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What's Up with Warm February Weather in US?


Claire.

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38 minutes ago, back to earth said:

Check the graph trends 

 

Image result for global temperatures over long scale time

Ok. This is the sort of thing that I was talking about. If you will scale things right you can make a grain of sand laying on a piece of glass LOOK like Mount Everest! If you will note the "disastrous"  temperature fluctuation represented on the graph is a swing from about minus 0.2 degrees to plus 0.4 degrees centigrade over a 10,000 year period. That is a total swing of 0.6 degrees centigrade or a 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm sorry but I just don't see that as an emergency situation. The spike at the end proves my point about the uncertainty of it being a man caused problem. The time period represents a VERY short period of time during which people, if anything, were reducing their foot print on the ecology. I lived through the 60s and believe me back then people were just dumping anything anywhere. THAT changed. I lived in one of the most polluted places in America and got to watch the changes made. The sudden flick makes me wonder if it represents a change in the way the data is gathered more than an actual world wide change. 

No matter what though I can deal with a one degree change. 

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1 hour ago, DanL said:

Ok. This is the sort of thing that I was talking about. If you will scale things right you can make a grain of sand laying on a piece of glass LOOK like Mount Everest! If you will note the "disastrous"  temperature fluctuation represented on the graph is a swing from about minus 0.2 degrees to plus 0.4 degrees centigrade over a 10,000 year period. That is a total swing of 0.6 degrees centigrade or a 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm sorry but I just don't see that as an emergency situation. The spike at the end proves my point about the uncertainty of it being a man caused problem. The time period represents a VERY short period of time during which people, if anything, were reducing their foot print on the ecology. I lived through the 60s and believe me back then people were just dumping anything anywhere. THAT changed. I lived in one of the most polluted places in America and got to watch the changes made. The sudden flick makes me wonder if it represents a change in the way the data is gathered more than an actual world wide change. 

No matter what though I can deal with a one degree change. 

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/if-earth-has-warmed-and-cooled-throughout-history-what-makes-scientists-think-that-humans-are-causing-global-warming-now/. Not to mention millions of years ago when earth`s warmest  was at its highest.  

 

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According to that chart, the extremes are -0.4 to +0.4 degrees C.

Maybe.

The actual years of the temperature excursion are 1910 to present, with brief pauses in the 1950s (16 years) and 1998-2005 (eight years).  During that time, temps rose about a degree C.  I have the actual numbers in my office and will post them when I get back there.

I work with tree ring data, mostly.  It is continuous across the entire range of the graph.  We can apply the same technique across 8500 years of data - and that temperature spike at the end is still there.  I could believe that what we are seeing in tree ring data is a response to CO2 fertilization, rather than temperature.  The two are very difficult to separate because they follow very similar models.  But we also have instrumental records that confirm increasing temps.  And in any event, high levels of CO2 in the air are an environmental disaster even if they didn't result in higher temps.  Let's remember that we're dealing with an environmental disaster, not just a temperature disaster.

Most instrumental records are based on equipment that has been in use for centuries.  Farenheit invented the thermometer in the 1750s.  We're still using the same design.  But now we have made it a double system that records both high and low temps.  This has been in use since the 1830s.  The last major change in measuring of surface temps at surface stations was the adoption of Standard time for recording in 1883.

Even satellite temps depend on surface temps.  If you want to know what the temperature is at the surface, you take a sample of surface stations, use the satellite to measure reflectance at each one (Red, green, blue and infra-red colors are used.).  Then use the measured surface temp as your Y-variable and the reflectances as your X-variables and run a regression.  Use the resulting equation plus satellite data to estimate the surface temp anywhere on earth.  Do this a few million times and average the result to get your average daily satellite temp.  NASA does the whole process every day.

Our "modern" precipitation gauges are only slightly changed from the tin can that was used in the 1840s.  We've changed the shape and added a sliding volume scale, but the result is the same.  If you want to make it an electric gauge so you can read it by computer from a remote location, you put an electric  scale under the can and weigh it.

Including data recorded by the Army Surgeon General's Office, the Signal Corps, some private diaries and the efforts of the Weather Bureau and Weather Service, we have data from the western US dating into the 1820s.  In Europe there are several cities whose records go back to 1700s.  And all use basically the same equipment.  There have been some changes in the manner of useage that creates disconnects in the weather graphs, all before 1840, but otherwise, we are looking at continuous records recorded using the same type of equipment for 175 years.

Doug

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Changes in global weather patterns have always been a problem for people. I don't doubt...I will even actually guarantee that  at some point in the future we will have both some rather extreme warming and at other times some rather extreme cooling. I also have seen the terrible results of human pollution on a fragile ecology. I have also seen that the recovery if we make changes can be amazing. 

