices of a catastrophically heating co2 world)

the current temperature at the south pole:

2012.09.10 1750 UTC
Wind from the ESE (120 degrees) at 7 MPH (6 KT)
Visibility 2 mile(s)
Sky conditions mostly clear
Weather Ice crystals
Mist
Temperature -94 F (-70 C)
Windchill -126 F (-88 C)
Pressure (altimeter) 28.35 in. Hg (960 hPa)

indeed extremely warm, but i would not recommend to uncle gore and uncle hansen to visit the south pole right now for a warmist lobbying show to demonstrate catastrophic global warming in front of world tv cameras. bad luck for you that there is nil melting today of south pole ice shield ice and therefore no contribution to sea level rise.

you, as an it guy should be careful to try to teach other peope in a field, namely meteorology, where your track record is zero and formation completely missing.

"bill conolly, look how cold it is today in antarctica, and what a big difference there is to your unreflected above saying about antarctica..."

Imagine that, during the Antarctic winter too! I bet the warmist models didn't see that coming! A cold Antarctic winter! Take that, greenhouse effect! Hello, Ice Age!

"More popcorn in aisle three, please!"

[Tut, you're easily amused. Anyway, surely the discussion is over? Kai has completely destroyed any idea of global warming - if it was cold in on part of Antarctica on one day, GW is logically impossible, no? -W]

billie, your are absurdly wrong when you think that americans like british class thinking and behavior. quite on the contrary, practically all americans laugh about british snobiety and find british englich pronounciation (like the royal family) hardly bearable and profoundly snobbiysh. and your statement that british class structures are missing in the us and therefore admired, because americans suffer from their short history without a king and nobles is the summit of ignorance and arrogance.

you have a profound misunderstanding of american culture and the way of life, of the land of the free and the home of the brave

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa0cz2V_VqU -W]

but always look at the bright side of life, tadaa, tadaa tadaa tadaa tadaa, tadaaaaaaa

without carbon dioxide, tadaa, tadaa tadaa tadaa tadaa, tadaaaaaaa

William, as I am also following the Lewandowsky issue, Kai is indeed very amusing!

Runaway Warming

milhayser — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 07:34:55 +0000

Runaway Warming

The extent of Arctic sea ice undulates like a yearly sine wave—rising in October, peaking in winter, and melting all spring and summer. This September we are likely to observe the lowest of lows; Greg Laden writes "There is less sea ice in the Arctic Circle than recorded in recent history." More ice has also melted in Greenland this season, with 4 weeks still to go. Greg says, "glacial melting is both more important than one might think and also more complicated." For example, the albedo of Greenland's ice sheet (the proportion of sunlight reflected back into the atmosphere) varies depending on the snowpack. "The white fresh frozen snow that falls over the winter is highly reflective," but "as it melts and gets slushy and mixes with water is has lower albedo." This is an example of a feedback mechanism, as warmth and melting allows more sunlight into the ice. Additional feedback could occur as methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is freed from polar ice sheets.

milhayser Wed, 08/22/2012 - 03:34

Tags

Global Warming

methane

Just to be clear, the current level of ice is 4.41 million sq km, and the record low is 4.28. However, we are at a record low for this date, and we have about 3 weeks before the usual time that ice starts to rebound, so a new record low is assured. Additionally, at the moment the slope of the graph isn't even looking like it is bottoming out--still looking linear.

Obsessives (such as myself) can check here as a starting point:

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/

It's worth pointing out that whilst ice Extent is easiest to measure, and most useful for navigation, there are also measures of area and volume; Area - which also tries to measure ice concentration - has already blown the 2007/2011 records away. Volume will have to wait, it's published monthly. But it will be a surprise if it's not a record.

As far as Extent goes, it's worth keeping in mind that irt's possible to have a couple of million km2 of 'slush-puppy' extent when Area and Volume are both within error of zero.

The interesting thing will be the effect on NH weather..

Ahcuah, there are multiple sources for data on the Arctic ice, measuring it slightly differently: extent, area, volume etc. Several have already reached new records with weeks of melting left. See, for example, Cryosphere Today:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

Thanks. Today even the Huffington Post had an article discussing some of the different ways of measuring it. www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/22/arctic-sea-ice-record-low_n_1821550.h…

The Sirens of Titan

esiegel — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 20:00:33 +0000

The Sirens of Titan

"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody." -Mark Twain

Back before the telescope was invented, Saturn was known as the Old Man of the Skies. The slowest-moving of the naked-eye planets, it's the only one that would reliably be in nearly the same location, year after year. You can find it all summer, after sunset, by following the "arc" of the handle of the big dipper all the way until you run into the brightest northern-hemisphere star, Arcturus, and then speeding on to the very bright Spica. Saturn is right next door.

