How climate change alters regional climate in unpredictable ways

[ZetaX]

I can only second what Camacha said. He is 100% correct that locking threads because of a few participants is not working too well. It gives the trouble-makers (e.g., but not only, trolls) even more power: not only disrupting threads, but even getting them locked.

[Bill Phil]

I'm afraid I must concur with ZetaX and Camacha.

[Red Iron Crown]

Discussion of moderation policy is off-topic in this thread, please start a Kerbal Network thread if you wish to discuss it (please recall [URL="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/30064"]Rule 3.4[/URL] and do not discuss specific moderation acts publicly).

Let this thread get back to the topic at hand.

[GeneralVeers]

[quote name='Dieselpower']In the last decades evidence for this has grown, and by now there have been thousands of studies done, and none of them could find proof for an alternative explanation[/QUOTE]
That's not good enough. There could be a cause we don't know about. Keep in mind that CO2 was still a greenhouse gas a thousand years ago--before anybody even knew what CO2 was.

A while back (though I forget if it was this thread or the other one) I posted a theorem providing strong, easily verifiable, scientifically sound evidence that CO2 could be a result of global warming rather than the cause. Short version: ten percent of human CO2 emissions are from breathing, animal biomass is dozens or hundreds of times greater than human biomass, animals are more active when it's warmer, therefore warmer climate causes planet's animals to emit more CO2.

The mere accident of happening at the same time isn't proof of which one is the cause. Just because you see a fire truck next to a house that's on fire, doesn't mean the fire truck set the house on fire. So, CO2 and warming happened at the same time. How do you prove that it's actually the CO2 that is the cause, and not the result.....?

(that must be done in order to prove the anthropomorphic global warming case, and I don't think it's possible with today's science)

[Bill Phil]

[quote name='WedgeAntilles']That's not good enough. There could be a cause we don't know about. Keep in mind that CO2 was still a greenhouse gas a thousand years ago--before anybody even knew what CO2 was.

A while back (though I forget if it was this thread or the other one) I posted a theorem providing strong, easily verifiable, scientifically sound evidence that CO2 could be a result of global warming rather than the cause. Short version: ten percent of human CO2 emissions are from breathing, animal biomass is dozens or hundreds of times greater than human biomass, animals are more active when it's warmer, therefore warmer climate causes planet's animals to emit more CO2.

The mere accident of happening at the same time isn't proof of which one is the cause. Just because you see a fire truck next to a house that's on fire, doesn't mean the fire truck set the house on fire. So, CO2 and warming happened at the same time. How do you prove that it's actually the CO2 that is the cause, and not the result.....?

(that must be done in order to prove the anthropomorphic global warming case, and I don't think it's possible with today's science)[/QUOTE]

Could CO2 not only be a cause but also a result?

You see, there has never been 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere for hundreds of thousands of years. Now there is. The changes usually take thousands of years, and only increase extremely sharply when a catastrophe happens. Like a ginormous volcano (like yellowstone, or similar), or something similar. Bottom line, CO2 has been increasing for quite some time. Decades. Edited November 21, 2015 by Bill Phil

[SargeRho]

Increased CO2 is both the cause and result. More CO2 means higher temperatures, means the oceans get warmer, means the oceans can dissolve less CO2, means more CO2...

But something must have upset the carbon cycle in order for the CO2 levels in the atmosphere to rise so dramatically. We know that it's not Volcanoes, humans contribute many times as much CO2 as Volcanoes. The oceans aren't getting warmer without reason, it's not the sun, since the Sun's output hasn't increased sufficiently to explain the warming.

[img]http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/CO2_history_1024.jpg[/img]

We're seeing things similar to what happened during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, but on a much, much shorter timescale. Normally, plants and the ocean absorb more CO2 than they produce by a small margin, that's what's kept Earth from becoming Venus, alongside weathering. Our carbon emissions are only 3.5% or so of the global emissions, but those 3.5% are enough to overcome the carbon cycle, and rapidly increase the CO2 concentration.

