I have observed the “conservative” Global Warming Deniers cult here for some time. It’s interesting to see that they have progressed.
First, they denied that there was any such thing, and when they doubled down they claimed it was a “hoax,” or it was so Gore or, hilariously, scientists could make money. This simply demonstrated massive ignorance of science and scientists (and scientists’ income).
Then, they might reluctantly admit that some things were happening, but it was all natural, it was normal processes, it was just the sun (as if scientists missed the #1 source of heat on our planet!). And besides, God wouldn’t allow that to happen.
Next, a few people were admitting that this was kind of unusual, but would simultaneously claim we couldn’t be responsible, that the Earth was too big for that, while also claiming that we can’t do anything about it anyway — which implies that we DID have something to do with it, but it’s out of our hands now.
Now…I hear a lot less out of them. I think it’s beginning to sink in. I’m sincerely very pleased by this!
Some still say “but it’s too expensive!” Yeah? Try dealing with another Houston every couple of years, plus costs of continuously rising seas and more intense weather! And note that all the major reinsurance firms – who insure insurance companies – ASSUME warming-related events now.
Then consider the many business opportunities for alternative energy sources. Solar power and and wind power don’t have to be controlled or built centrally by big corporations — which is one reason why ExxonMobil worked so hard against them. I know a number of Republicans who have been converted to solar power once they realized they could produce so much power that they could sell it BACK to the utilities after getting all they needed. Greentech is also very big business, and one the Chinese are getting heavily into. Since the US was the source of much of that innovation early on, why not get back into it now?
I once worked in an industry that had a saying: “If you are going to err, err in favor of the diver.” I have modified it recently: “If you are going to err, err in favor of our great grand children.”
Why not, asks Motivemagus? Why not indeed? My guess you’d have to get the CONservatives to agree with the evidence. Plus, they’d have to admit they were wrong—so, Dunning Kruger and all that.
Then there’s trump. His love of lying gives him excellent cover. He “could” declare he was “all-in” for a carbon-free energy future. Then fire Scott Pruit and begin talking about how he was right all along about man-made climate change being a big threat to the human species. Then because it was his idea, he would say all the scientists have come to agree with him, and that he’s glad to have cleared up the controversy about man made climate change.
Then the CONservatives would, naturally, be against and the PROgressives would be in favor. And we’d have to wait until 2020 to get that resolved. Getting rid of trump’s not enough. Pence thinks the world is 6,000 years old.
But a trump turnaround on climate change would be completely in character. Think about the amazingly lame explanation he gave about his “birther” nonsense. He certainly cleared up that particular controversy.
Republicans make it illegal to discuss Global Warming, they thought the problem was solved. They thought New York and New Jersey should have prepared for a hurricane, they thought voting against emergency funding would solve their problems. They don’t like government programs that aren’t helping businesses, so they though they could solve problems by slashing the FEMA budget. They don’t like when facts tell them pollution causes climate change, so they solve their problem by removing regulations on pollution. They thought Obama was so mean getting us into the Paris agreement, so they solved their problems by electing Trump.
So what happened? Why are we seeing the greatest flood of our time during Trump’s presidency in a red state? I thought they prayed this stuff away?
My area is all smoke from fires. Warm winters don’t kill bug larvae, trees die. Also that poor land use planning not only screws up ecologic balance, but put homes and development in the direct path of both fire, and flooding, from hurricanes or otherwise. Neat to put the most dangerous petrochemical plants in the world along the gulf coast in the direct path of many hurricanes, not just this one!
Idiotic. Typhoons have been killing millions in Africa and the Indian sub-continent for all of recorded history. Hurricanes have been slamming the North America gulf and Atlantic coasts as well.
This isn’t a question of weather and what has happened with weather in the past. It is the fact that humans have polluted the air and sea and it has made a dramatic difference, which has been validated by 99% of scientists in the world. The 1% of scientists who don’t believe in global warming have been bought off by industries who don’t want regulation. Just like the irresponsible politicians in Texas who now are dealing with chemical explosions due to a company which didn’t have reasonable regulations placed upon it. Similarly, some “scientists” didn’t believe that tobacco caused cancer.
@brass… I don’t have the expertise to assess your statement, though I suspect someone like Baslim does.
It does seem exceedingly unlikely that you have better data and insight into this than the scientists around the world from multiple disciplines who study it 24-7-365.
