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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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 Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 4:32 am Post subject: Why So Gloomy? |
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Shall we have another go?
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There�s No Such Thing As a 'Perfect' Temperature
By Richard S. Lindzen
Newsweek International
April 16, 2007 issue - Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it? Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators�and many scientists�seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth's climate history, it's apparent that there's no such thing as an optimal temperature�a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.
A warmer climate could prove to be more beneficial than the one we have now. Much of the alarm over climate change is based on ignorance of what is normal for weather and climate. There is no evidence, for instance, that extreme weather events are increasing in any systematic way, according to scientists at the U.S. National Hurricane Center, the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which released the second part of this year's report earlier this month). Indeed, meteorological theory holds that, outside the tropics, weather in a warming world should be less variable, which might be a good thing.
In many other respects, the ill effects of warming are overblown. Sea levels, for example, have been increasing since the end of the last ice age. When you look at recent centuries in perspective, ignoring short-term fluctuations, the rate of sea-level rise has been relatively uniform (less than a couple of millimeters a year). There's even some evidence that the rate was higher in the first half of the twentieth century than in the second half. Overall, the risk of sea-level rise from global warming is less at almost any given location than that from other causes, such as tectonic motions of the earth's surface.
Many of the most alarming studies rely on long-range predictions using inherently untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately forecast the weather a week from now. Interpretations of these studies rarely consider that the impact of carbon on temperature goes down�not up�the more carbon accumulates in the atmosphere. Even if emissions were the sole cause of the recent temperature rise�a dubious proposition�future increases wouldn't be as steep as the climb in emissions.
Indeed, one overlooked mystery is why temperatures are not already higher. Various models predict that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the world's average temperature by as little as 1.5 degrees Celsius or as much as 4.5 degrees. The important thing about doubled CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas) is its "forcing"�its contribution to warming. At present, the greenhouse forcing is already about three-quarters of what one would get from a doubling of CO2. But average temperatures rose only about 0.6 degrees since the beginning of the industrial era, and the change hasn't been uniform�warming has largely occurred during the periods from 1919 to 1940 and from 1976 to 1998, with cooling in between. Researchers have been unable to explain this discrepancy.
Modelers claim to have simulated the warming and cooling that occurred before 1976 by choosing among various guesses as to what effect poorly observed volcanoes and unmeasured output from the sun have had. These factors, they claim, don't explain the warming of about 0.4 degrees C between 1976 and 1998. Climate modelers assume the cause must be greenhouse-gas emissions because they have no other explanation. This is a poor substitute for evidence, and simulation hardly constitutes explanation. Ten years ago climate modelers also couldn't account for the warming that occurred from about 1050 to 1300. They tried to expunge the medieval warm period from the observational record�an effort that is now generally discredited. The models have also severely underestimated short-term variability El Ni�o and the Intraseasonal Oscillation. Such phenomena illustrate the ability of the complex and turbulent climate system to vary significantly with no external cause whatever, and to do so over many years, even centuries.
Is there any point in pretending that CO2 increases will be catastrophic? Or could they be modest and on balance beneficial? India has warmed during the second half of the 20th century, and agricultural output has increased greatly. Infectious diseases like malaria are a matter not so much of temperature as poverty and public-health policies (like eliminating DDT). Exposure to cold is generally found to be both more dangerous and less comfortable.
Moreover, actions taken thus far to reduce emissions have already had negative consequences without improving our ability to adapt to climate change. An emphasis on ethanol, for instance, has led to angry protests against corn-price increases in Mexico, and forest clearing and habitat destruction in Southeast Asia. Carbon caps are likely to lead to increased prices, as well as corruption associated with permit trading. (Enron was a leading lobbyist for Kyoto because it had hoped to capitalize on emissions trading.) The alleged solutions have more potential for catastrophe than the putative problem. The conclusion of the late climate scientist Roger Revelle�Al Gore's supposed mentor�is worth pondering: the evidence for global warming thus far doesn't warrant any action unless it is justifiable on grounds that have nothing to do with climate.
Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17997788/site/newsweek/ |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 9:33 pm Post subject: |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:28 am Post subject: |
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I can respond to that. In certain countries not very far from the deserts of the Sahara, there would be increased desertification and perhaps so many Africans will die. Part of the Middle East and Mediterranean will become increasingly hot which would make it harder to farm in some areas. In the North, the warming climate won't harm much of the industrialized world, I would assume. There might be more gains than losses for example in Canada and for Denmark in respect to Greenland. One cannot predict how global warning will affect us, but for some it will be a major catastrophe. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:50 am Post subject: |
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So we can expect to see a pollyanna thread from you whenever Richard Lindzen farts out an op-ed piece? Great.
Read the IPCC summary of the report on climate change impacts that was released on Friday. It's the best assessment we have of the possible problems that global warming is going to cause. As you may know, various government officials from the US, China, Saudi Arabia and Russia have forced some changes in order to downplay some of the conclusions, so rest assured that it is a very conservative document. http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM6avr07.pdf (about 20 pages).
