Al Gore on 'climate crisis' : 'Worse than we thought'

[Hauptman]

You can't understand how giving up things implies a reduced standard of living?

I'm not sure how this is such an obscure hypothesis...

Nice dodge, but I would like specifics. As you know it's easy to make claims; I would like some facts and logic to back them up, or am I being unreasonable?

[I_luv_saber]

Also Let me say that your use of If, May and Possible are particularly disingenuous. You imply that something might happen assuming that no one is going to call you on it and then we do and you back-track.

Weasel Words.

[badpenny]

Let me preface this by saying outright, I've always considered myself a very, very left leaning person on the political side. Registered Democrat, member of the ACLU, very ardent supporter of government programs to help the poor, create jobs, imbalance social inequity. Also, I'm no Luddite, I have a PhD from a very respected university in Aerospace Engineering and I work as an engineer for a very well known Aersospace company. I use lots of physics and modeling (including computer modeling) everyday and I have a pretty good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of various methods many people contrue to be "proof".

Why do I have a problem with the thought that CO2 levels are increasing the average Earth's temperature? Not saying I've made up my mind but I find the physics of the CO2 thing to be actually a little shady.

Consider a small thought experiment: Suppose I am in a cold bedroom at night and you want to sleep warm. What do I do? I wear pajamas. I put on a blankets. I put on a down comforter. I keep adding insulation until I can sleep warm. Why? Because my body is supplying the heat (at about 100 Watts btw), and I am trying to retain this heat. Hence, insulation.

Now, suppose I die in bed. (Not to be morbid but everybody has to leave the party sometime.) What happens to my initially warm slumber, eventually? No matter how many blankets I put on? That's right, I get cold. The chemical furnace that was my body shut off, and eventually, my remains will retain to the steady-state temperature of that cold room. So, what can we deduce from our thought experiment? Insulation works to keep a body warm, when that body is generating heat.

Does the Earth generate heat? No. Not much, really (some of the plants and animals generate heat, burning fuels generate heat, but overall, it's a drop in the ocean of the heat on the Earth). That vast majority of warmth on the Earth is generated from the radiance engergy of the sun. The Earth is a cold body.

Now, the argument for CO2 is this: The suns energy is mostly higher frequency radiance. This energy strikes the Earth, where some is absorbed and some reflected. The warm Earth radiates energy, mostly in the lower frequencies. CO2 is very absorbant at these frequencies, and hence CO2 warms the Earth by reflecting this Earth emitting radiance back to the ground.
(I think I've summerized this, please correct me if I'm mistaken).

So what's my problem? Well, for one thing, heat transfer is always from hot to cold. The Earth is warm, the CO2 in our atmosphere is and has to be, cooler (on average). So, knowing that a homogeneous gas like CO2 has no preferred radiance direction, how exactly does CO2 heat the Earth?

This whole thing sounds hincky to me, if you spend some time really thinking about it.

[Digital Analog]

Let me preface this by saying outright, I've always considered myself a very, very left leaning person on the political side. Registered Democrat, member of the ACLU, very ardent supporter of government programs to help the poor, create jobs, imbalance social inequity. Also, I'm no Luddite, I have a PhD from a very respected university in Aerospace Engineering and I work as an engineer for a very well known Aersospace company. I use lots of physics and modeling (including computer modeling) everyday and I have a pretty good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of various methods many people contrue to be "proof".

Why do I have a problem with the thought that CO2 levels are increasing the average Earth's temperature? Not saying I've made up my mind but I find the physics of the CO2 thing to be actually a little shady.

Consider a small thought experiment: Suppose I am in a cold bedroom at night and you want to sleep warm. What do I do? I wear pajamas. I put on a blankets. I put on a down comforter. I keep adding insulation until I can sleep warm. Why? Because my body is supplying the heat (at about 100 Watts btw), and I am trying to retain this heat. Hence, insulation.

Now, suppose I die in bed. (Not to be morbid but everybody has to leave the party sometime.) What happens to my initially warm slumber, eventually? No matter how many blankets I put on? That's right, I get cold. The chemical furnace that was my body shut off, and eventually, my remains will retain to the steady-state temperature of that cold room. So, what can we deduce from our thought experiment? Insulation works to keep a body warm, when that body is generating heat.

Does the Earth generate heat? No. Not much, really (some of the plants and animals generate heat, burning fuels generate heat, but overall, it's a drop in the ocean of the heat on the Earth). That vast majority of warmth on the Earth is generated from the radiance engergy of the sun. The Earth is a cold body.

