Inactive sun could herald new mini-Ice Age

[Doug1029]

I cant beleive I read someone saying that the son is down the list of things that affect our climate, there surely is no way you could possibly beleive this, the son is what gives us our climate, and you actually beleive that we stupid little humans even have the ability to affect our climate more than the son does, now co2 may be a greenhouse gas, but we cant even touch the amount of co2 released from a volcano, we are really pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things if the world gets tired of us it will just shake us off like a dog shaking off water. i would also like to point out the amount of co2 in our atmosphere is caused by the warming of the planet not the other way around, when temperatures are warmer the oceans dont absorb as much co2 as they do when it is cooler. Its really very simple. We didnt create co2 it was allready here when we arrived, we just found a way to make money off of scaring people with it.

You read me right. Within the range of normal solar activity, the sun has little affect on climate. If the sun suddenly went dark, that would be a major effect, but that would also be outside the range of normal activity.

CO2 intensifies the effect of sunlight striking the earth. The amount put out by volcanoes does have an effect, but not nearly as large as the sulfides and particulates they put out. The net effect of volcanoes is to temporarily cool the earth. Historical eruptions have cooled climate for four-to-six years. Some prehistoric ones probably added two or three years to that. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa produced record cold in the US in January/February 1886. That's a typical duration for most eruptions. The eruption of 535 AD produced a three-year winter in Gottland/Sweden. There's a six-year cold snap dated to 2807 BC, but the source has not been determined.

But we humans put out a lot more CO2 in relation to the particulates we release. Particulates rain out of the atmosphere in a matter of days, but CO2 hangs around for centuries. And its not just CO2. It's also methane and CFCs and other pollutants we produce.

Warming lags CO2 increase when the system is operating naturally. And that's the whole point: the system is not operating naturally. We have altered it. Our total CO2 emissions since 1750 are about twice what is in the air now. The oceans have absorbed the other half.

Actually, most of that CO2 was not here when we arrived. Most of it was buried in the form of coal © or methane (CH4). We converted those materials to CO2 by burning them.

Apparently you don't think the climate is getting warmer. Have you checked out any of the lists of global temperature anomalies? There are only eight of them. You could easily do it in a few minutes. Do ANY of them show the temperatures going down during the 20th century? If deniers are going to claim the temperature isn't going up, they'll need a dataset to support that contention. Show me that dataset.

Doug

[dmurdock36]

yes and there has been no increase in temperatures going on 10 years or more now, this is all bs I agree we pollute our atmosphere and we need to stop doing this but I am tired of all the alarmist making stuff up and scaring people it is not a dire situation it is all about the money.

[Bildr]

yes and there has been no increase in temperatures going on 10 years or more now, this is all bs I agree we pollute our atmosphere and we need to stop doing this but I am tired of all the alarmist making stuff up and scaring people it is not a dire situation it is all about the money.

That is really an unscientific way to think. You CAN'T judge an entire system as complexe as weather just with what happenned in the last few years!!" https://www2.ucar.edu/climate/faq/how-much-has-global-temperature-risen-last-100-years

[Doug1029]

yes and there has been no increase in temperatures going on 10 years or more now, this is all bs I agree we pollute our atmosphere and we need to stop doing this but I am tired of all the alarmist making stuff up and scaring people it is not a dire situation it is all about the money.

You'd better check those lists of global temperature anomalies. They show surface temperatures continuing to rise slowly and sea temperatures going up rapidly. If you need the URLs, ask. I posted them once before, maybe I can find them again.

Exactly what are you calling "alarmist?" What do you think the "alarmists" are predicting?

What the science is predicting is a melt-off of the Arctic Ocean, substantially complete by mid-century. That will probably bring severe consequences to the weather system, but because it will be a completely new regime, nobody knows exactly what will happen. But all the research seems to agree that it won't be pretty. That's the short-term consequences, still 25 to 35 years away.

Sea level will probably continue its slow rise. You'll have to look hard to see it happening. What you'll see is places that have never been hit by hurricanes getting demolished. But they won't happen every year - probably more like once every seven or eight years - like what's happening right now.

Spending money? Energy conservation will save you money. You pay your electric bill by the kilowatt hour. Fewer kilowatts means fewer dollars. And wind chargers are in a dead heat with gas-fired turbines as to which is the cheapest (about 7 cents/kwh) and build and operate. Coal plants are shutting down (150 in the last three years) just because they're losing the economic competition. The New England grid has signed the contracts to switch to wind over the next five years. And if we can get a carbon fee system in place instead of these misplaced cap-and-trade credits, we'll save even more. Taxes - politicians like them, but environmental scientists don't. The money gets frittered away on irrelevant projects instead of being used to limit carbon emissions. Taxes don't help - they hurt.