Now tell us, BJWD - other than sheer wishful thinking and a blind faith in market economics, what reasons would you have for taking Lindzen's word over that of the 62 authors of the Working Group 2 summary?
It is good to see that Lindzen has now accepted anthropogenic global warming, however. Now he's moved into the "but we can't/shouldn't do anything about it" stage of denial.
Last edited by gang ah jee on Tue Apr 10, 2007 9:04 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:57 am Post subject: |
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Alteration of the Gulf Stream would not just mean a more frigid Northeast US and East Coast Canada, but it would absolutely screw Europe.
Right now the temperature of the sea has risen 1 degree Celsius. This is not as dire as the increase in ocean salinity. Should the ocean shallows become too salty for fragile coral reefs it could lead to an ecological catastrophe and a massive blow to biodiversity.
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Growing Acidity of Oceans May Kill Corals
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 5, 2006; Page A01
The escalating level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making the world's oceans more acidic, government and independent scientists say. They warn that, by the end of the century, the trend could decimate coral reefs and creatures that underpin the sea's food web.
Although scientists and some politicians have just begun to focus on the question of ocean acidification, they describe it as one of the most pressing environmental threats facing Earth.
"It's just been an absolute time bomb that's gone off both in the scientific community and, ultimately, in our public policymaking," said Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), who received a two-hour briefing on the subject in May with five other House members. "It's another example of when you put gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, you have these results none of us would have predicted."
Thomas E. Lovejoy, president of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, has just rewritten the paperback edition of "Climate Change and Biodiversity," his latest book, to highlight the threat of ocean acidification. "It's the single most profound environmental change I've learned about in my entire career," he said last week.
A coalition of federal and university scientists is to issue a report today describing how carbon dioxide emissions are, in the words of a press release from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "dramatically altering ocean chemistry and threatening corals and other marine organisms that secrete skeletal structures."
For decades, scientists have viewed the oceans' absorption of carbon dioxide as an environmental plus, because it mitigates the effects of global warming. But by taking up one-third of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide -- much of which stems from exhaust from automobiles, power plants and other industrial sources -- oceans are transforming their pH level.
The pH level, measured in "units," is a calculation of the balance of a liquid's acidity and its alkalinity. The lower a liquid's pH number, the higher its acidity; the higher the number, the more alkaline it is. The ph level for the world's oceans was stable between 1000 and 1800, but has dropped one-tenth of a unit since the Industrial Revolution, according to Christopher Langdon, a University of Miami marine biology professor.
Scientists expect ocean pH levels to drop by another 0.3 units by 2100, which could seriously damage marine creatures that need calcium carbonate to build their shells and skeletons. Once absorbed in seawater, carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid and lowers ocean pH, making it harder for corals, plankton and tiny marine snails (called pteropods) to form their body parts.
Ken Caldeira, a chemical oceanographer at Stanford University who briefed lawmakers along with NCAR marine ecologist Joan Kleypas, said oceans are more acidic than they have has been for "many millions of years."
"What we're doing in the next decade will affect our oceans for millions of years," Caldeira said. "CO2levels are going up extremely rapidly, and it's overwhelming our marine systems."
Some have questioned global-warming predictions based on computer models, but ocean acidification is less controversial because it involves basic chemistry. "You can duplicate this phenomenon by blowing into a straw in a glass of water and changing the water's pH level," Lovejoy said. "It's basically undeniable."
Hugo A. Lo?iciga, a geography professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is one of the few academics to question the phenomenon. A groundwater hydrologist, Lo?iciga published a paper in the May edition of the American Geophysical Union's journal that suggested the oceans may not become so acidic, because enough carbonate material will help restore equilibrium to them.
Lo?iciga wrote that although seawater in certain regions may become more acidic over time, "on a global scale and over the time scales considered (hundreds of years), there would not be accentuated changes in either seawater salinity or acidity from the rising concentration of atmospheric CO2."
Two dozen scientists have written a response questioning this assumption, since it would take thousands of years for such material to reach the oceans from land.
"The paper by Lo?iciga ignores decades of scholarship, presents inappropriate calculations and draws erroneous conclusions that simply do not apply to real ocean," they wrote. They added that, unless carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere stabilize soon, the seas will soon exceed the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended acidity limits.
Scientists have conducted a few ocean acidification experiments in recent years. All have shown that adding carbon dioxide to the water slows corals' growth rate and can dissolve pteropods' shells.
Langdon, who conducted an experiment between 1996 and 2003 in Columbia University's Biosphere 2 lab in Tucson, concluded that corals grew half as fast in aquariums when exposed to the level of carbon dioxide projected to exist by 2050. Coupled with the higher sea temperatures that climate change produces, Langdon said, corals may not survive by the end of the century.
"It's going to be on a global scale and it's also chronic," Langdon said of ocean acidification. "Twenty-four/seven, it's going to be stressing these organisms. . . . These organisms probably don't have the adaptive ability to respond to this new onslaught."