My problem with the current Global Warming thing is that it is a panic reaction and reminds me a LOT of a con man making a sales pitch and trying to push you into a fast ill advised purchase. Over and over I have watched the American people sold a pig in a poke. Remember the end of the world hole in the ozone layer??? Notice you haven't heard about that in years and years. That is because after panicking the government and people and costing us more than a trillion dollars they figured out that it is a natural phenomenon and not any problem. Remember, we were all going to die of skin cancer and even the animals were going to die...NOT! I remember when we were assured that if we went to war in the Kuwait and the oil field caught on fire that it would lead to a "nuclear" type winter and kill us all...NOT.  They are STILL quoting a Berkeley study that states and proves with all sorts of statistical data that in five years the Polar ice cap is going to melt and the poor polar bears will become extinct. The problem is that this study and warning was made over 20 years ago!! 

Nobody is saying that Global Warming might not be a problem down the road. The debate is whether or not this is a man made problem and even more important will bankrupting America make a bit of difference. Let me assure you moving industry to China because our businesses can't use American resources is NOT going to help the world. America paying 10 dollars a gallon because we aren't allowed to use our domestic resources or to refine it here also will not help the world ecology. 

Before we jump off a cliff again lets give it time and really look at the problem and make damn sure that there IS a problem and that anything we do will make a difference. If the warming trend is real but natural we could gut our culture and not make a BIT of difference. 

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22 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

The actual years of the temperature excursion are 1910 to present, with brief pauses in the 1950s (16 years) and 1998-2005 (eight years).  During that time, temps rose about a degree C.  I have the actual numbers in my office and will post them when I get back there.

To make my generalizations specific:

The coldest year on record, according to NASA, was 1911 (Sorry about that.) at -0.11 degrees C. below the baseline.  The warmest year was 2016 at 0.98 degrees above the baseline, for a total temperature rise of 1.09 degrees in 88 years (NASA 2017).  Those are global averages.  In places (Amarillo, TX) the increase has been greater; along the US east coast, nothing much has happened.  Since 1826, Manhattan, KS has warmed about 1.59 degrees C. (Burnette 2009).

The longest daily weather index in the world is from Uppsala, Sweden which extends from 1722 to the present.  There is an index for central England that began in 1722 and extends to the present.  Stockholm, Sweden is third, extending from 1756 to the present.  The oldest record in Oklahoma is from Fort Towson and began on July 1, 1824.  Unfortunately, it has some major gaps.

 

Burnette, D. J., D. W. Stahle and C. J. Mock.  2009.  Daily-mean temperature reconstructed for Kansas from early instrumental and modern observations.  Journal of the American Meteorological Society (Oct. 2009).

NASA.  2017.  GLOBAL Land-Ocean Temperature Index in 0.01 degrees Celsius   base period: 1951-1980.
 

Doug

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16 hours ago, DanL said:

My problem with the current Global Warming thing is that it is a panic reaction and reminds me a LOT of a con man making a sales pitch and trying to push you into a fast ill advised purchase.

That is why I keep telling people to know the science and use it as their basis of action.  Some of the warming advocates, especially from back in the 1970s and 1980s, were no better than modern deniers.  But even those early advocates have moderated their stance.  I know one personally.  He was a bit of a kook then and still is, but we're gradually educating him.  Unfortunately, he writes for some liberal magazines, so his unfounded opinions get scattered far and wide.

Have you ever tried to write a professional paper that is absolutely error-free?  It ain't easy.  Every sentence has to be fact-checked.  And even then, some reviewer is going to question your methods (or just plain misunderstand them).  Here on UM I have posted a number of erroneous statements, as has nearly everyone else.  There isn't time to fact-check everything, so most people don't - even those who know their material will appear in print.  For an example, compare Posts 28 and 30 for the coldest year on record.

 

The Ozone Hole.  The problem was Chloro-fluoro-hydrocarbons (CFCs) polluting the atmosphere which allowed ultra-violet rays to penetrate the atmosphere during freezing weather.  The solution was to ban production of CFCs.  CFCs were used as coolants in air conditioners and as propellants in spray aerosols.  I have the dubious distinction of having used the last box of CFC-propelled tree marking paint on the Durango District (That would have been about 1986.).  The claim of high costs associated with the ban is bs.  The industry converted to a related compound almost overnight.  It did suffer a decline in business, but as that money was spent on other products, the economy as a whole took no notice.

The amount of ozone over the Antarctic in springtime has declined by about 50% in the last decade, about 94% since 1975.  AND:  no it's not a natural problem.  The reaction that CFCs catalyze IS natural, but the catalysis is due to man-made CFCs.  The reason you don't hear much about the ozone hole these days is that we solved the problem.  The damage has been pretty-much reversed.  It's no longer threatening our health and food supply, so it's not news.  And that's because the ban on CFCs is still in effect.

 

Polar Bears.  The Arctic Ocean was ice-free (mostly) during the Altithermal (about 8000 years ago) (Ice remained in the Canadian islands.).  Polar bears survived that very nicely, thank you.  We will probably see a decline in polar bear populations and an increase in hybridization between polar bears and brown bears as their ranges converge, but extinction does not seem to be in the cards.

