Saved by the Pollution!

The whole thing could be quite comical, if the solar output goes into a longer decline.. We'll be capping sulfur emissions and frantically emitting as much greenhouse gas as possible to keep from going into an ice age...

I only hope we don't run out of fuel, in that case!

Personally I'd like to read the paper myself, but I can't seem to find a link to it. Can you provide one please, so we aren't basing our assumptions on reuter's synopsis of it.

Also, it's pretty much established in the scientific literature that warming has continued, at least through the last decade. So the part about "warming stopping since 1998" is nonsense. Here is a relevant link:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100728_stateoftheclimate.html

Thanks Roger. I spent about half an hour trying to find it myself. I suspect the link for the new/next issue will go up this week and then we will be able to find it.

Milo

Hi Milo,

Kind of related to what you're original post was about is this article from a few years ago:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/04/22/2549626.htm

It goes to show you that climate is a complicated thing. Keep a look out for that paper and I'll do the same. It should be an interesting read.

The Earth was going through thermal cycles long before we got here to muck with it.

It will be going through thermal cycles long after we're gone.

NAH, my friend, yo have it bass ackwards. Things only can be messed up, when WE do it. So said Pinky, with an enormous life experience. Facts, beyond the present decade?!? What for? Getting the Solar facts straight? Pinky knows, that's that.

What a lot of HORSE HOCKEY! I can't believe the amount of self imposed ignorance that the 'greens/communists' employ when discussing this topic. In spite of the picture of the massive amount of smoke billowing from those towers. I just can't get over the one single 'FACT', that one single volcano puts out more particulate matter, and 'green house gasses' than man has cause in the entire industrial age! AND! On top of that, there have been 'on average' 500 volcanic eruptions every year since the world began. Yes! Any pollution is bad, and it should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and in the most economical manner; and not destroy capitalism in the process, which is the real ultimate goal of all this 'climate change' nonsense. Man's pollution, as bad as it may be is just an insignificant drop in the bucket, when one honestly looks at where any climate cycle may have originated.

And, let us not forget that the MAIN thing, which regulates the ozone layer (AND, which protects us from the solar wind), is the Earth's magnetic field. It seems that it is weakening, because we may be in for a 'pole shift' sometime in the next 100 years. If the earth is warming, it is more than idiotic to not even put the 'Sun' into the equation, when discussing this topic!

For me, yes the debate is over, and Al Gore lost!

Ozone? Ah yes.

That was when those irritating scientists with their understanding of that new fangled physics, never ending reassessment of their measurements, peer review and fancy computer models decided that CFC's were destroying the Ozone layer (already noticeable around the poles).

So various private and public do-gooders organised to get CFC's banned and replaced them with something else.

The media (who thrive on controversy) stirred up dissent from the ignorant who complained loudly, predicted the end of western civilisation and said we couldn't live without our beloved CFC's.

Now a few years later, CFC's are phased out, the world's refrigerators still work as before and the polar Ozone holes are shrinking.

See we can do it when we try.

Ozone? The situation in the Arctic is much worse lately than it was. I don't know what you Aussies have been putting up with (maybe worse!), but the UV index has been climbing here in recent years. I'm sitting here half blinded by the glare on a sunny day, UV index 8. Checking the greenhouse every hour or so, to move plants or adjust shade cloth to keep tomatoes and peppers from being scorched to death. The first sunny day, some plants literally ended up with leaves that were crispy and permanently toast. The highest UV I've seen was last year, up to 9 on the scale.

It seems crazy, we had so little sun this spring anyone would have complained, but you can hardly go outdoors unless it's cloudy! We've actually been spared a scorching, by endless rain drizzle and fog.

You said ".. 'FACT', that one single volcano puts out more ..." sorry, that's just not true (although it's a fairly common bit of Horse Hockey)

Look up the US Geo Survey site - Humans produce ~ 150 times more CO2 than volcanoes each year.

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2007/07_02_15.html

for some clear thinking try

http://www.grist.org/article/volcanoes-emit-more-co2-than-humans

At the risk of oversimplifying, it has been noted and documented that the effect of volcanic action is in opposition to the greenhouse gas effect. Volcanic debris generally provides a cooling effect, whereas greenhouse gasses result in a warming effect. The emission of greenhouse gasses from volcanic eruption is minuscule compared to man made sources.

By "self imposed ignorance" I assume you mean like this refereed scientific paper by volcanologists published in EOS, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

EOS Article

Here is the first paragraph of that article:

Which emits more carbon dioxide (CO2): Earth's volcanoes or human activities? Research findings indicate unequivocally that the answer to this frequently asked question is human activities. However, most people, including some Earth scientists working in fields outside volcanology, are surprised by this answer. The climate change debate has revived and reinforced the belief, widespread among climate skeptics, that volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities [Gerlach, 2010; Plimer, 2009]. In fact, present-day volcanoes emit relatively modest amounts of CO2, about as much annually as states like Florida, Michigan, and Ohio.