In the long run, the risks are two: ecosystem collapse, where we accidently kill off something that was keeping us alive, or discharge of the methane gun. There are huge amounts of methane stored as methane ice in the ocean deeps. If warming seas melt the methane, it bubbles to the surface and goes into the air. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, more powerful than CO2. It oxidizes to CO2 in about a decade, but the CO2 can hang around for centuries. The melting methane becomes a vicious cycle with more melting producing more warming producing more melting, etc. If the methane gun discharges, we'll lose control of the climate system and be unable to stop warming.

At the moment, even if the methane gun fires, there isn't enough CO2 in the air to cause a runaway greenhouse effect, but in another fifteen to twenty years, there will be. Realistically, we are probably about 300 years from a point where we could exterminate ourselves this way. If the methane gun fires, our best hope is for a series of small discharges that will slowly kill off enough of us to reduce our emissions and restore the climate system. Large or numerous discharges in rapid succession could raise the planet's mean temperature almost to the boiling point. Four hundred to 500 years is the best estimate for this, if it occurs.

Actually, I'm starting to think it won't occur. The small discharge scenario seems far more likely to me. And that would give us time to respond; that is, if we haven't already entrained our own destruction.

If you're looking for a potential disaster to worry about, though; I have a better one: bird flu has only one gene to go to become transmissible between humans. That, of course, is the hardest one for it to get, so there's no telling how long it will take. But if and when it does, the kill rate is about 50% of those exposed. CDC is predicting that about half of us will be exposed. The US could lose one-quarter of its population in six months' time and it would be worse in the developing world. And that would put CO2 pollution on hold for a few decades. So maybe bird flu will save us yet.

Doug

[+DieChecker]

They show surface temperatures continuing to rise slowly and sea temperatures going up rapidly.

What does "sea temperatures going up rapidly" mean? I thought I had read that the deep ocean was siphoning off heat, and that the surface temperatures were not changing as greatly as the air temperatures.

Edited January 24, 2014 by DieChecker

[Frank Merton]

Reading back over the entries since I last looked at this thread, you would think I had announced salvation from global warming caused by a repeat of a period of low solar activity.

Wow! People read what they expect or want, not what is said. I am corrected for predicting such a thing (when I went out of my way to several times say if it happens and that we should not count on it). Then I am criticized for saying that this will solve all our problems, when I went out of my way to say the opposite.

All I did was point out that there is some hope out there, and this is one of them. I do object to the assertion that the sun has no influence on climate. That is I think an overreaction to those who deny anthropogenic global warming using the sun as an excuse, which, of course, is incorrect too.

What I think is going to happen is that humanity is going to bail itself out of this mess by accident. The economics are turning against fossil fuels, although political pressure may help on the margins, no giant socialistic scheme is going to find acceptance and pushing them just generates irrational political opposition. Also, some fossil fuel use will always be with us, so remember that some are worse than others.

[Frank Merton]

What does "sea temperatures going up rapidly" mean? I thought I had read that the deep ocean was siphoning off heat, and that the surface temperatures were not changing as greatly as the air temperatures.

That is as I understand it correct, but I'm not sure I'm sanguine about deep ocean warming up either.

[Doug1029]

What does "sea temperatures going up rapidly" mean? I thought I had read that the deep ocean was siphoning off heat, and that the surface temperatures were not changing as greatly as the air temperatures.

The datasets are SSTs - sea surface temperatures. These are determined from satellite data. I posted the URLs on another thread, but I don't remember which one it was.

I have also read that the ocean deeps are siphoning off heat. Presumably, that's from measurements taken at depth, but I don't know what that depth is.

Surface temperatures determined using the Mesonet system are taken at a height of 20 feet. For manned stations, that height is four feet. Both are actually air temperatures. You may be referring to temperatures in the stratosphere. I don't know what's going on up there. I live at ground level and the trees I work with are pretty close to ground level, so that is what I keep track of.

Doug

Edited January 24, 2014 by Doug1029

[Doug1029]

I do object to the assertion that the sun has no influence on climate. That is I think an overreaction to those who deny anthropogenic global warming using the sun as an excuse, which, of course, is incorrect too.

You are right about the sun having an effect. Perhaps I overstated the case. Variations in solar output have a small effect - I have measured it in tree rings. But the effect is smaller than that of volcanoes and AGW.