Science has the ability to revise and update itself.  Depending on a twenty-year-old paper is a good way to miss important updates.  There are search engines that can check for citations of a given paper, allowing you to work forward in the literature.  Use them.

I don't recall anyone claiming that burning of the Kuwaiti oil fields would produce a cooling effect on climate.  However, there was a slight dip in global temps from 1992 to 1994.  Coincidence?  The concept of nuclear winter has never been subjected to a real-life test.  But by comparing the effects of atomic bomb tests and volcanic eruptions on weather, we arrive at the conclusion that effects would have to last about six years before the cooling became self-sustaining.  No event in recorded history has done that.  Estimates are that about 200 megatons of nuclear weapons would be needed to cause nuclear winter.  With Trmp and Putin acting like a couple of bullfrogs during mating season, it might be a good idea to buy some winter clothes.  Now even Iran and North Korea want into the act.

Global warming is already a problem.  The growing season in the US is already two weeks longer than it was when I was born.  That throws some bird migrations out-of-sync with their food supplies, resulting in population declines and risk of extinctions.  Droughts here in Oklahoma have already driven up the price of beef which has not yet recovered - you're paying for global warming whenever you go out for a steak dinner, or buy a hamburger.  Portions of the Imperial Valley that used to grow tomatoes and other truck crops have had to give up and switch to dairying.  The cost of vegetables went up, but the cost of milk and cheese came down a little.

For many years biologists wondered why armadillos were increasing their range.  Then somebody figured out that snow cover controls armadillo populations.  If there is more than eight inches of snow on the ground for more than 10 days, armadillos starve to death, being unable to dig for worms and insects.  Thus, global warming, by controlling snow, controls armadillos.

 

Is global warming a manmade problem?  The earth was created with a huge amount of carbon 12 already present.  Oceanic carbon is mostly this primordial carbon.  But there's another kind of carbon:  carbon 14.  It's radioactive and gradually decays to carbon 13.  It is created from nitrogen in the upper atmosphere when nitrogen atoms are struck by cosmic rays.  Carbon 14 is taken up by plants during photosynthesis.  During the Coal Age, plants absorbed C14 and died, preserving C14 as coal.  Over time, the C14 decayed to C13.

We can measure the amount of C12, C13 and C14 in a sample.  Coal has a higher C13/C12 ratio than does sea water.  We note that C13 in the air is increasing over time.  This has been measured at least monthly and now daily since 1960.  That C13 is not coming from sea water.  So where is it coming from?  The source has to have a higher C13/C12 ratio than anything that is not a source.  So far, coal is the only candidate identified (Oil was formed in the oceans from C12.).  Has anybody been burning coal so that it would be released into the atmosphere?  If you claim that man is not doing this, then you need to provide an alternate source of C13;  What is that source?  This is the question that deniers HAVE to answer.  No answer concedes the issue by default.

So science assumes a human cause to global warming simply because nobody has been able to think of another one.

 

The big fear is that we will cause the climate to cross some tipping point (or threshold), possibly without knowing it happened.  The most-immediate one anybody can think of is loss of Arctic sea ice.  This would generate a feedback loop.  As ice melts, less and less is available to reflect solar energy back into space.  The incoming energy warms the water, which melts more ice, reducing reflectance and increasing warming.  This feedback could launch us permanently into a warmer climate, possibly much warmer.  And it seems to be happening - the Polar Vortex seems to have moved to a new winter home over Greenland.  It diverts storms southward and that sends them into the northern US.  Local cooling caused by global warming.

I come from northeast Ohio, an area affected by the relocated Polar Vortex.  The costs of snow removal have sky-rocketed in the last few years.  And it's tax money that pays for that.

Global warming is here already.  It will gradually, maybe rapidly, get more costly in the next few years.

Doug

Edited by Doug1029
Ozone doesn't catalyze the reaction; CFCs do. Easy to let these mistakes get by.
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A few points and an explanation or two...

Polar bears would have NO problems with an ice free Arctic. This has always made me laugh and proven how stupid the people that make these claims are about how things work in the Arctic. This is one of the reasons that I am so suspicious of these peoples claims about global warming and its possible causes. Polar bears CAN live and survive on the Arctic ice BUT their special adaptations only make it easier for them to survive there and NOT even slightly dependent on it.

IF the ice melted the bears would not be the creatures that would be in trouble. One of their favorite prey is the seal. THEY are dependent on the ice; not the bears. They are primarily aquatic creatures. They lay on the ice near their holes or in little ice caves that they make but need to be near the water so they can just pop into it when a bear comes along. On dry land they are not very agile at all. (Like slow as the ITCH!) Without the ice they would have to come onto dry land to have their pups and to rest and there the polar bears would just tear them UP.   

Polar bears often go walk-about and travel hundreds of miles across dry land with NO problems and even ocassionally breed with grissly bears. The result is called a Grolar Bear LOL. Bear in general are the second most adaptable mammal on Earth beat only slightly by humans. Saying that Polar bears are dependent on the ice to survive is like saying that the Inuet People (Eskimo) of the Arctic would all just lay down and die without the ice. Neither the bears NOR the Inuet people are aquatic creatures. The bears hide in snow quite well and can hunt on the tundra quite well.  Nuff said...