We didn't have large-scale industry comparable to what we have now thousands of years ago. It's only been 180 years since the industrial revolution.

[img]http://environ.andrew.cmu.edu/m3/s2/graphics/embedded/fig14-2.jpg[/img]

And the rapidly rising CO2 levels coincide with the industrial revolution. Notice what happens after 1820-40. Edited November 21, 2015 by SargeRho

[GeneralVeers]

[quote name='Bill Phil']Could CO2 not only be a cause but also a result?[/QUOTE]
No. Without greenhouse gases, Earth would be around 30 degrees colder (Celsius!) than it is. CO2 is responsible for around 7 degrees of that (rough guess). So, pre-Industrial CO2 was enough to keep Earth pretty comfy. Did a doubling (actually, more than doubling) of CO2 make the planet 7 degrees warmer? Nope. (it's not just CO2, either, there are other greenhouse gases, particularly methane, which have risen markedly in recent years--the warming trend we've allegedly seen is just way too small)

Obviously something is amiss. The short answer is that CO2 has a bit of a problem with diminishing returns. As you add more CO2 to the planet, each additional ton insulates less than the previous one. The planet is at the point where doubling CO2 levels again would do nothing measurable.

Oh, and there's another possibility: instead of CO2 being either a cause or a result of warming, CO2 and warming could both be a result of something else entirely.......

[Bill Phil]

Here's the thing: If there's a larger temperature, then more CO2 will be released from concentration.


Maybe it's not a linear relationship? Or anything similar.

[SargeRho]

There is no doubt that CO2 causes the atmosphere to retain more heat, we know this because CO2 retains heat. Whether or not it's the primary cause is a different question entirely. Methane contributes about 28% of what CO2 does, while CH4 is more more powerful than CO2, CH4 doesn't live long ,and there's over 200 times more CO2.

Warming is effectively a feedback loop. More CO2 means more warming, means more water vapor and more CO2 in the atmosphere, means more warming.

From what I understand, CO2 is kind of a thermostat. CO2 raises the temperature, increasing water vapor in the atmosphere. If you remove the CO2, in time, the temperature drops, and with it the amount of water vapor. Edited November 21, 2015 by SargeRho

[Camacha]

[quote name='WedgeAntilles']That's not good enough. There could be a cause we don't know about.[/QUOTE]

Gravity could be a lie too, and everything might be stuck together with bits of Jell-o, but it is not very likely. You want absolute and irrefutable proof, the one thing science cannot, and will never, provide. It is the very essence of science.

[GeneralVeers]

[quote name='Bill Phil']Here's the thing: If there's a larger temperature, then more CO2 will be released from concentration.


Maybe it's not a linear relationship? Or anything similar.[/QUOTE]

[quote name='SargeRho']There is no doubt that CO2 causes the atmosphere to retain more heat, we know this because CO2 retains heat.[/QUOTE]
I think somebody in this thread has the answer to these two posers. Lemme check.
[quote name='WedgeAntilles']No. Without greenhouse gases, Earth would be around 30 degrees colder (Celsius!) than it is. CO2 is responsible for around 7 degrees of that (rough guess). So, pre-Industrial CO2 was enough to keep Earth pretty comfy. Did a doubling (actually, more than doubling) of CO2 make the planet 7 degrees warmer? Nope.[/QUOTE]
Yup. Found him. :) Yes to Phil: it's not a linear relationship. And no to SargeRho: twice the CO2 isn't causing the atmosphere to retain twice the heat.

You know what we really need? A laboratory. We need to test the theory by taking a planet and turning the CO2 levels way up, and then observing what happens. Dang, we've only got the one planet.......

.......or do we?

[SargeRho]

Unless it's not actually the CO2 that's retaining all of the heat. I didn't say that it did, I mentioned water vapor in my last post. CO2 increases temperature, which results in more water vapor in the atmosphere, which in turn heats up the planet more, and releases more CO2, which in turn increases the water vapor in the atmosphere. It's a positive feedback loop.

