Is global warming even real?

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by Ilikeponies579, Dec 16, 2014.

  1. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Yes and more. I. e. that the arctic ice vs. temperature dynamics has crossed a "tipping point." I.e. we are on a new functional relationship curve between those two variables. Essentially ice free end of summer arctic is only a few years away (by 2020 anyway), not 60 or more years into the future as ICCP forecast back in 2005 report. This reduces shipping cost from Norway & Arctic Russia to India, etc. to 60% less than today's cost, and avoids pirate invested waters / insurance cost.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 10, 2015
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    It is? Pretty nuanced. It's not as big as strawman as an assertion that those raising dramatic alarms about CH4 runaway possibilities are also telling everyone we don't need to worry about "oil depletion, climate change, pollution, etc". That's a whopper.

    You stand queried: what issue, exactly, would I take with this " - - a denier who claims "if a volcano erupts, only CO2 will save us from extinction!" It's not a rhetorical question.
     
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    As I stated, I assumed you would take issue with someone who said that because such claims are used to support doing nothing about (or in some cases even encouraging) CO2 emissions - and that the resulting warming is a good thing. And that's not a rhetorical answer.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The "doing nothing about" part you added later, and it's been dismissed as a strawman.

    This is your original, what I responded to, in full:
    And the query is: what issue, exactly? The suspicion here is that you do not know what my (or the) issues would be with such a claim - it is, after all, in some sense a possibility. It's shot through with improbabilities and misconceptions of risk, but it's not simply false.

    Your implication that people willing to discuss seriously and publicly the risk of a significant methane runaway are somehow claiming we should do nothing about all that other stuff is simply false.

    My take on the possibility of a small scale methane runaway - a positive feedback mobilization of 1% of the permafrost methane over the next century, say, then self-damped - the logistic curve of so many biological and ecological phenomena - is that it represents a serious threat we should consider carefully. It doesn't have to kill us all to do serious harm.

    My take on the catastrophic scale methane runaway, the boiling oceans of Billy's alarm, is: 1) any probability of it that doesn't start with a few zeroes to the right of the decimal point is an emergency. 2) the arguments I've seen against its possibility are by turns disturbingly naive and worrisomely vague. The calculations of feedback rate for deeper ocean hydrates assume heat transfer through the bottom sediments by diffusion (which is very slow) through existing overlayers and deep water, for example, overlooking currents and ice melt effects and inculcated instability of those sediments for various reasons.

    The strongest argument I've seen so far is that it has not happened already, in the millions of years of its availability. That is reassuring, but against it one notes the uniqueness of the current CO2 boosting regime - brand new consequences are much more likely than if we had a geological record of this in the past. So reassurance is not at hand, apparently, and the matter is one of some urgency - and I don't give a damn what some fool of a denier thinks of such a discussion.
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2015
  8. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    I have a question.

    I've seen you say this on several occasions:
    Could you elaborate on what you mean here?

    I ask because by my reckoning, in a nutshell, while ocean currents may bring novel heat sources into contact with the sediments, the basic mechanism of heat transfer from the water to the clathrates is still one of diffusion through the sediments which is always going to be slow.
     
  9. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    Blue dominating Red (2008 until 2014) = AGW heating hiatus.*
    * Assisted by sun in one of its 11 year intensity minimums.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    [/b]
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 15, 2015
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    That's quite possible. Then we'd hit the cold part of the PDO and see another slowdown/stop in warming.
     
  11. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    "boiling oceans" is quoted from misleading title of video I have posted more than once. (Most recently in post 387.)
    When ever I did so I was careful to note it referred to masses of bubbles rapidly rising from the ocean floor NOT 100 C.

    You are distorting and misleading - why I made that word red. Please replace it with "bubbling" - if that not possible due to editing time limitations, please admit I was NOT suggesting "boiling ocean." Further more, violent bubbling up is OBSERVED in the video and I have explained the physic of it in some detail. Basically the bubble filled column of water above the out gassing spot on the ocean floor is significantly less dense than the surrounding water. Thus it accelerates up under the constant buoyancy force and by time it reaches the surface has sufficient velocity to "coast" up in some cases more than a meter before falling back to the surface. The Arctic Ocean water is of low salt content and becoming fresher every year as more ice melts into it. The Gulf Steam water is quite salty, so despite its higher temperature it is more dense, and efficiently delivers heat to the methane hydrates on the bottom.