What I think is going to happen is that humanity is going to bail itself out of this mess by accident. The economics are turning against fossil fuels, although political pressure may help on the margins, no giant socialistic scheme is going to find acceptance and pushing them just generates irrational political opposition. Also, some fossil fuel use will always be with us, so remember that some are worse than others.

I foresee much the same. We are converting to wind because it's cheaper. We are phasing out coal plants because they are expensive. We are implementing conservation practices to save money. Economics is doing more than the politicians.

Doug

[Ealdwita]

The in the room is overpopulation. All the while certain sections of mankind engage in uncontrolled reproduction, emissions, food shortages etc will continue to cause problems.

[Kludge808]

No, the planet is too small for the population so the obvious answer is to make it larger.

[Doug1029]

The in the room is overpopulation. All the while certain sections of mankind engage in uncontrolled reproduction, emissions, food shortages etc will continue to cause problems.

Population is gradually coming around. The world reached maximum population growth back in the 1970s. Assuming the decline in birth rates continues, ZPG will be reached by the end of the century - the US should get there about 2050. Before that happens, we could easily make it to ten billion, though - that's 43% larger than we are now. The roll of resource managers is to fend off disaster until the population comes down enough to no longer be a problem.

Doug

[+DieChecker]

The datasets are SSTs - sea surface temperatures. These are determined from satellite data. I posted the URLs on another thread, but I don't remember which one it was.

I have also read that the ocean deeps are siphoning off heat. Presumably, that's from measurements taken at depth, but I don't know what that depth is.

Surface temperatures determined using the Mesonet system are taken at a height of 20 feet. For manned stations, that height is four feet. Both are actually air temperatures. You may be referring to temperatures in the stratosphere. I don't know what's going on up there. I live at ground level and the trees I work with are pretty close to ground level, so that is what I keep track of.

Doug

Yes, but what does "rapidly" indicate? 0.5C in 5 years? Is it twice the air temperature change? I'm just curious what "rapidly" refers to.

[Doug1029]

Yes, but what does "rapidly" indicate? 0.5C in 5 years? Is it twice the air temperature change? I'm just curious what "rapidly" refers to.

Here are the URLs:

Global Temperature Anomalies address is:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

Hadley-Crutcher 3 address is:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3ggl.txt

The first one is NOAA's list of temperature anomalies (the Hansen list). The second contains the other lists. You'll have to browse the website a little to locate all of them.

Doug

[MonkeyLove]

It's not just overpopulation but increasing consumption. For example, the U.S. has less than 5 pct of the world's population but must consume up to 25 pct of world oil production to power up around 250 million passenger vehicles (among other things). Given a growing global middle class, the rest of the world is following suit.

[Guest]

Any way you slice it there is no way the planet can cope with the demographics of the coming 50years. Most of the damage to the ecosystem (40% decline in biodiversity) happened since the 1980's when the global population went from 3billion to 7billion. Add the inevitable further 3billion to that by 2050 and you can see the sort of biodiversity decline we can expect. This will look like the most rapid and serious mass extinction the planet has ever seen. There is no way that we as a species can come out of this scenario as winners and most ecologists would put good money on us been one of the extinct species at the end of the process.

Br Cornelius

[qxcontinuum]

People shouldn't be allow to have more than one child. Having 2 or 3 i call it irresponsibility.

[Frank Merton]

People shouldn't be allow to have more than one child. Having 2 or 3 i call it irresponsibility.

I don't like the idea of legal involvement in the family like that; nor do I think it has much effect. The Chinese have a one child policy and it has been effective, but no more or less than in Vietnam where the government has encouraged family planning with education and subsidized contraception. In other words all the hardship the Chinese approach has caused has had very little effect if any. What cause birth rates to come down is largely economic.

[Guest]

A one child policy would now do little to defuse the demographic time bomb. A radical reformation of resource usage strategies would be the only thing which could do that, and in an era where neo-liberal economics won the ideological war - that doesn't look possible.

The population crisis is another example of man been clever without been wise. If at the time when vaccines, public hygiene and general increases in medical science were introduced someone had have spent a little time considering the population consequences - issues of population growth could have been addressed in parallel.

Man is clever but stupid at the same time and there is little evidence that he is learning from his mistakes. Always seeking for the magic bullet solution rather than planning with wisdom. It is this single fact which makes me very pessimistic about the next 50years.

Br Cornelius

[Doug1029]

I don't like the idea of legal involvement in the family like that; nor do I think it has much effect. The Chinese have a one child policy and it has been effective, but no more or less than in Vietnam where the government has encouraged family planning with education and subsidized contraception. In other words all the hardship the Chinese approach has caused has had very little effect if any. What cause birth rates to come down is largely economic.