Image credit: EarthSky.org.

But everything got an awful lot more interesting once the telescope was developed. What was a bright, slowly moving point of light for all of humanity suddenly transformed into the ringed wonder we know today.

Image credit: BKellySky of http://bkellysky.wordpress.com/.

Saturn, as you know, has the most complex and spectacular ring system of any planet discovered so far. While you can see the ringed structure even through a good pair of binoculars, the best views come from NASA's Cassini mission, presently orbiting the ringed giant and photographing as much of it as possible.

The best picture I've ever seen of its rings? That would be this one, taken from when the Sun was directly behind the planet.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

But Saturn isn't all by its lonesome out there. Just as we, on Earth, have our Moon to keep us company, Saturn has a family of its own. A very, very large family, with one member that's unique in all the Solar System.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).

Although there are more than 60 moons orbiting Saturn, the largest one, Titan -- visible here with its shadow falling on the gas giant -- is remarkable for a number of reasons.

Sure, it's big: larger than our Moon, larger than Mercury, and, at 5150 kilometers across, it's the second largest moon in the Solar System.

We've known about it for a really long time. Discovered in 1655 by Christiaan Huygens, Titan was the first moon discovered to orbit a world other than Earth or Jupiter.

Image retrieved from http://www.wingmakers.co.nz/universe/solar_system/Titan.html.

But unlike every other Moon ever discovered, and unlike even planets like Mercury and Mars, Titan is the only Moon known with an atmosphere so significant it's even thicker than the one here on Earth!

While this was long suspected, it was Voyager 1, the first spacecraft to visit Titan, that really showed us just how severe this atmosphere was.

Image credit: NASA / Voyager 1 space probe.

A thick nitrogen atmosphere, hundreds of kilometers thick, with a dense photochemical haze in the upper layers, obscures the surface from every single one of Voyager's visible-light pictures. With a surface pressure that's 60% greater than Earth's despite being just a fraction of our size and having just one-seventh of our gravity, Titan's atmosphere is actually more massive than our own.

But nitrogen is transparent to visible light; there's something more interesting than just a thick nitrogen atmosphere at work here.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

Thanks to the Cassini spacecraft, we were able to find methane molecules being broken apart by ultraviolet light from the Sun, producing other, more complex compounds, including ethane, acetyl alcohol, and even amino acids!

But that isn't all that Cassini came outfitted with. In addition to visible light equipment, it's also capable of seeing into the ultraviolet, which doesn't help much, but the infrared as well! Shown in red and green, below, the infrared filters allow us to see down, through the thick clouds and haze, all the way down to the surface of the most planet-like of all the moons.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

Initially, we couldn't tell what those dark features on Titan's surface were. Was it a vast ocean of methane, like our oceans on Earth? The chemistry, based on the temperatures and pressures present, would be close. Or is it just a case of differently-colored rock, like the maria of our Moon?

The great dark area, known as Shangri-la, was going to be the target of the first great experiment down to the surface. Because the Huygens probe, named after Titan's discoverer, was launched from Cassini, and became the first spacecraft -- in 2005 -- to land on a rocky body in the outer Solar System.

Image credits: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.

Descending through Titan's atmosphere and landing on the plains of Shangri-la, Huygens found mountains, valleys, strong evidence of past (but not present) liquid, and a dry, dark surface. Shangri-la was no lake.

But that doesn't mean the surface of Titan looked very much like the surface of our Moon. To me, it looked much more like a rocky cove once the tide's gone out.

Image credits: ESA / NASA / JPL / University of Arizona; NASA / Apollo.

But despite not finding any liquid at its landing site, Huygens and Cassini have learned an awful lot about the surface of Titan, and there is liquid there! There's evidence that Huygens has heard a methane waterfall, methane rain, clouds and evaporation are Titan's version of a water cycle, and thanks to the power of radar imaging, Cassini has confirmed that there are liquid methane lakes near the poles!

Image credit: NASA / JPL / USGS.

Based on what we know about Titan now, after nearly a decade of Cassini imaging, the cold regions near Titan's poles have abundant liquid methane, but the warmer regions, near the equator, ought to be dry. Liquid methane in those regions wouldn't last long and ought to boil off, so knowing what we know now, a methane lake near a tropical region of Titan would be a surprise.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

Well, guess what? Surprise! A region about the size of the great Salt Lake, near Titan's equator, came back as a completely black area on Cassini's radar, the telltale signal of liquid methane!