Carbon dioxide...Evidently most people and a bunch of the so called scientists don't understand what it is and where it comes from. Nor do they understand the causes of its fluctuations and what adds to it and what doesn't. Carbon dioxide (CO2 from here on) is the natural result of  ANY chemical combination of oxygen and carbon. When you breathe in your body takes the oxygen and combines it with carbon to create (free up) energy and you then exhale CO2. Basically oxidation of carbon in all its many forms releases energy. Think FIRE!  So, every animal and all fires are basically CO2 generators. Even things that you don't think of are part of the carbon cycle. More on that in a moment. 

Plants of all sizes take the CO2, separate the carbon from the oxygen, use the carbon to build their bodies and release the oxygen. This is the carbon cycle in a nutshell. Animals and fire make it then plants break it down and release it. This has been going on as long as the current type of life we have on Earth has existed. There has been a LOT of fluctuation in the balance over time. During the time of the Dinosaurs there was a lot of oxygen in the air. This is part of what allowed them to grow so big. Even if we could recreate them today they would not be able to live because their isn't enough free oxygen. It would be like a man trying to live on top of Mount Everest. 

The other thing that existed back then that we don't need now was the just huge BUGS. They also couldn't live now. I'm just as happy about that as can be. I don't want to think about bugs the size of birds!! Sorry I'm wandering!

The reason I mentioned the dinosaurs is because during the same time as the dinosaurs existed the plants and small creatures in the seas layed down the huge carbon resources that we have greatly benefited from today. Coal, oil and natural gas are all made from the bodies of plants and creatures that lived and died millions of years ago. I suspect that the high oxygen back then may have reflected the just huge endless "forests" that were turning a previously high CO2 atmosphere into the high oxygen atmosphere. One of the possible causes of the demise of the dinosaurs was that this high oxygen period was changing. BUT that is another debate...

Now days we are burning the various carbon forms that were laid down in the past. THIS adds to the current CO2 levels. NOW a point. If you converted say a coal fired power plant to burn wood it would release the same (approximately) amount of CO2. This though wouldn't add anything to the carbon foot print at all. The trees took the carbon from the air, and then when we burned it it was returned. Net gain...ZERO. If we didn't burn that tree it would nonetheless eventually die, fall, rot and release the CO2 back into the atmosphere. 

The fires are not the problem, it is the fact that we are bringing the carbon that was laid down in the far past into the present that PROPHETICALLY causes the problem. I suspect that it is a two layer problem. The high C)2 should make for really great plant life! It is possible that the rape of our forest lands world wide may be more a part of the CO2 problem than we realize. Again that is another debate.

Coal, oil and natural gas are ALL just basically the three states of matter that many elements can exist in; solid, liquid and gas.  We can actually turn coal into oil and that is something that just scares the Arabic oil producers to death and why they keep the prices of oil below a certain level. Now, back to the carbon cycle. The fact of the matter is that the burning of coal and oil should not have the level of effect that we are seeing. The plant life should be doing a better job than it is of keeping things balanced. 

My worry is that the idiots science that is practiced today is so focused on proving that man is the cause that they are not even looking at the other various natural causes for the eternally fluctuating CO2 levels. It makes me thing of our current police investigations. They all to often get so focused on proving that some individual is guilty that they never look for the actual criminal. They should be searching for the real facts not JUST the ones that support their theory. 

The carbon cycle may or may not be a part of the current very slight change in the global temperature. It is also possible that it is instead a SYMPTOM rather than the problem. There are a LOT of things that vary and could be causing this. The world has warmed and cooled many many times over the millions of years without the aid on man. The sun is not a totally stable and unchanging heat source. The temperature of our  planets core is variable. Just the simple fact that man made changes in the surface of the planet may change how much of the energy from the sun is absorbed/reflected back. 

Before we JUMP to a conclusion we need to actually LOOK at all the facts and try to SEE what we can find out rather than LOOKING for proof that man is the cause and the oil/coal/natural gas is the problem. The problem is that there is more money in man made causes than in natural causes. Man is lazy. It is easier to just blame it on people and look for an easy fix and change than to look at a real problem that we might have to adapt to.

If the world warms up...so what. People live in the tropics believe it or not. I live in Texas and we have summers with temperatures in the hundreds sometimes. So what. Will the people in the north really, like the polar bears go extinct if they don't get as much snow??  Will the human species really be effected if some stupid people sit on their butts for 20 years and drown when the slowly rising waters rise above their heads. 

Real science is about questions more than answers. People though want answers and if they can't get the right one they will mostly settle for a wrong one. The world was flat for a long time and the center of the universe. This was law and people died for disputing it. We are not actually much different from those people these days unfortunately. 