You might ask yourself why you feel an ongoing need to take this stance. It doesn’t seem like your views are widely held by scientists. I guess that makes you an exception, and maybe that’s your real point. Maybe you want to feel as though you have special knowledge that all those scientists are too dumb or blind to comprehend. But why on earth would you be right and all the scientists wrong?
The thing about dealing with BO is that he makes me understand quite well what Wolfgang Pauli meant when he said of someone’s theory, “It’s not even wrong.” So it is with BO. .Contrary to his bluster, scientists have understood the physics he claims they do not understand. What BO refuses to recognize is that natural events that take place at glacial speeds are not relevant to any discussion about the effects of AGW. AGW is concerned with actions and consequences on human civilization time scales, not glacial time scales.
Just look at the time interval of glacial cycles. Over than last several hundred thousand years, the time it took for CO2 to go from minimum to maximum ( a difference of roughly 85 ppm) was no less than 7000 years. No less than 7000 years. That’s a glacial scale. Changes in global climate on that sort of time scale allow living systems to adapt to the slowly changing conditions.
In contrast, humans have dumped enough CO2 into the atmosphere and the oceans such that the CO2 has increased by 85 ppm in 50 years. That would be the amount of increase from the time when CO2 and temperatures are near their minimums. 50 years for AGW, so far, versus 7000 years!
BO talks about warm waters evaporating and moving to the land. Obviously that happens, contrary to his assertions that scientists don’t believe him. We know the water came from the oceans because we have physical evidence that during the ice ages, water levels are lower. He’s describing, however, a process that proceeds at a glacial pace. You know, really, really slow on the human time scale. Moreover, his “analysis” does not allow for the fact that humans are using up groundwater stored over millions of years at a pace that leads to their exhaustion in centuries… or less. The amount of sea level rise due to that factor alone is nearly equal to the rise due to the melting of ice.
These changes to the environment from human civilization are too fast for living systems to adapt, as we see all around the world. Living systems, you know, those things which are supposed to benefit from an increase in CO2, but which somehow don’t, because, gosh willikers, increasing temperatures which will follow increasing CO2, tend to affect plants and animals in adverse ways. Adaption occurs in some cases, but there are limits to the speed of adaption and to the speed with which different species colonize more favorable land (or sea). This, the deniers uniformly fail to understand.
All of BO’s snide, yet in the end really foolish, comments are meant to obscure the issue. The goal of CO2 reduction is not to create an ice age. All his questions are trying to shift attention from what can be done on the human time scale, not on the glacial time scale.
Reducing Greenhouse gas release into the atmosphere slows down the rate of increase of temperature rise. That will eventually slow down sea level rise. Glacier melt? Maybe. I don’t address his other stupid stuff because it is not relevant.
As another example of BOs insufferable arrogance, it is in fact, well understood that warming will cause precipitation increases on land. And is already doing so. But here’s the fly in the BO ointment. Precipitation increases are found (using models and actual measurement) to be gaining more in intense precipitation than otherwise. In other words, the effect is not just more rain, but more intense rain. Remember all that recent flooding in so many places? That was good for the humans affected, wasn’t it? Guess what? More to come.
The above paragraph was written exactly one year ago. More to come, indeed!
Letting the warming continue unabated will only continue to result in things which adversely affect civilization as we have it now. BO paints a rosy picture of the Sahara greening, but that happened because of a solar insolation change. Solar insolation, which BO refuses to acknowledge as the driving factor in ice ages. All of that took place over long time scales..http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/how-earths-orbital-shift-shaped-the-sahara/. BO poses his remarks to make you think that scientists believe that reducing carbon emissions will reverse the effects of AGW. In fact, no scientist (AL Gore is not a scientist) thinks that. The increase in CO2 and its effects on climate are going to linger, even if we could shut off all fossil fuel burning this instant. The effects would linger for far more than a century. And the extra growth of plants at higher CO2 levels, isn’t going to cut it. Because what else do plants need? Water, which will be slow in coming..An analogy to AGW and the BO “solution” is this. You are in a boat along the coast, which the faster it goes, the more water it takes on through a hole in the bow. If you keep going fast, you cannot bail out the water fast enough and you sink faster. If you slow down, you can bail until you can get the boat to shore. It’s hard work to do that. Some people on the boat can swim, some cannot..The BO response is to say, well, keep speeding, we’ll get closer to land! And if we sink before we get to land? Tough nuts for the non-swimmers. But, in a few thousand years, sea level will decrease and the boat will be on dry land. Well, he’s right of course. But his solution is of little use to those in the boat.
