Dot Earth: The Bathtub Effect

Well, nobody has been right on the short-term predictions for climate change. What evidence is there that long-term predictions will be any better?

Now, as much as a skeptic that I am, I am all for being responsible stewards for this planet, but isn't this a little too much like hysteria?

Maybe there are comparisons with global economics and stock markets ? It gets complex and interwoven, then when too many people skim from it etc etc. I dunno, but how about a kids 'top' spinning on a table whilst people are nudging it ? Maybe it's like the Earths magnetic field, unstable spots swirl around and increase before a sudden flip ? If there's suspicion that we cause climatic instability, perhaps we should play it safe and minimize whatever we think our negative actions might be. The flip-over possibility doesn't sound very nice, whatever kind of person/critter is alive to see it

Feed the masses BS long enough and they think they are Mushrooms. I have yet to see data that correlates CO₂ to global warming.

Bromides, CFCs, Water Vapor, the Sun output show better correlations. Yes CO₂ is up so is Methane, Smog, Carbon soot just for starts.

Ozone and the magnetic field are down.

Weather predictions are bunk. It is not the weatherman but the science. When NOAA can't predict the weather in any certainty 20 days out, how can you discern global warming trends for the next century? The error factor gets larger with time not smaller.

The short version: .0 can not be used scientifically to produce .0000000000 by using a larger time vector. It still has a precision of < .0!

Green washing is not science, it is propaganda. Are we pissing in our own pool? Yes! But lying about it only muddies the waters to preserve the status quo not fix the source of the issue.

Brad

Weather predictions are bunk. It is not the weatherman but the science. When NOAA can't predict the weather in any certainty 20 days out, how can you discern global warming trends for the next century? The error factor gets larger with time not smaller.

Let's not confuse weather and climate. Weather is chaotic, but long-term climate can be predicted, given some models. Coming out with some statistical means, is perfectly possible and acceptable. Certainly, there is no chance to predict the weather in a particular day, say a month or a year from now, but the general trend of the global climate can be predicted, given that the models are a good enough fit of the reality.

Now, generally speaking, I don't buy the flame war about whether man is responsible for the climate change. The latest changes might as well be due to statistical fluctuation only (although I doubt) but for me, this is not the point. I think, we anyway need to take actions, to help reducing the effects of that change. Moreover, even if CO₂ emissions reduction policies are not enough to save the planet, still, it is time as a mankind, to start approaching nature in a more humble way, acknowledging that its resources are not endless, and that air/water can not contain all junk that we decide to dispose with no consequences. If the planet will not suffer due to the warm-up, it will face serious problems in other areas due to the current wrong mentality, sooner or later.

Moreover, it is hypocritical, if not immoral, for developed countries to cherish globalization of capital on the one hand (mostly for exporting production cost to the 3rd world), whereas on the other, atmosphere, waters, tropical forests, etc. are considered a national business...

Nicely put, tkot.

The issue is they look at cause and effect as a simple system of blame CO2 for the warming issue. billions will be spent and little effect will be found.

The reality is more like drug interactions. The dynamics are not just cut and dry. Many different dynamics effect the system not just one.

As for long range predictions the hurricane and winter predictions for this year were as bad as ever. Weather is Climate. We can't have one without the other. Sure I can say over the next 20 years this will happen but that does not begin to make it true. The long range variables get worse not better with time.

My point is while CO2 is an issue, it is not the Issue. Population, Pollution, Sustainability, Dogma, Responsibility, Greed, short term thinking and its twin piss poor planning, bad science, Politics for gain of the few are the real issues. CO2 is a red herring, a system that focuses the public away from real issues.

The first problem with climate/weather models is they don't account for all the Suns variation of input into the system.

The second is that more data makes more accuracy. If we can't understand the system enough to predict the dynamics of local weather then long and short term climate predictions are only a guess.

Third to generalize changes still tells us nothing or very little. Some places will get worse, some will get better and some will stay the same.

Fourth, Change is a universal constant. So it comes down to: What is our inputs to the system doing? ; Which are beneficial and which are harmful? ; How do we best manage the changes for our system because the dynamics will change.

Global warming on the climate level is being lessened by high altitude carbon soot. On 9-11 and the days following it seen a jump in world temps not a drop from the lack of airline flights.

The medieval warm period and little ice age are greater variations than anything we have seen in modern times. CO2 was not the cause but a symptom. Volcanic output raised CO2 and particulates for the little ice age but the ignored data has been that the sunspots stopped for that period also.

Robert Fitzroy the inventor of weather forecasting got so frustrated by it he slit his own throat and his system used temp and barometers.

This is not to say weather forecasting is not possible. We are just missing a major dynamic or two that will make it all make sense.

It does remind me of Alchemists who thought the elements were solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Once it was realized this was the states of matter major leaps in technology were made.

My issue is still we need to climb the mountain of problems facing this planet. We need to climb the right mountain or we are just wasting time.

Brad

" CO2 is a red herring, a system that focuses the public away from real issues."

I think that might be very true.

Red herrings are not an endangered species.

My point is while CO2 is an issue, it is not the Issue. Population, Pollution, Sustainability, Dogma, Responsibility, Greed, short term thinking and its twin piss poor planning, bad science, Politics for gain of the few are the real issues. CO2 is a red herring, a system that focuses the public away from real issues.