Now, the argument for CO2 is this: The suns energy is mostly higher frequency radiance. This energy strikes the Earth, where some is absorbed and some reflected. The warm Earth radiates energy, mostly in the lower frequencies. CO2 is very absorbant at these frequencies, and hence CO2 warms the Earth by reflecting this Earth emitting radiance back to the ground.
(I think I've summerized this, please correct me if I'm mistaken).

So what's my problem? Well, for one thing, heat transfer is always from hot to cold. The Earth is warm, the CO2 in our atmosphere is and has to be, cooler (on average). So, knowing that a homogeneous gas like CO2 has no preferred radiance direction, how exactly does CO2 heat the Earth?

This whole thing sounds hincky to me, if you spend some time really thinking about it.

Survey says?..... BZZZZZ Oh I'm sorry that's not right at all.

When you die your body stops all metabolic processes and stops making heat. No more heat generation means no more heat to relfect, which means eventually all the heat escapes.
The sun is constantly warming our atmosphere. There is no energy cut off. When the rays are reflected off the earth some escape and some are reflected back by greenhouse gasses. The Sun doesn't just stop heating us. So more "Blankets" means more reflected heat. If that allows the global thermometer to jump a few degrees things are sent out of whack.

[keith]

Consider a small thought experiment:

I realise it's bad form to reuse these things to often but here it is again;

[PretAllez]

Weasel Words.

(To be honest... I don't remember writing that quote,
but if I have, I wish I had written "your use ... is particularly disingenuous" )

[migopod]

So what's my problem? Well, for one thing, heat transfer is always from hot to cold. The Earth is warm, the CO2 in our atmosphere is and has to be, cooler (on average). So, knowing that a homogeneous gas like CO2 has no preferred radiance direction, how exactly does CO2 heat the Earth?

This whole thing sounds hincky to me, if you spend some time really thinking about it.

The "greenhouse effect" is essentially how planets and other bodies with atmospheres manage to not lose too much heat to the universe proper. CO2, methane, water vapour etc. contribute to this effect by allowing visible wavelengths to pass through and heat the surface. The surface heat raises the temperature of the atmospheric gasses when the atmosphere during the day. It's not reflecting heat back, it's just that the gases are being heated. This is actually pretty old theory, like 1824 and subject to experimentation since the 1850s.

The theories related to global warming are based correlating concentrations of various greenhouse gasses to global temperatures, and suggest that higher concentrations of such gasses in the atmosphere essentially increase the effectiveness of the greenhouse effect.

[I_luv_saber]

(To be honest... I don't remember writing that quote,
but if I have, I wish I had written "your use ... is particularly disingenuous" )

A thousand apologies, I mis-attributed, It was Digital Analog's post. I'll edit the original to reflect. Sorry, again.

(and actually, I was supporting DA's position, I just decided to include the phrase and link to the situation DA described.)

[badpenny]

The "greenhouse effect" is essentially how planets and other bodies with atmospheres manage to not lose too much heat to the universe proper. CO2, methane, water vapour etc. contribute to this effect by allowing visible wavelengths to pass through and heat the surface. The surface heat raises the temperature of the atmospheric gasses when the atmosphere during the day. It's not reflecting heat back, it's just that the gases are being heated. This is actually pretty old theory, like 1824 and subject to experimentation since the 1850s.

The theories related to global warming are based correlating concentrations of various greenhouse gasses to global temperatures, and suggest that higher concentrations of such gasses in the atmosphere essentially increase the effectiveness of the greenhouse effect.

This should be fairly trivial to prove then.

If one constructs numerous transparant boxes and fill them with various gases and then set them all in the sun at the same geometry, lattitude, ect...if your theory is correct, then...different temperatures? Yes/No?

Would you agree that this would be a fairly conclusive method of demonstrating the "greenhouse effect?"

[tchwojko]

This should be fairly trivial to prove then.

If one constructs numerous transparant boxes and fill them with various gases and then set them all in the sun at the same geometry, lattitude, ect...if your theory is correct, then...different temperatures? Yes/No?

Would you agree that this would be a fairly conclusive method of demonstrating the "greenhouse effect?"

Venus, hotter than Mercury. The greenhouse effect is not controversial.

[keith]

Yes/No?"

No. The effect of the glass/whatever would outstrip that of the contents. Hence 'greenhouse effect' . You could use really big boxes I suppose.

Simple way is to shine a light source into a fixed volume of a given gas. Green house gasses absorb at energy levels for re-radiated solar energy (long wavelengths).

[migopod]

This should be fairly trivial to prove then.