    This mechanism I first described and applied to the large new crater in Siberia. In that case it was the 9.6% CH4 content of the air at the bottom which accelerated the methane gas upward in the center while air descended around it near the crater walls. That descending air reduces the CH4 concentration until a dynamic equilibrium concentrations is reached - I. e. The rate of CH4 source release at crater bottom then equals the rate of CH4 delivered to the surface. Effectively, this is a natural pump driven by the greater density of the pure descending air. With the math model of this dynamic system I as able to compute the density of the descending air (for the known 9,6% concentration of CH4 at the bottom.) The controlling factor of air density at normal barometric pressure is the temperature. Thus from my model I predicted what the surface air temperature was.

    My model applies to any fluid and explains why now columns of CH4 up to 1Km in diameter are "Bubbling up" along the Siberian shelf, where now a small part of the Gulf Stream is entering delivering the heat needed to decompose the methane hydrates on that relatively shallow continental shelf (which happens to be about 1/4 of the entire Arctic Ocean floor).

    The ICCP reports, ignorant or ignoring the buoyancy physics I modeled, say that CH4 bubbles released at the ocean floor (under pressure) are small, with very low "terminal velocity" (limited speed of rise) so will all dissolve before reaching the surface - nothing to worry about.

    This is happening NOW. Much more than 1% of the CH4 in methane hydrates is on that Siberian shelf (in large part because Russian rivers flow North and for thousands of year have been depositing organic matter on the shelf.)

    Yes the historical fact that life has not previously become extinct on Earth does reassure some but AGW is different. quoting from reference given in post 390:
    "maximum PETM rate of emission for organic carbon as the source is equivalent to 6.2 billion tonnes of CO2 per year, and for methane as the source, 1.1 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. For comparison: 2010 human-carbon emissions were 30.6 billion tonnes. So if organic carbon was the source:
    current emissions are almost 5 times faster than the PETM, and if methane, current emissions are rising 27 times faster."
    THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 15, 2015
  12. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    * Might was added by Billy T, who thinks another decade or more long slow down is very improbable.

    In part as then the sun will be back in its maximum intensity phase; in part because the POD, discussed in post 406, is returning to its greater heating phase and they typically last a decade; but most importantly "business as usual" will continue (unless we have a global economic collapse, including rapidly growing coal burning Asia) so every year for the foreseeable future, significantly more CO2 will be released AND the half life of CH4 will continue to increase at least by 0.3 years each year.

    Those of us, like me, who post factual & scientific information trying to at least get sugar cane alcohol to displace the CO2 release by gasoline fueled cars, are about as effective as trying to stop a speeding train by the friction of brooms held against its side as it speeds to the disaster of the broken rail-road bridge a few Km ahead of it; but I want my grand children to know I tried.
     
  13. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Since this slowdown was not predicted by you (or anyone else) back in 1998, I'd say it's quite probable that we will see another unpredicted slowdown after another 1998-esque rapid warming.
    Some good news there from the Washington Post:
    ================
    By Chris Mooney March 13

    Sometimes wonky, technical details really matter.

    Such is the case on Friday, with an announcement from the International Energy Agency showing that there was a “decoupling” of economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions in 2014. In other words: the world economy grew, but CO2 emissions didn’t. This was “the first time in 40 years in which there was a halt or reduction in emissions of the greenhouse gas that was not tied to an economic downturn,” said the agency.

    For anybody who cares about the planet, that’s very good news. After all, the previously tight link between economic growth and the use of more energy — leading to more emissions — has seemed an almost invariant fact of the modern industrial world. Indeed, observations like these have driven some on the environmental left to posit that economic growth itself is incompatible with environmental protections.
    =================
     
  14. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    23,198
    That is not true of TOTAL coal based emissions of CO2 or all emissions of CO2. The article (and even the words of the link) clearly state: "global-energy-related-emissions-of-carbon-dioxide-stalled-in-2014." But steel and cement making plus others also burn coal.
    Washington Post author, Chris Mooney, overly generalized what that IEA article states about global-energy-related-emissions-of CO2.