 

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We basically agree.  I don't think the bears will go extinct due to ice loss and neither do you.  The difference is in our sources.  I cite research articles demonstrating that the Arctic Ocean was open during the Althithermal (See below.).  But note the dates on those articles.  The open Arctic Ocean has been suspected since the early 1990s, but only recently has the evidence become strong enough to warrant the conclusion that polar bears had survived the open water episode.  I am basing my conclusions on peer-reviewed scientific research - the gold standard of truth - but some earlier researchers did not have the benefit of this information.  At that time (1990s and 2000s) the belief that the Arctic Ocean never melted off was not such an extreme one.  You are trying to judge people in the past using today's standards.  That is neither fair to them, nor historically accurate.

As for whether humans are associated with global warming - you're ignoring the isotopic studies.  They pretty much demonstrate where that increasing carbon in the air is coming from - coal.

Yes, over millions of years carbon cycles through the ecosystem.  But CO2 has a half-life in the atmosphere of at least 300 years, maybe closer to 1000 years.  Those plants can't keep up.  Here is a graph of the Keeling Curve which shows CO2 concentration of the air.

Keeling+2.jpg

That sawtooth effect is the result of seasonal changes in plant cover in the Northern Hemisphere.  If plants could keep up, there would be no sawtooth effect.  Also, if plants could keep up, this would not be a curve at all, but a flat line.  If you do a regression on the data, you find that in 1900 the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was about 205 ppm.  In 2016 it is permanently above 400 ppm.  Plants aren't taking that extra carbon out of the air.  The CO2 concentration will double the 1900 level by 2020 - 120 years.  That has never happened before.  In all natural CO2 increases, CO2 has lagged temperature by about 300 years.  Not this time.  This time, temperature is lagging CO2 and that indicates something different from the natural processes of the past.

Doug

 

Funder, S., H. Goosse, H. Jepson, E. Kaas and K. H. Kjaer.  2011.  A 10,000-year record of Arctic Ocean sea ice variability - view from the beach.   Science 333.6043 (2011): 747-750.

Dyke, A. S., J. England, E. Reimnitz and H Jetté.  1997.  Changes in driftwood delivery to the Canadian Arctic Archipelago:  the hypothesis of post-glacial oscillations of the transpolar drift.  Arctic (1997): 1-16.

 

Edited by Doug1029
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On ‎3‎/‎2‎/‎2017 at 10:47 AM, Doug1o29 said:

That is why I keep telling people to know the science and use it as their basis of action.  Some of the warming advocates, especially from back in the 1970s and 1980s, were no better than modern deniers.  But even those early advocates have moderated their stance.  I know one personally.  He was a bit of a kook then and still is, but we're gradually educating him.  Unfortunately, he writes for some liberal magazines, so his unfounded opinions get scattered far and wide.

Have you ever tried to write a professional paper that is absolutely error-free?  It ain't easy.  Every sentence has to be fact-checked.  And even then, some reviewer is going to question your methods (or just plain misunderstand them).  Here on UM I have posted a number of erroneous statements, as has nearly everyone else.  There isn't time to fact-check everything, so most people don't - even those who know their material will appear in print.  For an example, compare Posts 28 and 30 for the coldest year on record.

 

The Ozone Hole.  The problem was Chloro-fluoro-hydrocarbons (CFCs) polluting the atmosphere which allowed ultra-violet rays to penetrate the atmosphere during freezing weather.  The solution was to ban production of CFCs.  CFCs were used as coolants in air conditioners and as propellants in spray aerosols.  I have the dubious distinction of having used the last box of CFC-propelled tree marking paint on the Durango District (That would have been about 1986.).  The claim of high costs associated with the ban is bs.  The industry converted to a related compound almost overnight.  It did suffer a decline in business, but as that money was spent on other products, the economy as a whole took no notice.

The amount of ozone over the Antarctic in springtime has declined by about 50% in the last decade, about 94% since 1975.  AND:  no it's not a natural problem.  The reaction that CFCs catalyze IS natural, but the catalysis is due to man-made CFCs.  The reason you don't hear much about the ozone hole these days is that we solved the problem.  The damage has been pretty-much reversed.  It's no longer threatening our health and food supply, so it's not news.  And that's because the ban on CFCs is still in effect.

 

Polar Bears.  The Arctic Ocean was ice-free (mostly) during the Altithermal (about 8000 years ago) (Ice remained in the Canadian islands.).  Polar bears survived that very nicely, thank you.  We will probably see a decline in polar bear populations and an increase in hybridization between polar bears and brown bears as their ranges converge, but extinction does not seem to be in the cards.

Science has the ability to revise and update itself.  Depending on a twenty-year-old paper is a good way to miss important updates.  There are search engines that can check for citations of a given paper, allowing you to work forward in the literature.  Use them.

I don't recall anyone claiming that burning of the Kuwaiti oil fields would produce a cooling effect on climate.  However, there was a slight dip in global temps from 1992 to 1994.  Coincidence?  The concept of nuclear winter has never been subjected to a real-life test.  But by comparing the effects of atomic bomb tests and volcanic eruptions on weather, we arrive at the conclusion that effects would have to last about six years before the cooling became self-sustaining.  No event in recorded history has done that.  Estimates are that about 200 megatons of nuclear weapons would be needed to cause nuclear winter.  With Trmp and Putin acting like a couple of bullfrogs during mating season, it might be a good idea to buy some winter clothes.  Now even Iran and North Korea want into the act.