If one constructs numerous transparant boxes and fill them with various gases and then set them all in the sun at the same geometry, lattitude, ect...if your theory is correct, then...different temperatures? Yes/No?

Would you agree that this would be a fairly conclusive method of demonstrating the "greenhouse effect?"

Here's Tyndall's work from the 1850's and This is how Arrhenius did his stuff in 1896. Tyndall's apparatus was essentially the equivalent of what you're proposing except that it used a heat source other than the sun.

Interesting to note that Arrhenius actually did believe that carbon emissions were good in that they would help prevent the next ice age.

[migopod]

Venus, hotter than Mercury. The greenhouse effect is not controversial.

DAMNABLE LIES! It's all milankovitch cycles!

[Digital Analog]

This should be fairly trivial to prove then.

If one constructs numerous transparant boxes and fill them with various gases and then set them all in the sun at the same geometry, lattitude, ect...if your theory is correct, then...different temperatures? Yes/No?

Would you agree that this would be a fairly conclusive method of demonstrating the "greenhouse effect?"

Check out the research done on Venus for your answer.

Edit, F*ck, Beaten

[Inquartata]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-...s-in-1970s.htm

Meh, you don't see any problems with the Peterson methodology? Really? None at all?

Let me present a few quotes from it. Maybe that will make them apparent.

"...we conducted a rigorous literature review of the American Meteorological Society’s electronic archives as well as those of Nature and the scholarly journal archive Journal Storage (JSTOR)."

"...no longer being fully reproducible by electronic search techniques..."

( So, no way to check on that "rigorous" assertion. )

"Not all the citations may be supportive of the paper in question, but they do help indicate which papers dominated the thinking of the day."

( So which was he conducting, a test of whether or not here was "consensus" or only of consensus among the "most influential" scientists? "Dominated the thinking"? Does that sound consonant with a simple count of papers? )

"The gray literature of conference proceedings were not authoritative enough to include in the literature search. However, a few prestigious reports that may not have been peer-reviewed have been included in this literature survey as they clearly represent the science of their day."

( Eh? "Authoritative enough"? Gee, that doesn't sound at all like a tendentious value judgement, does it? But still, "a few" were included. No cherry-picking going on, though, I am sure! And it doesn't appear at all from the last phrase that Petersen had already decided which position was dominant when he was choosing his sample...

And isn't that "not peer reviewed" thing supposed to be a no-no in science? )

"Our literature survey was limited to those papers projecting climate change on, or even just discussing an aspect of climate forcing time scales of decades to a century."

Ah. Nothing like a carefully chosen sample to yield the desired results.

"Articles were not included in the survey if they examined the climate impacts of factors that did not have a clear expectation of imminent change such as increases in volcanic eruptions or the creation of large fleets of supersonic transports."

( So, the idea of natural climate change over the long run was not quite acceptable to a guy in the global warming camp. But no further sample bias crept in there, I'm sure...)

As to the Skeptical Science article itself, apparently it prefers to print quotes from that 1975 NAS report at second hand, via some reviewer's article rather than directly from the document itself. Nor does it scruple to tell us what it's "basic conclusion" was.

But hey, let's go with that. Farther down in that same review we find

"...there seems little doubt that the present period of unusual warmth will eventually give way to a time of colder climate, but there is no consensus as to the magnitude or rapidity of the transition."

( Yes, this is the same as "no consensus as to whether global cooling is likely", is it? "Rapidity" and "magnitude" are synonyms for likelihood, right? Right... )

And

"The onset of this climatic decline could be several thousand years in the future, although there is a finite probability that a serious worldwide cooling could befall the earth within the next 100 years".

Which is exactly what Weart was reporting: "To geologists of the time, "very soon" meant within a few thousand years, although Kukla* and a few others thought cooling might possibly become severe within a century or two."


Even the article's "basic conclusion" contains a phrase which obviously makes it useless to the global warming advocates: "...it does not seem possible to predict climate." Hmm... that doesn't seem to be stopping them.

*How to explain the fact that Kukla was apparently one of the believers in fairly imminent cooling according to Weart, yet Petersen puts him in the "neutral" camp?

One wonders whether it could have had anything to do with sample bias? Let's see: Weart cites 4 papers by Kukla, yet only one of these seems to have made Peterson's cut. And the ones which didn't, with titles like "When Will the Present Interglacial End" and "The End of the Present Interglacial"? No doubt they were just missed by that "nonreproducible" electronic search. There do seem to have been rather a lot of those...

No, it looks to me as though Peterson's study is hopelessly flawed from a methodological standpoint, putting his conclusions into jeopardy, especially inasmuch as the contradict those of a much longer and more complete survey of the literature by Weart, whose job was doing such histories, as opposed to Peterson, whose "real" job is doing actual climatological research.