A doubling in CO2 was expected to have a warming effect of 1°F. It's actually been quite a bit more than that.

There's no need to be condescending. Or dishonest, for that matter, since you've put words in my mouth. I have not said that twice the CO2 means twice the heat. I haven't been disrespectful towards you, so why the asshattery? Edited November 21, 2015 by SargeRho

[GeneralVeers]

[quote name='SargeRho']A doubling in CO2 was expected to have a warming effect of 1°F.[/QUOTE]
Why was the second helping of CO2 "expected" to have only one-seventh as much warming effect as the first? Why [B]did[/B] that second helping of CO2 have much less effect than the first?

[quote name='SargeRho']There's no need to be condescending. Or dishonest, for that matter, since you've put words in my mouth. I have not said that twice the CO2 means twice the heat. I haven't been disrespectful towards you, so why the asshattery?[/QUOTE]
Immune.:kiss::sticktongue::P Edited November 21, 2015 by WedgeAntilles

[SargeRho]

Because there's only so much radiation to absorb. If 250 ppm already absorb a large portion of the radiation, 500ppm aren't going to absorb twice as much, because the amount of radiation coming from the Earth's surface isn't infinite.

Say, for the sake of argument, 250ppm is enough to absorb 90% of the infrared light. And doubling absorbs 90% of the remaining 10%. Now you're absorbing 99% of the radiation. But if 90% of the radiation raise the temperature from -10°C to 15°C, why would 99% raise it from 15 to 50? Edited November 21, 2015 by SargeRho

[GeneralVeers]

Which means raising it to 750 ppm is going to absorb even less radiation. There ya have it, folks.

Uhh.....I feel like I should say something snarky here. Oh! I got one!

"Now I know how Ben Kenobi felt when Luke finally beat the remote while blindfolded." :D

[SargeRho]

Yes, it means that 3x the CO2 doesn't mean 3X the temperature. And how exactly does that invalidate anthropogenic climate change? A doubling in CO2 from pre-industrial levels now appears to cause up to 4.5°C warming, some even put it at 9°C, but that's unlikely. 4.5°C would not be very pleasant. Edited November 21, 2015 by SargeRho

[GeneralVeers]

[quote name='SargeRho']Yes, it means that 3x the CO2 doesn't mean 3X the temperature. And how exactly does that invalidate anthropogenic climate change?[/QUOTE]
Simple: it means human CO2 emissions produced near-zero temperature change. There have been larger temperature changes, in Earth's past, before anthropomorphic climate change was even a thing, and we don't know what caused them all.

[quote name='SargeRho']A doubling in CO2 from pre-industrial levels now appears to cause up to 4.5°C warming, some even put it at 9°C[/QUOTE]
Nope. One degree C. Bad idea to be using outliers.

[quote name='Camacha']Gravity could be a lie too, and everything might be stuck together with bits of Jell-o, but it is not very likely.[/QUOTE]
Here's the thing about gravity: it's merely a symptom. We don't know what it's a symptom of, either. The graviton is entirely hypothetical; the stress-energy tensor is merely a mathematical construct; and the curvature of space is also hypothetical--we can't see the curvature of space because we exist [B]IN[/B] that space.

So yeah. For all intents and purposes, the graviton really is hyperdimensional Jello.

[SargeRho]

I feel like I'm talking to a wall, since you're ignoring everything, and cherry-picking what you think you can refute easily. It's been explained to you repeatedly how we the current temperature trend is caused by us, and how it's abnormally fast. The PETM took 200000 years. Half of that warming, the other half cooling. At 1/1000 of the speed they're rising at right now. Something has overwhelmed the carbon cycle, and we are the most likely candidate. Those 3.5% we're contributing to the total CO2 emission is enough to overwhelm the carbon cycle. Edited November 21, 2015 by SargeRho

[GeneralVeers]

[quote name='SargeRho']I feel like I'm talking to a wall[/QUOTE]
That makes two of us. (in answer to the rest: no I'm not, no I'm not, the explanation was bogus, it wasn't, and it's not abnormally fast)

[QUOTE]I'm out.[/QUOTE]
I'm not. Well, I'm out for eight hours cuz it's bedtime. :D

[SargeRho]

Yes you are, times two, it was accurate, it was and it is.