Global warming is already a problem.  The growing season in the US is already two weeks longer than it was when I was born.  That throws some bird migrations out-of-sync with their food supplies, resulting in population declines and risk of extinctions.  Droughts here in Oklahoma have already driven up the price of beef which has not yet recovered - you're paying for global warming whenever you go out for a steak dinner, or buy a hamburger.  Portions of the Imperial Valley that used to grow tomatoes and other truck crops have had to give up and switch to dairying.  The cost of vegetables went up, but the cost of milk and cheese came down a little.

For many years biologists wondered why armadillos were increasing their range.  Then somebody figured out that snow cover controls armadillo populations.  If there is more than eight inches of snow on the ground for more than 10 days, armadillos starve to death, being unable to dig for worms and insects.  Thus, global warming, by controlling snow, controls armadillos.

 

Is global warming a manmade problem?  The earth was created with a huge amount of carbon 12 already present.  Oceanic carbon is mostly this primordial carbon.  But there's another kind of carbon:  carbon 14.  It's radioactive and gradually decays to carbon 13.  It is created from nitrogen in the upper atmosphere when nitrogen atoms are struck by cosmic rays.  Carbon 14 is taken up by plants during photosynthesis.  During the Coal Age, plants absorbed C14 and died, preserving C14 as coal.  Over time, the C14 decayed to C13.

We can measure the amount of C12, C13 and C14 in a sample.  Coal has a higher C13/C12 ratio than does sea water.  We note that C13 in the air is increasing over time.  This has been measured at least monthly and now daily since 1960.  That C13 is not coming from sea water.  So where is it coming from?  The source has to have a higher C13/C12 ratio than anything that is not a source.  So far, coal is the only candidate identified (Oil was formed in the oceans from C12.).  Has anybody been burning coal so that it would be released into the atmosphere?  If you claim that man is not doing this, then you need to provide an alternate source of C13;  What is that source?  This is the question that deniers HAVE to answer.  No answer concedes the issue by default.

So science assumes a human cause to global warming simply because nobody has been able to think of another one.

 

The big fear is that we will cause the climate to cross some tipping point (or threshold), possibly without knowing it happened.  The most-immediate one anybody can think of is loss of Arctic sea ice.  This would generate a feedback loop.  As ice melts, less and less is available to reflect solar energy back into space.  The incoming energy warms the water, which melts more ice, reducing reflectance and increasing warming.  This feedback could launch us permanently into a warmer climate, possibly much warmer.  And it seems to be happening - the Polar Vortex seems to have moved to a new winter home over Greenland.  It diverts storms southward and that sends them into the northern US.  Local cooling caused by global warming.

I come from northeast Ohio, an area affected by the relocated Polar Vortex.  The costs of snow removal have sky-rocketed in the last few years.  And it's tax money that pays for that.

Global warming is here already.  It will gradually, maybe rapidly, get more costly in the next few years.

Doug

Doug I don`t think anyone really knows what causes the earth to heat, winds, solar flares , volcanos or man made admissions, there are so many contributing factors, but we have to support six billion people on this  earth :(

Edited by docyabut2
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11 hours ago, docyabut2 said:

Doug I don`t think anyone really knows what causes the earth to heat, winds, solar flares , volcanos or man made admissions, there are so many contributing factors, but we have to support six billion people on this  earth :(

"Cause" is a hard thing to pin down, especially when there are multiple mechanisms.

Wind is just the air moving heat around.  It may have an effect on temperature by moving heat to places where it can be radiated back into space.  Otherwise, it is just a conveyance, not a cause.  Solar flares - do they even affect temps?  Volcanos have a temporary effect by adding particulates, CO2 and SO3 to the atmosphere.  Particulates block incoming radiation, warming the upper atmosphere while cooling the surface; SO3 hydrolyses to sulfuric acid which reacts with impurities to form sulfates, most of which are white and so have a cooling effect.  And CO2, over the long haul keeps incoming radiation from escaping back into space.  But the last really big volcanic event occurred in 535 AD and produced an eighteen-month cooling (The origin of Fimbul Winter myths?).  It wasn't large enough to kick off a prolonged cooling period.

So, yes there are a lot of things that can modify the earth's temperature, but there is really only one "cause" - incoming solar radiation.

 

Over six billion people now and probably pushing ten billion by the end of the century.  And that is why we need to convert to clean energy as soon as possible.  We can generate 30% more electricity at the same price with wind than with any other power source AND we can generate that power on the same land we use to grow corn, soybeans, wheat oats and cattle.  I have seen cows standing in the shade of a wind tower to keep cool - out here on the plains there is no other shade.  Wind is compatible with agricultural production while mountain-top removal is not.