    Yes, alternate energy system for power production are increasing and in the US at least, EPA is forcing some coal fired power plants to switch to natural gas, but in most of the rest of the world the amount of coal burned for just for electric power is increasing annually, even China, I think, but they have closed three coal power plants in the Beijing area (while opening new and larger ones further west).
    One small statistical variation, in one component of coal use, does not a trend make. Here is what the IEA projected 4 months ago (published 15 December 2014):
    * As I recall, China itself thinks it coal consumption will peak in 2045 + or - 5 years. (and other parts of ASEAN which are lagging behind China after 2050 at the earliest.) I.e. about three decades, if no global economic collapse, of CO2 release increasing each year with rare statistical variations as exceptions.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 16, 2015
  15. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Right - and are examples of global energy related emissions.

    The above is certainly not to say we have solved the problem, because there's a lot more to do - we need reductions in CO2 emissions, not just no increase year to year. But at least it's not "business as usual."
     
  16. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    23,198
    No there are chemical* and other uses, not normally considered "energy related" - If every use of coal is "energy related" there would be no need for the article to qualify what it is speaking of by adding those terms. The article is discussion of how electric power is produced.

    * Iron ore, Fe2O3 is reduced to iron by "coke" made for coal. I.e. when hot in a "blast furnace" the two "O3" unite with 3 Carbons of the coke to make three molecules of CO2.


    Of course - I agree. I.e. That one small statistical variation in one component of coal use, is not "business as usual." - It is a "statistical variation."
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 16, 2015
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    There is a threat of physical disturbance of the sediments, some of it even with feedback potential, on a significant scale. Shifting currents not only transport much more heat into direct contact with the sediments much faster than diffusion through the upper water would, but disturb the sediments physically. The shallower decomposing hydrates also disturb the overlayers, bringing deeper buried clathrates into closer contact with the warm water. Significant deposits are on slopes in the higher latitude oceans - the disturbances and shifting currents couple with gravity to remove overlayer in landslides. Rising coastal areas from under melting ice burdens also produces landslides off shore, as does increasing volumes of meltwater runoff. Longer times of exposed surface as surface ice vanishes leads to more frequent and continuous disturbance of deeper water by the effects of storms and winds. And so forth.

    Basically, there are several possible AGW influenced modes of sediment disturbance capable of releasing methane hydrates into contact with warmer water on a significant scale, and with potentially positive feedback at least in the short run. There are also non-AGW possibilities - we may be unlucky in our earthquakes or volcanoes, say. These are un-evaluated risks, afaik. They worry me.
     
  18. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    It's diffusion of the heat through sediment, rather than water that is the limiting factor - or at least, that's what I understood anyway.

    I think under these circumstances, the reduction of pressure on the clathrates resulting from the reduction of overburden is more likely to be problematic - like uncorking a champagne bottle.

    There's a paper that I've cited once or twice that looks into at least some of these scenarios - for example, a repeat of the Storegga land slide.
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    That has also been my take. And that depends on the sediments remaining largely undisturbed, which assumption is unsafe to some degree for those various reasons.

    In particular, some of the disturbance mechanisms involve local and AGW feedback, currently unexpected in the calculations (as with, for example, the hydrate blowouts in Siberian permafrost). This potentially amplifies the effects of both AGW and natural event (non-glacial-rebound earthquake, non-AGW landslide), and reduces the safety factor of scale and patch disconnection.

    (There is also a hidden assumption of ocean current patterns remaining generally as they are or changing only very slowly - some more exposed or vulnerable deposits currently protected by cold water regimes could be mobilized by shifts in deep water currents. )

    So the question becomes: How much bad luck would it take to set off a runaway of significant scale and duration? How much improbability currently protects us? How unsafe is that assumption of status quo? Because the event whose probability we are reducing by making it is a catastrophe.
     
  20. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    The following quote is section 4, the conclusion, in its entirety:
    As far as I can tell the study does NOT, consider the much more rapid rise of bubbles, in a buoyant column, that I have discussed and modeled mathematically. I.e. it seems to continue the wide spread idea that most of the bubbles will dissolve prior to reaching the surface, producing effects they discuss on the Arctic Ocean pH, etc.