Correct my math if it's wrong, but, the PETM took 200000 years. Half of that time was warming, the other half was cooling, so, 100000 years of warming. The temperature rose by 5°C. Assuming 5°C warming by the end of the century, you get a 1000 times faster warming right now. Assuming 2° warming, it's still 400 times as fast. Edited November 21, 2015 by SargeRho

[micr0wave]

The CO² exhaled doesn't come from fairy dust.
To keep it simple, plant makes, say, a simple sugar (C6H12O6, from CO², sunlight and H2O), human (or animal) eats sugar, burns it to CO² and H2O and exhales the CO², thereby getting the energy the metabolism needs.
There seems to be also some misconception about the CO² effect, it's not really working as an insulator, think of a semi-transparent mirror.
The details on how the mechanism works has been explained a couple of times, like that carbon cycle has been too.

[lajoswinkler]

There is no more scientific debate on whether global climate change is happening, and not even whether humanity is responsible. [U]It's over.[/U] It was over 20 years ago.
The evidence, decades and decades, going back a long time (direct measurement of temperature, salinity, pressure, precipitation, isotopic content[B]*[/B], ice core analysis, sea level, etc.) is absolutely piled on.

[SIZE=1]*depletion in atmospheric carbon-14 (because coal lacks it and atmosphere has a pretty much constant concentration of it) strongly correlates with these changes[/SIZE] Edited November 21, 2015 by Vanamonde
Keep things civil, please.

[Chakat Firepaw]

[quote name='WedgeAntilles']A while back (though I forget if it was this thread or the other one) I posted a theorem providing strong, easily verifiable, scientifically sound evidence that CO2 could be a result of global warming rather than the cause. Short version: ten percent of human CO2 emissions are from breathing, animal biomass is dozens or hundreds of times greater than human biomass, animals are more active when it's warmer, therefore warmer climate causes planet's animals to emit more CO2.[/QUOTE]

There are multiple reasons why we know that the increase in CO2 levels are from the burning of fossil carbon:

First, it is combined with a slight reduction in oxygen concentration that matches the combustion of things like coal and oil rather than the metabolising of sugars.

Second, the isotopic composition of the carbon in the air and dissolved in the ocean shows that the increase is from carbon reserves that have been isolated from the atmosphere for a minimum of 100k years.

Third, and most conclusively, we know how much fossil carbon that we have burned. It's about twice the increase in atmospheric carbon content, (about half of the increase ends up in the ocean, which also has more CO2 in it than it did a century ago).

[quote name='WedgeAntilles']The mere accident of happening at the same time isn't proof of which one is the cause. Just because you see a fire truck next to a house that's on fire, doesn't mean the fire truck set the house on fire. So, CO2 and warming happened at the same time. How do you prove that it's actually the CO2 that is the cause, and not the result.....?[/QUOTE]

That there is an increased greenhouse effect can be seen in things like stratospheric cooling.

That increases in CO2 levels are the main cause of that increased greenhouse effect has been directly observed.

[quote name='SargeRho']Yes, it means that 3x the CO2 doesn't mean 3X the temperature. And how exactly does that invalidate anthropogenic climate change? A doubling in CO2 from pre-industrial levels now appears to cause up to 4.5°C warming, some even put it at 9°C, but that's unlikely. 4.5°C would not be very pleasant.[/QUOTE]

The current best numbers are about 3°C/doubling of CO2 or 0.8°C/(W/m^2). The second version of that value is an important one because it better show why many of the alternate explanations for the warming are self refuting: Claiming that the temperature isn't as sensitive to a doubling of CO2 inherently claims that it isn't as sensitive to _everything_.