Just make birth control and family planning available to enough women and the population will start to come down. Don't think we need to meddle in the family. Let the world's women decide.

Doug

[Harte]

ZPG: Zero Population Growth

OLD THEMES, OLD MEMES

The ZPG alarmists always posed their “runaway growth” paradigm the same way that global warmists set a paradigm of constantly rising world average temperatures. When it doesn't happen, there is a “paradigm shock” and a slow or more rapid reappraisal. ZPG fundamentalists urged radical remedies, saying that the world's wealthiest people must rapidly cut their consumption to save the Earth from what the UK Royal Society called "a vortex of economic, socio-political and environmental ills".

Economists however ignored these calls, saying that only more economic growth pushed by population growth can combat the “diseconomies of growth” - but their paradigm will also have to integrate the changing outlook for population. Most economic demographers like to pretend, or worse, they believe they have a total and perfect explanation of why the human population has for 250 years grown in a semi-exponential manner, seemingly shrugging off the impacts of world wars, regional wars, famines, epidemics, economic crises – and climate change.

The exact opposite of ZPG advocates, almost all economic demographers are “populationists' or natalists. They argue that governments must maintain population growth to ensure economic growth in the future.

As we know the complete opposite paradigm – control and limit population growth to favor economic growth – has been used with considerable success by governments with as wide-ranging ideologies as Singapore, the Peoples Republic of China and Iran since the 1960s and earlier. In all 3 cases the large success in curbing population growth came as a surprise to governments, but as we are finding out today, whether the economy is growing or shrinking, population growth rates are falling. They fall to ZPG, and then become negative, shifting to net annual decline of national populations.

In the regions and countries where this new paradigm is already installed, including most European countries, Russia, Japan, several “surprise countries” such as Bangladesh and Malaysia, and soon China, whatever sets of national demographic, economic and family policies are applied, the decline process beds in. It then becomes hard or impossible to switch back to national population growth.

Source

Also:

Harte

[Guest]

Harte, the damage is been done with the current population. Remember the 40% decline in biodiversity - that's just a fact from every field of ecology. This is the fundamental crisis which no economist ever brings to the table when discussing population. There is an inescapable fact that when a species or habitat is driven to extinction it remains extinct ever after, and no one can predict the consequence of that event.

It would not matter a fig whether population stabalized at current levels - the damage would still carry on at current rates and get progressively worse as more people strived for middle class lifestyles. That net growth of 1% you point to will still see world population peak out at 10billion - putting a massive 1/3 more strain (minimum since it ignore the rise of the middle class) on the already overstretched resource base. This is particularly significant in light of the fact that peak oil has already arrived many decades before peak population.

Economic growth - without consideration for the limits of resources - is still an issue which has not been fundamentally questioned in the field of politics and economics. It is still seen as the inevitable driver of all human activity, and yet it has already started to come up against its fundamental limits.

There is nothing alarmist about the current demographics and its devastating effects on the ecosystem - the thing which we depend on to survive. The time bomb cannot be defused in any ethical way and we will just have to face its inevitable consequences.

As I have always said, climate change is just one small aspect of this fundamental existential crisis of human meaning and purpose which is haunting our very existence and plunging many into personal existential despair. People such as those in Japan who have ceased to engage in stable relationships have lost confidence in the very purpose of life which they have been taught from the day they were born.

Br Cornelius

Edited January 28, 2014 by Guest

[Harte]

I've often compared it to the niche we evolved in.

After all, we're way out of that niche now. That's the sort of thing that causes extinctions.

Harte

[+Hammerclaw]

So, just in my lifetime, we've gone from worrying about Nuclear Winter, to Global Warming and now to a Mini Ice Age?

[Doug1029]

So, just in my lifetime, we've gone from worrying about Nuclear Winter, to Global Warming and now to a Mini Ice Age?

US and Russian subs still play hide-and-seek in the oceans and we still have a lot of missiles pointed at each other. An accident is still very possible. India and Pakistan are shooting at each other over Kashmir and they both have nuclear weapons. North Korea and Iran are rattling sabers. And then there's nuclear terrorism. Nuclear winter is only 100 or so megatons away. The risks are still very real.

Global warming is still with us and likely to get worse. The downturn in solar activity hasn't yet started to affect global temps in any way that can be measured. And the solar cycle reaches its next minimum in 2020. So you won't have to wait long.

There will never be another ice age as long as humans control the climate. We know how to warm up the planet - that's easy. It's cooling it we're having trouble with.

Doug

Edited January 30, 2014 by Doug1029