Florida, Michigan and Ohio individually or together?

I read it as "individually", but I can't know for sure. Your question did get me wondering what the relative CO2 emissions of each of those states were, so I looked it up. Here's a link for the CO2 emissions by state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

100% agree with your logic about warmings etc even though I think it's bit simplified. But still do think of many ethic problems about how we treat our resourses. Let me put it this way: If an important resourse reserves were low and our ancestors (last few generations) not knowing that (?) had iresponsibly used them up and lived a little better life while if used under control would last for another 10 or 20 generations without significant life quality deterioration, how would you feel about that? S.M.

You relate yourself to the partial amount of impact our activities have with respect to the earths greenhouse system.

But try to see it differently: what is the impact our activities have with respect to our environment?

what impact does the "small" human impact have to the global temperature with respect to the temperature would have had without a greenhouse system?

Nature has created a system which keeps our temperature at a perfect level.

Over the history we know that this level has gone up and down and more and more we know what the effect of this was.

What used to be seabed is now inhabited land, where our ancestors used to hunt in woodland is now sea.

Imagine the sea would just go up with 0.28%, in average the ocean is 4267m.

Stick to the facts

here is a climatographic reperesentation of the average annual temperature in Ukkel, where it has been measured since 1833.

You can see cyclic effects in it which are related to solar activity, volcanic incidents and other natural causes but the long year tendency is that the average goes up.

To be simple:

• science claims that the climate is warming up
• "industry" claims that it is not true based on colder years and solar cycles (11 years)

In the definition of climate is stated that this is a period of 30 years.

So disputing about single years is compairing apples with oranges.

And those single years are still warmer than the warm years 150 years ago.

More inconvenient charts and graphs.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

Whether global warming is man made or not, the one thing that really gets my goat is the fear mongering and monumental ripoff scam that the global carbon exchange is.

These people should be going to jail.

And throw away the key. S.M.

I agree that carbon trading as it exists today is a corrupt and ineffective system. I believe the people behind it are well intentioned but the idea is impractical. Hopefully I'm wrong and carbon trading ends up working. However, I would much rather see the money spent on creating that exchange put towards increased investment in alternative energies.

Whether the earth warms for ANY reason, the heat makes more water evaporate from the oceans, lakes and rivers, and the clouds cool the earth from their shade. But, the latest bit of craziness is to try and get 'water vapor' listed as a 'greenhouse gas'. They can't have it both ways!

Clouds don't cool the earth.

They restrict the heat from touching the ultimate surface but the energy has entered our troposphere so the heat is in.

Clouds also prevent IR radiation to leave the troposphere,

remember a clouded sky is a less cold night.

Yes, absolutely, the clouds act as infrared filters in nighttime, to moderate surface temperatures.

AND, in daytime the surface under clouds is cooler. The tops of the clouds are excellent reflectors, to reflect sunlight back to space. For a net negative in daytime. And as I recall for a net negative overall.

I guess, it simply slipped your mind to finish the scenario as such.

Half of our time can be described as daytime, the other half as nighttime. They are even. In daytime the source of the energy influx is the Sun at 6000+ degrees absolute. At nighttime, the 300K surface temperature radiates against a roughly 0 degree background of space. Even if we brutally simplify energy flux to be proportionate to temperature differences, the daytime energy balance matters about 20 times over nighttime balance.

So for a first, second and maybe third approximation, forget about nighttime balance, as that does not matter overall.

I am curious about your take on the matter.

--------------------------------------------------------------

If you care to learn more about handling radiation correctly, see Wikipedia "blackbody radiation". Add surface radiation and reflectivity properties, and you are neck deep in modifications of some small factors. At a 20x difference they may be interesting, nothing more.

The moon receives the same amount of solar flux as we do and it has temperatures that range from -250º F at night to 250º F during the day and has not experienced the same warming trend we have over the past 50 years. Greenhouse gases, as well as atmosphere, oceans, etc. moderate temperatures here on Earth. The amount of moderation to those temperatures depends on many factors:

1. Density of Atmosphere
2. Amount of Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (Water Vapor, CO2, Methane, etc)
3. Amount of Earth covered in Water
4. Amount of Earth covered in ice
5. Tilt of the Earth
6. Amount of particulates in the Atmosphere
7. Average cloud cover

There are Literally 1000s of other factors. The reason why we know that CO2 is the culprit behind our recent (last century's) change in average temperature is because it is increasing temperatures as we would expect it to (within a reasonable margin of error) given it's increase in the atmosphere.

Sorry to bust in but that calculation about temps is OVERsimplification in the sense that not the whole horizon (seen at daytime) reflects at 6000 degrees to earth (fortunatelly). S.M.