I don't disagree that the world faces too many problems. The above are real issues. Famine is another one. Political corruption is yet another. Moral crisis, fragmentation of societies, religious fanatism, etc, etc. the list never ends. Now, one can name one of the above as a red herring to obstruct people from seeing the other reality. But one has to start from somewhere. And it seems, according to the current understanding and using certain models (granted, they may be proven wrong later) that we are 5 minutes past midnight to tackle the CO2 issue. If you have other data, or you feel there is a parameter we haven't taken into account, please provide them to make the discussion more interesting. I would be glad to know that in the end, earth will survive the amounts of pollutants we emit. This may mean we can relax a little bit, but not for long: the issue of exploiting limited resources as if they were infinite should come to the surface sooner or later. Do you want to leave it to your kids to take care of it, while you enjoy the standards of life you currently have?

The second is that more data makes more accuracy. If we can't understand the system enough to predict the dynamics of local weather then long and short term climate predictions are only a guess.

As for the difference between weather and climate, I thought it was clear, but I see you insist in confusing them. Weather prediction has to do with the study of real-time meteorological data, as pressure/temperature gradients, humidity, etc. The point is, say, whether it will rain in particular in Athens two days from now, and how much and for how long. This prediction process is intrinsically chaotic. Inaccuracies (even infinitesimally small) in measuring these meteorological data will result in errors that grow amazingly fast as prediction extends far ahead in future. On the other hand, climate prediction is based on mathematical models and statistical data and it's purpose it to provide a statistical means of what about is going to happen on average. If you have a pretty good model and pretty accurate data, then you have a pretty good prediction. The margin of error you may make is more or less within predictable bounds.

The medieval warm period and little ice age are greater variations than anything we have seen in modern times. CO2 was not the cause but a symptom. Volcanic output raised CO2 and particulates for the little ice age but the ignored data has been that the sunspots stopped for that period also.

The sunspots have a cycle of 11 years. I would find it absurd if the effect of those haven't been promptly taken into account by the scientists. Beyond that, the issue is not that the change is the worse that earth ever experienced. It's rather that the change has been too rapid to be discounted as just a statistical "noise". To use some abstraction: I don't know of any real change during the last maybe 100 years, in volcanic activity or sun spots size, or anything else. I would be glad to know that there is something else than the human activity that brought this change. I don't fall to a deification of statistics, especially if you cannot find a link between two apparently coinciding phenomena, but here we have clear scientific evidence that CO2 contributes to the so called green-house effect. Is it a conspiracy? I doubt.

Two observations:

Yes, climate is the aggregate of weather, but there is a case that we still lack the ability to model climate correctly. The cone of certainty widens very fast the further we predict.

Historical data for predictions for both climate and "climate change" have been very consistent. However, they have been consistently wrong.

Second, there is an 11 year solar cycle, but there are also longer solar activity cycles that take place. It isn't as simple as every 11 years.

Nature contains cycles within cycles.

Imagine an audio wave of 1,000 Hz. Now add another at 500 Hz, and another at 240 Hz, another at 10 Hz, yet another at 1.5 Hz. The resulting compound waveform is complex and contains many, many sub frequencies.

Lastly, historical data for CO2 levels and geographic temperature changes show an interesting correlation. CO2 trends lag behind temperature changes for periods of warming and cooling over tens of thousands of years, which is the opposite effect that is being sold to us today. Again, I am not a climate scientist, but this raises the question as to what drives what. I can see that it may be possible to induce temperature change by manipulation of CO2, but there are some very important questions we need to understand, too.

1) Why would trace amounts of CO2 changes have such a large magnitude of change in climate? While CO2 is considered the most powerful greenhouse gas, it exists in only trace amounts in our atmosphere. The magnitude of change attributed to CO2 appears to exceed its ability to effect that change. Other agents such as methane, water vapor, etc. have a lower per unit causative effect as a greenhouse gas, but they exist is much, much higher quantities. Are we barking up the wrong tree? Some say yes. Methane has recently undergone a more critical review lately.

2) Climate change (we must the words 'climate change' now because 'global warming' trends have sharply reversed for several years now (for some unexplained reason)) is heavily shrouded in politics. It has become such a political game that it is impossible to tell what is real and what is fabricated.

I am sure there are many well-meaning people out there, but there are many well meaning people that presume that the end justifies the means and if there is some fudged data or missing data in the process, it is less important than saving the planet. The truth is, we don't know what the truth is. Anyone professing to know the truth is highly suspect. We know that from historical precedent.

Typically, politicians are not scientists and the two professions are diametrically opposed in their methods and outcomes. Mixing the two results in ethical conflicts. It is reasonable to be very wary of what politicians bring to the table.

Political truth always rides tall on the saddle of agenda.

Another sun spot cycle is said to be every 121 years also but for some reason I can't find any NASA or NOAA data base more than a few years when I first started checking into it it went back almost 200 years.

I don't read Chinese but their data is said to go back 800 years.

I have read and understood around 100 peer review articles on CO2, global warming and the data presented. I found no CO2 causes the warming we are having. The data covered everything from ice cores to ocean sediments and lots more.

One thing I did run across was the rest of the planet are warming up from increased solar output. What I could not find is ratios or hard data to figure out if we are warming more or less than the other planets. That may give us a idea how much heat impact we are having. The Israeli scientist who figured out that carbon soot was blocking out a percentage of the sun was even more curious when he found out solar output was up 10% at that time per his statement.

Politics for gain is corruption.

What clear evidence that CO2 causes global warming? If it has came out in the last 3-6 months I may have missed it. A lot of article quote CO2 causes it but the quoted articles use statements that are not so clear cut.

The problem with the CO2 data is they do not coincide but randomly. The patterns do not match. Yes there is a general increase of both but not by ratio or pattern.

Time for bed I worked 13hrs last night. Please excuse me if I came across terse it was not my intent.

Brad