[peadar1987]

[quote name='WedgeAntilles']No. Without greenhouse gases, Earth would be around 30 degrees colder (Celsius!) than it is. CO2 is responsible for around 7 degrees of that (rough guess). So, pre-Industrial CO2 was enough to keep Earth pretty comfy. Did a doubling (actually, more than doubling) of CO2 make the planet 7 degrees warmer? Nope. (it's not just CO2, either, there are other greenhouse gases, particularly methane, which have risen markedly in recent years--the warming trend we've allegedly seen is just way too small)

Obviously something is amiss. The short answer is that CO2 has a bit of a problem with diminishing returns. As you add more CO2 to the planet, each additional ton insulates less than the previous one. The planet is at the point where doubling CO2 levels again would do nothing measurable.
[/quote]
[citation needed]

[quote name='WedgeAntilles']That the Earth isn't warming up? Yeah, that's my line. If the Earth's temperature is changing, it's not changing enough that we can measure it reliably.
[/quote]
Want to give specific criticisms of the methods we use to measure the temperature of the earth?


[quote]
If there's a significant difference between energy in vs. out? No. The Earth isn't necessarily going to warm up. It could, or it could cool down, or the temp could remain the same. It depends where the energy goes. If it hits land, the Earth will warm up pretty quickly. If it hits water, the Earth will warm up hardly at all, because water has a much higher specific heat. It takes a lot more energy to heat a cubic meter of water one degree than a cubic meter of dirt one degree.
[/quote]
Yes it is, unless of course, there is a phase change. In a closed system, if energy in is greater than energy out, temperature will rise. The earth is a closed system, thermodynamically speaking, as the mass we transfer to and from space is negligible compared to the energy transferred.

You're diverting again, in any case. Give me a source that says that the incident solar radiation is higher than the energy the earth radiates into space. Even better, give me one that says that the energy from the sun is [I]so much higher[/I] than the energy radiated by the earth, that more energy is blocked by CO2 in the tiny tail of the sun's blackbody curve than at the peak of the earth's.


[quote]
Further: what if you were to head outdoors and go for a run, right this minute? Then your body would start converting carbs into heat at a much higher rate than it currently is. And the Earth would get warmer--even though the amount of energy in the system remained the same!

One could draw, from that, the conclusion that in order to save the planet we need to stop exercising...... :D
[/quote]
So where do you think this energy is coming from? Radiogenic heat? About 22TW. Human energy consumption? About 15TW. Insolation? [B]174,000 TW[/B].

[quote]
No need. Basic thermodynamics. The amount of heat blocked by an inusulator depends on its thermal conductivity coefficient, the cross-sectional area across which heat is moving, the distance that heat moves, and the temperature difference between the hot and cold end. When the hot end is hotter, more heat gets blocked. When the temperature difference is zero, the insulator isn't blocking anything.[/QUOTE]

Basic thermodynamics. Far too basic for this problem. For a heat source only undergoing conductive heat transfer, it is true. For a heat source experiencing conductive, convective, and radiative heat transfer, like the earth does, it is woefully inadequate.

[ZetaX]

[quote name='peadar1987']So where do you think this energy is coming from? Radiogenic heat? About 22TW. Human energy consumption? About 15TW. Insolation? [B]174,000 TW[/B].
[/QUOTE]

Or to make his numbers even more ridiculous: use the energy actually produced by the humans themselves. Lets use the numbers from [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_power[/url]. By that even if all humans were exercising 24/7 at peak potential, we would only have aroung 1.2TW of usable power produced. In practise, this ignores losses due to the conversion of chemical energy inside humans, but it also ignores that humans obviously do not exercise 24/7; those two should about cancel each other.
Some other sources talk about 120W total energy consumption of healthy humans. So yeah, the above should be about right.