But no matter what solutions resource managers come up with, they are only stopgap measure until the population can be controlled.

Doug

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When you are talking about temperature changes of this small an amount over such a long period of time I'm sorry but I question the accuracy of the data. Where exactly did you GET the average temperature of a year a thousand years ago down to .1 of a degree centigrade? The fact is that even 150 years ago this level of accuracy was scarce. Who exactly was it that was measuring the daily temperatures 200 years ago and writing it down so we have that data today. Unfortunately the data is from inferred sources rather than hard data and is subject to interpretation that may be questionable. 

Now, what could be causing the slight rise in temperature that we seem to be seeing? These are JUST possible thoughts and not meant to be firm hypothesizes so don't go off on me for unfounded or forbidden wondering.

The sun IS a variable star as all stars are. Even a tiny change in either the amount or even the frequency of the actual light could have small effects over long periods of time. These effects could be lagging along behind the actual occurrence just as it takes a wave time to move across water, effects on a huge ecology my take time to build up and be detected.  

We don't have a firm understanding of the exact function and fluctuation of our magnetosphere. We know that it is like something alive and its exact poles move around. Sometimes they move a lot and then seem to settle for a while and then take off again. The center of our planet is liquid metal and very HOT core. it may be effected by this and even a small change in its core temperature might have an effect on the surface temperatures. You have to understand, even the tides cause by the moon are also refelected down in this deep liquid molten sea. The movement of these "tides" cause friction that increase heat in the core. Mars may be a dead planet in part because it didn't have a large moon stiring and keeping its core hot and its magnetosphere stable. 

The change in our plants plant life cover as it reflects the agriculture of mankind may well have this level of effect. A forest is like an airconditioner and creates a just huge thermal engine that cool the air. Clear the forests as we have done all over the planet and replace them with plowed fields and over time I HAS to have some effect. I know that it is empirical data but I've worked in the fields and there is nothing hotter than a field freshly plowed. The humidity is sky high as the wetter soil starts to dry and the darker subsoil just soaks up the heat! We also have cut down the massive forests for the wood to build our homes and to clear them for pasture land. There HAS to be a measurable effect of this vast a change. If this were to be the cause of the observed warming we can either adapt and learn to live with it or MASSIVELY reduce the population and I'm not talking birth control here either. That would be to slow. 

The various particulate air pollutants all eventually settle out of the atmosphere. I'm not talking just the regular things but for example, where does all the rubber go that wears off our tires? You would think that the roads would get layered with it but it doesn't. The sides of the roads aren't ankle deep in rubber so where does it go? anyway, all this stuff eventually ends up on the ground someplace. Even a tiny change in the reflectivity of the surface of global snows during the winter would, over time, begin to show up as a warming trend from increased absorbed solar heat during the winter. 

LOL, I have a wild imagination and could go on for some time throwing out such unsubstantiated possibilities. Hopefully you get my point. There are LOTS of things that COULD have small effects on global temperature. Even more likely is an accumulated effect from all or several different small things. At this time we seem to be spending ALL our efforts in proving that people and fossil fuel usage is THE cause rather actually looking wide eyed for the cause with an open mind. There seems to be a huge effort being made to scare people by vastly over stating the problem and there is only one reason for that effort that I can imagine. Someone wants to manipulate public opinion an get us to jump into an ill advised and poorly thought out decision. 

The increased sea levels are NOT going to come in like some sort of tsunami! It will be very slow and while it might be inconvenient it isn't the end of the world if people have to move back a little bit. It might be a little hotter in the Northern areas. That might actually be nice in the winters and well I live in Texas; if the summers are a little hotter, "Suck it up butter cup!"  You WILL get used to it. Coral reefs have lived and dyed for EVER and just as in the past they will move on and rebuild over time. The Guadalupe Mountains in West Texas are not actually mountains. It is a fossil reef in an area that at one time was the bottom of a huge inland sea!! Hey, I have a nice thought, global warming might actually make my "Ocean front property in Arizona" a REALITY!! 

Don't take life too seriously. Anytime someone tries to rush you into a decision it is probably a scam. That might not always be true but it pays over a long life to be skeptical. I had an Uncle that rushed to get into investing in the Wankle Rotary Engines and had about a million bucks worth of stock in them. They were great engines and were a big improvement over regular engines. This was true. Unfortunately they didn't hold up or last and who wants to have to replace a cars engine every couple of years? This didn't show up in the short term but when they went into production it wasn't long before the problem ate it up. Even Mazda had to give them up and that was what they were originally all about. Let us not jump to any fast decisions about this sort of thing. I'm old I really do remember them trying to sell us on a coming ice age a few decades ago!  

Edited by DanL
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20 hours ago, DanL said:

When you are talking about temperature changes of this small an amount over such a long period of time I'm sorry but I question the accuracy of the data. Where exactly did you GET the average temperature of a year a thousand years ago down to .1 of a degree centigrade? The fact is that even 150 years ago this level of accuracy was scarce. Who exactly was it that was measuring the daily temperatures 200 years ago and writing it down so we have that data today. Unfortunately the data is from inferred sources rather than hard data and is subject to interpretation that may be questionable. 