    For example just prior to the "potential CH4 release areas" map below (I hope soon) is this text:

    " Regional methane-induced seawater acidification from the seafloor would occur in addition to an ocean-wide acidification caused by the uptake of anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere [IPCC, 2007]. The combined effect of the two processes would accelerate ocean acidification in parts of the AO, including deeper waters which otherwise would be exposed to ocean acidification with a considerable time delay. Research on that topic so far has been conducted under the premises of a projected pH decrease due to the anthropogenic CO2-uptake of about 0.3 units until the end of this century. Methane-induced acidification could nearly double this decrease in parts of the AO. "

    Figure 4. Changes in pH due to the release of 50% of the methane from hydrates within the first 100 years and distributed over the first 100 m above the bottom.*

    * This now bold text "only effects pH in first 100 m above the bottom" CONFIRMS they are falsely neglecting even the currently OBSERVED 1km diameter columns of CH4 & CO2 bubbles rising rapidly up, without dissolving, due to the column buoyance effects I have described, and successfully used my math model to PREDICT the surface air temperature when the 9.6% CH4 concentration was reported at the bottom of the new, large crater opened up in Siberian tundra. (Model applies to fluids /water or air/ that have lower density than the surrounding fluid.)

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    Sorry I can only copy the above Fig 4 caption, but as you would expect, most of the large CH4 release will come from the Siberian costal waters.

    Here is link to my math model: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/climate-gate.97892/page-46#post-3213664
    Which using only physic and the observed 9.6% CH4 at bottom, predicted the air temperature was 54F that july in Siberia when concentration was measured.

    Here is a photo taken from air plane showing some of the "kilometer diameter" columns of gas bubbling up in the Arctic Ocean, where simple theory says "it can't - would dissolve before reaching the surface."

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    Read text of above photo here: http://www.theweathernetwork.com/ne...ubbling-up-from-the-arctic-ocean-floor/33078/

    Simple aerodynamics theory also states that the tiny winged, heavy bumble bee can not fly - Too much turbulence produce by those small wings.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 16, 2015
  21. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    ...the laws of physics do not in any way forbid bumblebee flight; there are no papers that deny bumblebee flight, and no scientist has done so in a lecture, except, perhaps, ironically. To put it simply, it is possible to "prove" that a bumblebee cannot fly if you perform an extremely crude calculation (like forgetting to take into account things like the rate of flapping, the rotation of the wing, or the action of vortices), but a full aerodynamic calculation (to say nothing of getting all empirical and watching a bumblebee fly) will show that the bumblebee's flight works perfectly fine. ​

    Rationalwiki: Bumblebee argument
     
  22. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I went to link. It tells some of the origins / history, but not the argument I read when directed to it in college physic class in early '60 - Namely a calculation of the turbulence by then accepted theory - Tiny wings very rapidly beating, as they do, according to it produced more turbulent dissipation of energy than lifting energy. The Professor's point, a valid one, was of course that theory is not always in agreement with fact. Not that bumble bees can not fly.

    Bumble bees do fly so of course the laws of physics do permit that. Point is that man may not fully understand them (the laws of nature describing them) or may have over simplified them for calculations. There is still a lot we are unsure of in for example the net forcing of clouds averaged over globe and year.

    I made this "accepted theory is not always right" comment as It is widely accepted, including by the ICCP, that small bubbles have such low terminal velocity that they would dissolve before reaching the surface, except in very shallow water. - That theory is WRONG *- not only by photo observation at end of my post 417 but by my more complete math model that does take into account the buoyancy of the water column containing the bubbles.

    * I.e. the accepted theory dis agrees with the empirical evidence in some important cases concerning transport of CH4 to the surface in the Arctic Ocean - greatly UNDER ESTIMATES the rate possible.

    Bumble bees CAN fly & " Water Clouds," dense with CH4 bubbles, CAN reach the surface from most of the Arctic Ocean floor. My math model of how they can also predicts they will be roughly circular - as they are observed to be. It applies to buoyant fluid columns and also predicted the surface air temperature in July when the 9.6% CH4 concentration at bottom of the new large Yamal region, Siberian crater was measured would be 54F - from physic and that one known 9.6% concentration fact.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 17, 2015
  23. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    No, it doesn't. That's an urban myth. It's akin to hearing an engineer looking at a 747 taking off say "wow, it's hard to believe that something that big can get off the ground" and then reporting "Engineers say that according to science 747's can't fly!"
     

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