Artist credit: Ron Miller.

Because of how rapidly methane evaporates, this 927-square-mile lake near the equator (and not far from the Huygens landing site) must be fed by an underground aquifer of methane, according to Cassini scientist Caitlin Griffith. According to the NASA press release:

"An aquifer could explain one of the puzzling questions about the existence of methane, which is continually depleted," Griffith said. "Methane is a progenitor of Titan's organic chemistry, which likely produces interesting molecules like amino acids, the building blocks of life."

So, in a world flush with amino acids, there are underground stores of liquid that flow and pool near the equator, in an environment that's not much different -- save for being significantly cooler -- than a very young Earth was. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Image credit: Brian Smallwood, http://www.spaceprime.com/.

Maybe, just maybe, Titan is another world in the Solar System where life, no matter how primitive, has found a way. Regardless of whether that's the case or not, we've still made an amazing breakthrough learning about the planetary science of this unique world:

"We had thought that Titan simply had extensive dunes at the equator and lakes at the poles, but now we know that Titan is more complex than we previously thought," said Linda Spilker, the Cassini project scientist based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Cassini still has multiple opportunities to fly by this moon going forward, so we can't wait to see how the details of this story fill out."

The quest for extraterrestrial life in the Universe may take us to places vastly different from anything we've ever experienced; I can't wait to see how the details fill out, either!

esiegel Thu, 06/14/2012 - 16:00

Tags

All this time we were looking for cryovolcanos when we should have looked for cryoaquafers!

A well rounded article as always. I didn't know about the Huygens putatively hearing waterfalls, but I do believe I've read the claim that it detected an increase in methan vapor when landing, meaning the surface was soaked, not entirely dry.

Currently Titan naively tests best for life outside of Earth, IIRC methane metabolism would use hydrogen to produce acetylene, and there is an unambigious near surface lack of the first and possibly a surplus of the other. The hydrogen lack can't be explained by atmospheric models, but could of course be explained by some nonorganic cold surface chemistry. But metabolism is good to amp up reaction rates with enzymes.

And of course a subcrustal supply of organics is good. Titan is differentiated and believed to have (unfortunately an ammonia soaked, IIRC) subsurface ocean like Europa. Water, organics, minerals and heat energy towards its core may come together, all the necessary ingredients for life.

Nit:

Saturn, as you know, has the most complex and spectacular ring system of any planet discovered so far.

True as far as planets go, we have 8 of them and don't expect more. (And the best, latest Nice models imply we ejected at least one outer Neptune.) All the other giants and neptunes observed rings are much punier: Jupiter, Neptune and I believe Uranus.

But FWIW there is at least one exoplanet (or brown dwarf) that has a much more spectacular planetary ring system:

""Eric Mamajek showed us the transit of an extrasolar ring system, the first ever observed. This research used archival photometry from two small programs dedicated to finding hot Jupiters: SuperWASP and ASAS-3. These teams made their data public and Mamajek and his team ran their stars through the data reduction pipeline, thinking they might be able to find rotation periods. But what they found was a complex, bizarre looking transit that blocked 95% of light at the transit minimum. This transit was seen in both data sets.

The team ruled out the most straightforward explanations, those of a transiting planet or circumstellar disk. The transit, lasting 52 days, is full of substructure: each day shows variations and there are times when the star returns to 100% brightness and is briefly unobscured. The simplest model, found by modeling the daily averages, is one with three sets of rings. The rings are thin and the gaps are clean. The rings have a radius of 0.1-0.4 AU – they’re huge – and under the assumption that they have a similar composition to Saturn’s rings, their mass is roughly 0.4 to 8 times the mass of the Moon.

Though Mamajek calls this transiting system “Saturn on steroids,” the astronomers aren’t sure what’s inside the rings."

Incidentally, another contextual and endearing quote from that page:

""“Planets are like cockroaches” – when we’ve seen one planetary system like this, we know there are more out there."

Oops. Aquifer, methane - my new browser default spell checker isn't really helpful.

That Titan waterfall paper was written in 2004. I recall Huygens landing on Titan in 2005. Now I haven't read the paper to see if Huygens heard a waterfall but I'll take your word for it.. :P

Let the bio-astronomers go fishing in The Great Methane Lake of Titan!!

Give them whatever they need: spacecraft, instruments, labs,.. grants.

I don't expect catfish jumping; I expect something alive!

Nice discovery for an underfunded space exploration program.

I personally am going to need a round trip SpaceX ticket for three from Earth to The Great Methane Lake, a hotel on the methane, a sailboat, dry suits, camera equipment, and a personal chef.