Climate is complicated, so I'm afraid that we do have it both ways when it comes to water vapor. Here is a portion of an article from NASA's website on the subject:

Clouds are an important part of Earth's planetary greenhouse. Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are perhaps more widely discussed, but clouds can do the same thing: they warm our planet by trapping heat beneath them. Yet unlike greenhouse gases, sunlight-reflecting clouds also have a cooling influence. Furthermore, the air temperature, which is affected by clouds, in turn affects cloud formation. It's a circular relationship that makes climate research all the more difficult.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2002/22apr_ceres/

And yet, according to the premise of this very thread, the pollution is supposedly doing exactly what I said the clouds are doing. Gee, I guess we can have it both ways!

unless the sulphur reacts with the clouds and falls out as acid rain

When we are able to read the paper, I suspect that it's going to say that the particulates that come from smokestacks do have a cooling effect, but that they are temporary. What the Chinese are also finding out, is that there are health and environmental problems associated with belching smoke.

I'm sure that Milo was being tongue in cheek with this thread.................not suggesting that massive air pollution is going to save us from global warming.

Cool...................you found, "The Paper".

You went much further than I did. I quickly skimmed through the paper and fell into the "duly noted" section and I am not even a climate scientist. I didn't notice that they were economists. Now I know why they didn't explain all of the terms used. E.G. I had to Google W/m2. Being in air quality compliance, I don't deal with irradiance very often.

Yeah, I'm sure it's excellent work, and I don't mean to criticize them at all (they are obviously very accomplished economists), but it does put their conclusions in context. That's the problem with a synopsis, too often the context of the work is lost in the condensing.

It basically took me years of embarrassing myself to learn this. I would read a synopsis and make the critical mistake of saying "that doesn't make any sense, those scientists are idiots". But on those occasions when I had an opportunity to actually read the paper afterwards I usually came to realize: "actually, those scientists are pretty smart, the synopsis left out too many important nuances". With time that has happened enough to me that I now don't judge scientific work or conclusions based on the synopsis. Just too much lost in translation.

As for not being familiar with irradiation being in air quality compliance, what about UV sterilizers?

I didn't think you were criticizing them. It just explains the shortcomings of the paper. I give them a "great work, guys! Now let the scientists take it from here."

I think the UV sterilizers for air quality are regulated under FDA or maybe the local health department.

We regulate the six criteria pollutants (NOX, CO, VOC, PM, PM10, and SO2), PM2.5, and HAPs. There are others in my section that also regulate asbestos. My Agency is pretty much a state run EPA. We do have a few more stringent rules than EPA does and we don't have authority or desire to regulate all of the federal rules (mostly area source NESHAPs and a couple NSPSs).

You Wrote:"We regulate the six criteria pollutants (NOX, CO, VOC, PM, PM10, and SO2), PM2.5, and HAPs. There are others in my section that also regulate asbestos. My Agency is pretty much a state run EPA."

Hey, let me just say thanks for the work that you do. It's nice to live in a country where I know there is a real effort to prevent the air and water from being toxic. We tend to forget how lucky we are here sometimes.

Perhaps you shouldn't rush to judgment based on one paper's synopsis by Reuter's.

It's absolutely true that most of the greenhouse effect we experience on Earth is due to water vapor. Without water vapor, our climate would be much more like the moon (which is the same distance as us from the sun). On the moon temperatures can reach -250° Fahrenheit at night and 250º Fahrenheit during the day. That's a 500º Fahrenheit variation between day and night temperatures. On Earth our temperatures rarely change more than 40º Fahrenheit between day and night.

When scientists talk about global warming, they are talking about a change of maybe a few degrees Fahrenheit in average temperature over the course of a century. It isn't that man is significantly changing temperatures on Earth, it's that small changes in the average temperature of the Earth can have significant effects.

So it's true that water vapor accounts for most of the greenhouse effect experienced by the Earth, but it is mankind's 33% increase of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere over the past Century and a half that is causing the displacement of average temperatures by a few degrees we are witnessing today.

Oh, but they will scream.

Maybe it is true!

Early in the last century you could not see the sun in London.

Just for the heck of it, I'm going to post my own unscientific, unprofessional theory on anthropogenic global warming.

1) I think it's true, and it's due to heat itself. Every time we build a road, parking lot, or any type of structure, i.e., a building, house, barn,.......whatever, we typically remove vegetation and replace it with something that absorbs light and converts it to heat..........................very effectively. Take a temperature reading on a sunny day of a grassy area, and compare it to the reading of a road, or a roof............big, big difference.

Combine this with the fact that everything we do generates heat, from manufacturing, to energy production, to driving our vehicles, and to my uneducated mind, the answer seems pretty darned apparent.

2) I think that the idea that it's being caused by CO2, is at least a partial scam and lie. Since taxing, trading, or otherwise generating money from dissapated heat would be impossible, I think that CO2 became a very worthy culprit, one that so far, has not been proven to cause global warming.

3) I believe that sulpher emissions into the atmosphere, whether man made, or through volcanic activity, do block/reflect sunlight, and cause cooling.

The End

Temporary at best. I don't know if it was posted, but the results of the additional sulfur is acid rain.

Some years ago there was concern about "nuclear winter"; Dr Strangelove might like it as a solution to global warming.