You just brought up my favorite subject.  So it's all your fault:  here goes.

The most-accurate source of paleoclimate data during the Holocene is tree rings.  They provide data with an annual resolution, sometimes seasonal.  We generate estimates for each year, subject only to variations caused by storms, aging trees and stand disturbances.  But storms disturb growth for only two or three years.  Stand disturbances, at most a century and tree growth maybe 200 years.  All are insignificant compared to the ten millennia age of the Holocene.

A series (a chronological list of tree ring widths for a specific sample) is cross-dated against other series from the same stand, usually only 30 or 40 samples, but sometimes reaching as many as a thousand trees.  Cross-dating is also called "wiggle-matching" and simply aligns peaks and valleys in each sample so they match other series.  Wiggle-matching starts with a living tree (so the age of at least one ring is known beyond question), and proceeds backward in time, matching up older samples and extending the result back in time for thousands of years.

Next, the effects of tree age are removed in a process called detrending.  Trees initially grow fast (wide rings) and slow down over time (narrow rings).  This age-related variance must be removed or it obscures the temperature signal.  In detrending tree rings, one needs a model of what a given tree's growth is expected to be.  There are many potential mathematical models, but really only two that give good results.  They are the positive and negative logarithms with asymptotes:  TRW = b1^t + b0 where TRW is Total Ring width; t is the age of the ring within the series and b1 and b0 are coefficients to be estimated.  Specific values of b1 and b0 are determined for every series.  These two models have a problem, though:  the negative log removes trends associated with a decreasing temperature, keeping those associated with rising temperature.  The positive log does the opposite, thus neither can be used throughout the Holocene.

The solution:  a Regionally Standardized Curve (RSC).  In this method, samples of 10 to 30 years in length are taken from each series in such a way that the decade 1821-1850, for example, has 30 samples aged 61-90 years.  For each 30-year period, a set of samples of each age group is made.  In each of these groups, temperature is assumed to be uniform.  For more-recent periods, like since 1960, the groupings are often broken down by decade.  Then detrended growth rates are determined for each grouping and the result averaged.  The average is then graphed over tree age to get a curve that corresponds to how trees of that species respond to age in that area (Trees from different areas may not have the same response, even if they are of the same species.).  Gaps in the graph are then filled by matching mathematical models to segments of the graph and estimating the missing values (I better note that "estimating" is a precise mathematical operation and not simply guessing.).

The last step in the process is to compare the RSC with each TRW series to determine what the particular tree's growth would have been had temperature not changed.  The residuals from this process are regressed onto historical temperature records and the result used to estimate temperature year-by-year for the entire chronology.

How accurate is this?  The standard deviation of temperature by year is usually around 30% of average temperature by year.  Standard deviation is squared and divided by the number of samples in the particular year and the square root extracted.  That value, when added or subtracted to the average estimated temperature, will include about 68% of all possible temperatures.  That value typically varies within a chronology as the number of sample trees decreases as one goes back in time.  Simply go back until you have reached the accuracy level you want and stop there.  If you want an accuracy of +/- 0.10 degrees, stop when you reach that value.  Anything more recent is at least that accurate, while anything older is less so.  By convention, all temperature estimates based on fewer than ten trees are considered unreliable.

 

My own chronologies go back to 1772.  There are others in this state that reach into the 1600s.  I suspect there may be some eastern red-cedar stands in western Oklahoma that date to the 1300s, but if so, I haven't found them yet.  Within Oklahoma, we have excellent tree ring records going back to 1700 and one reaching to 1403.

The University of Missouri is working on a chronology they hope will reach into the Ice Age.  They already have some samples from before the Younger Dryas (12,900 YBP).  Now they must find the trunks needed to fill the gap and, hopefully, extend the record farther back.  Currently their collection reaches back about 7000 years with a free-floating segment about 2000 years long (9000 with a gap of unknown length).

The European oak chronology reaches 17,000 YBP.  It is the longest one in the world.  A 1000-year chronology extending from 500 AD to 1500 AD is under construction in Florida and a 60,000-year chronology is under construction in New Zealand.

 

I will return to your post when I have a little more time.

Doug

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I am looking forward to the second spring this year.   Temps are nice now in northern Indiana.  Currently 55 degrees.   Within the past 10 days we have gone from highs in the 70's to high's in the 20's.  

 

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1 hour ago, Doug1o29 said:

I will return to your post when I have a little more time.

Doug

I just got back.  When I re-read DanL's post, I had a thought:  DanL is thinking of some interesting questions, some of which have already been dispelled by science.  But some of them haven't been.  DanL:  do some serious reading on the science.  I think you would learn a lot and it would be well worth your time.  Have you ever considered a career in Climatology or Environmental Science?  I think you could be good at it.

Your questions and comments are not those of a denier, but those of a seeker.  We need more seekers.

Doug

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