Ethan, I think you've overstated the "waterfalls" case. As Thomas noted, the paper you mentioned predated the Huygens landing by more than a year, and was a speculation based on the author's studies of space acoustics.

n a 2009 review (http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/71546/) Leighton states clearly that Huygens did not make any recordings of ambient sound.

Thomas and Michael,

Thank you for the correction on the Waterfalls sound. I had remembered hearing the audio file from back around the time of the Huygens landing and didn't go back and look up whether that was a simulation or an actual recording.

Looks like I'll have to refrain from mentioning that anymore; thanks for keeping me honest and setting me straight!

Ethan, you may have overstated the amino acids case as well. Is there any hard evidence for their presence, or are the paper's authors merely speculating? Since the setting is so reducing chemically, their formation and stability could be questioned.

It's ok Ethan. "Water"falls certainly exist on Titan whether we hear them or not. And the simulated sounds still sound sexy when we are tryin to impress the ladies.

And if life is a natural consequence of the universe, there is a solid chance that Titan has it. Beneath the surface are a huge number of potentially zones of habitation for convention forms of life, while the surface itself presents an awesome opportunity for completely alien forms of life.

It looks so much like a living breathing world that it's almost shocking not to see the remains of Titan pond scum lying around everywhere. We need to send probes to the poles to see what's what. Regardless Titan has my vote for second neatest rock in the Solar System (after Earth).

I have a board on Pinterest where I curate images and articles about space. It's a shame this site blocks Pinterest, even though it allows posting to Google Plus (which posts the image from the post), Twitter, etc. Please consider removing that block.

Aquifer? Maybe "methanifer."

Great article about a fascinating world. Torbjörn Larsson, your comments are very informative until you get to the statement "True as far as planets go, we have 8 of them and don’t expect more." Why is this statement of what is clearly an opinion, not a fact, relevant or necessary here? We have a lot more than 8 planets in our solar system, and the first small planet beyond Neptune may very well have a ring system of its own. New Horizons is currently turning the Hubble Space Telescope toward the planet Pluto to check for rings because of the potential hazard of the spacecraft hitting particles of a ring system we didn't know existed.

One thing I've never heard addressed is the temperature difference. Wouldn't chemistry run a lot slower at that temperature? If so, how would that effect life? Could it be that life formed on Titan a long time ago, but due to the slow metabolic rate, it hasn't had more than a few hundred generations' of evolution?

Chemical reactions would run slower than they would at higher temperatures or indeed not at all if too cold.

However, the chemical reactions produce energy at a rate that is equal to the rate of reaction times the energy released per reaction.

Therefore it depends on what chemical reactions take place to power the processes of life as to whether life will run slower.

@ Laurel Kornfeld
“True as far as planets go, we have 8 of them and don’t expect more.” Why is this statement of what is clearly an opinion, not a fact, relevant or necessary here?

Because it establishes the context in which Ethan's comment was almost certainly correct. Setting aside the "planet" debate, it is still inordinately unlikely that we will find a large planet beyond Neptune capable of supporting a massive ring structure. If Pluto has rings, then they are going to be ephemeral things that would be relevant to a mission that might pass through them and just interesting in general, but pose no threat of deposing Saturn as the King of Rings (in our solar system).

No, Pluto will not depose Saturn as King of the Rings. However, that doesn't mean Pluto isn't a planet or that small planets aren't planets or that our solar system has only eight planets, which it does not. What you really mean is that we are unlikely to find any more gas giants beyond Neptune. Larsson would have done better to specify that.

Pluto being out-massed by non-gravitationally-bound objects in its orbit by a factor of over 10:1 while the 8 planets all out-mass the rest of their orbit by a factor of at least 1000:1 is why it's not a planet. I don't see how ignoring a 5 order of magnitude gap in gravitational dominance, and the current definition of planet, would be inherently better other than it would mesh with your own personal opinion that such a gap in dominance should be ignored and the definition is hooey.

I can't wait for the day when a new generation has been raised who is no more shocked that Pluto isn't a planet than they are that Ceres isn't.

Regarding Avi and Wow's comments regarding very-slow life processes (um, I'll abbreviate that to VerSLiP), there was a recent discovery of some bacteria buried in the ocean floor from 86 MYA that are profoundly frugal and long-lived.

We used to think that life had to ultimately have energy inputs from our star, but the deep vent tube worms proved that idea wrong. Our ideas about what conditions are necessary for life get broader as we shed our terracentric views. Besides, any life there would have evolved to work within the given parameters, n'est-ce pas?

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/17/152936168/ancient-deep-sea-bacteria-are-i…