But since concluding otherwise is a threat to the present consensus, history needs revision, and the global cooling consensus MUST be labelled a myth and ascribed only to "science deniers", in order that the faithful not be allowed to doubt...


Well done, groupthinkers!

[Inquartata]

Read the article you posted. It doesn' tout global warming as humanities savior against the menace of total glacial takeover.

Dude, could you please quit trying to "interpret" my actual claims into grand predictions which I have nowhere made?

I'll say it again, and hopefully I will be clear enough to reach you this time:

I AM NOT MAKING ANY PREDICTIONS.

I AM NOT SAYING THAT AN ICE AGE IS IMMINENT OR LIKELY.

I AM NOT SAYING THAT THE ARTICLES I POST SAY OR PROVE SUCH THINGS, EITHER.

I am saying that there are other POSSIBLE outcomes to taking such actions as the IPCC and others advocate. I am saying that in a science as incomplete and unsure as climatology, it is POSSIBLE that the conclusions reached by the "consensus" are wrong, and POSSIBLE that the results of following their urgent policy recommendations might be even worse than if we simply do nothing.

Christ. Is that plain enough for you?

[Inquartata]

Nice dodge, but I would like specifics. As you know it's easy to make claims; I would like some facts and logic to back them up, or am I being unreasonable?

Yes.

I see what you're doing, you know. This is like the child with an infinite refrain of "Why?" to every previous answer. Presently you'll be asking what a "good" is, or what "less" means.

Sorry, man. Your "Why?" chain is at an end.

[keith]

So, the idea of natural climate change over the long run was not quite acceptable to a guy in the global warming camp. But no further sample bias crept in there, I'm sure...

Since this is what brought us here anyway. As DA pointed out any group of glaciologists is going to agree that we are in an interglacial. Given the current interglacial is at the long end of the distribution, on that time scale, we are more likely to be at a point where the probability of us approaching a glaciation is higher than us approaching an interglacial midpoint. So.....

To an economist in the long run we are all dead, to a geologist in the long run we are extinct. I am baffled that the impact of time scale, decades vs millennia, does not enter your thinking.

Well done, groupthinkers!

*shrugs* goes both ways.

That an author outlines the nature of the biases in a survey is good scientific practice, not a grounds for criticism, since it allows anyone to go off and redo the survey with different criteria and measure the impact on the results.

In the context of the debate, anthropogenic effects, leaving out non-anthropogenic papers is sensible. After all the 'coming ice age' shtick is used not against glaciologists but against those arguing for anthropogenic factors impacting global climate. The question is whether researchers investigating possible anthropogenic effects were claiming that man was going to accelerate the arrival of the next ice age. The charge that 'they' have changed there tune is not valid.

If you actually want to go and do a literature search to prove any of the assertions wrong you are welcome to. Critiquing methodology only takes you so far. Unless you can show that the methodology resulted in an incorrect conclusion you haven't demonstrated anything.

As a final aside. A common misconception is that there is a value in reinforcing the prevailing wisdom (blame Thomas Kuhn). Anyone who can prove the current consensus wrong is going to be very famous. A thought that has probably occurred to a great many ambitious young climate scientists .

[Hauptman]

Yes.

I see what you're doing, you know. This is like the child with an infinite refrain of "Why?" to every previous answer. Presently you'll be asking what a "good" is, or what "less" means.

Sorry, man. Your "Why?" chain is at an end.

Still dodging, I see. Well, I can't argue with you, if you won't actually make an argument. Enjoy your sermons instead.

[Digital Analog]

Dude, could you please quit trying to "interpret" my actual claims into grand predictions which I have nowhere made?

I'll say it again, and hopefully I will be clear enough to reach you this time:

I AM NOT MAKING ANY PREDICTIONS.

I AM NOT SAYING THAT AN ICE AGE IS IMMINENT OR LIKELY.

I AM NOT SAYING THAT THE ARTICLES I POST SAY OR PROVE SUCH THINGS, EITHER.

I am saying that there are other POSSIBLE outcomes to taking such actions as the IPCC and others advocate. I am saying that in a science as incomplete and unsure as climatology, it is POSSIBLE that the conclusions reached by the "consensus" are wrong, and POSSIBLE that the results of following their urgent policy recommendations might be even worse than if we simply do nothing.

Christ. Is that plain enough for you?

Not really, I'm not a big fan of being of you hinting at something consistently and then having you act all butt-hurt when I confront you as to the nature of your statements.