Stanford University marine biologist Robert B. Dunbar has studied the effect of increased carbon dioxide on coral reefs in Israel and Australia's Great Barrier Reef. "What we found in Israel was the community is dissolving," Dunbar said.
Caldeira has mapped out where corals exist today and the pH levels of the water in which they thrive; by the end of the century, no seawater will be as alkaline as where they live now. If carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current levels, he said, "It's say goodbye' to coral reefs."
Although the fate of plankton and marine snails may not seem as compelling as vibrantly colored coral reefs, they are critical to sustaining marine species such as salmon, redfish, mackerel and baleen whales.
"These are groups everyone depends on, and if their numbers go down there are going to be reverberations throughout the food chain," said John Guinotte, a marine biologist at the Marine Conservation Biology Institute. "When I see marine snails' shells dissolving while they're alive, that's spooky to me."
Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a scientist by training, attended the congressional briefing on ocean acidification. He said these developments are "new to me, which was surprising because I usually keep up with things."
"The changes in our climate are severe and urgent even if it weren't for this, but this just adds impact and urgency to the situation," Holt said. |
GW is not the only concern. Even without it there are perils to marine life due to world capture rates of fish, particularly concerning China.
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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| So we can expect to see a pollyanna thread from you whenever Richard Lindzen farts out an op-ed piece? Great. |
Maybe? I don't know. It was a good read. I guess all we want to discuss is Iraq..
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Read the IPCC summary of the report on climate change impacts that was released on Friday. It's the best assessment we have of the possible problems that global warming is going to cause. As you may know, various government officials from the US, China, Saudi Arabia and Russia have forced some changes in order to downplay some of the conclusions, so rest assured that it is a very conservative document. http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM6avr07.pdf (about 20 pages). |
I really have better things to do right now. But I will take you at your word. I did see the CBC's take on it. I should start planning for the end days.
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Now tell us, BJWD - other than sheer wishful thinking and a blind faith in market economics, what reasons would you have for taking Lindzen's word over that of the 62 authors of the Working Group 2 summary? |
"Blind faith"? Do you know where that term comes from? But on to the real question, why do I "take his word"? Well, do I? I like that his isn't alarmist, for one. And "environmentalists" have a serious credibility problem in my eyes.
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It is good to see that Lindzen has now accepted anthropogenic global warming, however. Now he's moved into the "but we can't/shouldn't do anything about it" stage of denial. |
Denial? The language you use is clearly designed to ridicule and end debate. This is exactly why I think that the whole debate is dominated by blow-hards. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:46 pm Post subject: |
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Face it, BJWD - you'd believe Hwang Woo Suk as long as he told you what you wanted to hear about global warming.  |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 9:10 pm Post subject: |
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First, that was nothing but an opinion piece. There was no science in it, so it is basically useless. Second, his characterization of the modeling these days is just incorrect. Third, like every good denier, he simply doesn't mention that no more than a 1 meter rise displaces hundreds of millions, if not billions of people. Fourth, he quite simply lied:
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| Ten years ago climate modelers also couldn't account for the warming that occurred from about 1050 to 1300. They tried to expunge the medieval warm period from the observational record�an effort that is now generally discredited. |
This is incorrect. THREE scientists made the famous hockey stick model based on tree rings only. Now, it was seized on as important and was highlighted in the 2001 IPCC report, but it was prior to the ice cores and other data. Was it wrong? Yes. Is his characterization also wrong? Yes. Errors are not cause for dismissal. they happen. Purposely misleading, now that's something to question in one's character. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 9:52 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| Face it, BJWD - you'd believe Hwang Woo Suk as long as he told you what you wanted to hear about global warming. |
Well, I suppose you can show me the climate models that you have built yourself? Either way, what do I want to hear?
I don't follow the discussion for the same reasons that I don't follow the "**** is the new crack", or "random violent crime is epidemic" discussions that the scared types have every few years. It is all easily digestible fear-mongering neatly packaged for sound-bites and consumption by the numb sofa bound classes.
This is yet another problem that only government can rightly solve, and only government can rightly prove. The messenger and the cure are the same person.
If you are able, you should check out the CBC's treatment of this last climate conference. They added ominous music and had a shrill woman informing us (only) of the most extreme possible outcomes as if they are the only possible outcome. Every fool to the top of the hill. JC is on his way back. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 10:20 pm Post subject: |
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BJWD, do you read Reason magazine? I'm not much of a libertarian myself, but they have some good writers, and occasionally some really thought-provoking articles. Anyway, did you hear about their science editor Ronald Bailey? Bailey covered global warming science for like 20 years now, hates environmentalists, and was pretty much using all of your arguments - 'it's just alarmism', etc. Hell, in 2002 he even published a book called Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death. But in 2005 he was man enough and honest enough to admit that he had been mistaken. You've got to respect that.
You might want to check out some of his articles:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/34079.html
http://www.reason.com/news/show/36811.html
http://www.reason.com/news/show/118479.html |
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