In contrast, AGW scientists suggest slowing down (not stopping as the deniers love to claim) enough so that bailing can keep up with incoming flow, allowing us to get the boat to shore with all on board and then fix the boat.
Brass Orchid, not even wrong, not even remotely relevant.
The problem with BO has always been that he doesn’t know how to explain things in a logical and coherent manner. How many people have responded to his comments with “WTF are you talking about?” Quite a few over the time I have read his posts. And his response to such people has always been to reply with condescension that they simply cannot understand some point of physics (and it’s usually the same point, according to him).
But one-liners aren’t appropriate for a complicated topic, whether it is his convert heat to potential energy (and he rarely expressed it that clearly) or “It’s the CO2, dummy!” Neither is sufficient or acceptable. In the beginning he was even more obscure, with a claim that the warm water was going to lead to an ice age. I mentioned some time ago that he wasn’t the only person to suggest that about the Arctic.
I pointed out early on that the ice ages are dependent on a change in insolation, and he kept up the argument that the accumulation of snow would overcome the temperature problem. No calculations, no evidence of a serious model. Sorry, but in science we want to see the work. The word of some guy posting on a comics site doesn’t suffice.
He later went on about how the warm water would be carried to the land and turn desert to greenery. Yes, that can certainly happen. It happened to the Sahara, but it turns out that was related to insolation as well (the tilt of the earth’s rotational axis with respect to it’s orbital plane varies in time.) I provided a reference. (see a prior post)
I was able to drag out some of his reasoning for all this. When I got the main picture, it was clear he wasn’t spouting nonsense as it initially appears to most people. I defended him on that basis, but pointed out that getting individual processes right did not automatically mean that the global process would work as he said. The climate system is complex. He could not or would not offer up any concrete evidence (in the form of calculations or a model) that things would go as he said.
He has also made some very simple errors in physics that suggest he has not thought things through. So I stopped paying attention.
From the beginning he has maintained a sneering contempt for “the scientific establishment.” Deriding scientists for using dogma. Yet, never ever providing proof. He has made similar derisive, but vague comments about statistics — never being clear on exactly what he was complaining about.
Vague defenses, vague attacks and then the scientists who demand clear answers and evidence of work done are trolls.We’re supposed to bow in wonder to that?
So by calculations presented to the reader and reasonable, if somewhat conservative calculations, I showed that the rate of semi-permanent transfer of water from ocean to land is slow. And it was clear that the transfer would be most effective, and therefore quickest if water were retained as ice.
Which sounds like a win for BO, but there are two points to consider.
1) What is the time scale for the transfer? Is it fast enough to offset the warming from greenhouse gases?
2) Will the transfer actually result in an increase of ice?
The rate of annual precipitation is increasing, and may increase more. (No one, and that includes BO, knows what that increased rate might be.)
Without the ability to calculate the increased rate as a function of time, Occam’s razor says, use the present rate for an estimate. So I did, and the conclusion is that it would take centuries to be of any use.
I did not address the thermodynamics of BOs concept, because I don’t know the right number for the efficiency of his “heat engine.” But it will not exceed 50%, which means that there is a greater amount of waste heat given to the environment than the amount cooled. Because greenhouse gases mean less heat escaping, this results in an increase in temperature of the atmosphere (as heat from the ocean is transfered to the atmosphere by this “engine.”)
The question of whether the transfer from water to ice will “take” is answered by the fact that we are not in a time where the insolation is going to decrease anytime soon. (You can ignore silly reports about the new maunder minimum, it will in fact have very little impact. The Little Ice Age was caused by the products of repeated large volcanic eruptions.) Without a decrease in insolation, there is no way that ice expands in an environment where the temperature keeps rising.
The point of all of the above is that while BOs concept works for the slow behavior of the glacial cycle, there is no suggestion (other than from him — and none from calculation) that his concept will overcome the increase heat retention from burning fossil fuels on a time scale that matters to present human societies.
On the other hand, you have made predictions about what you think global warming is doing. In true scientific method, one should show that the predictions of one’s theory are in fact seen in the data testing those predictions. Where are your data showing the changes in water distribution that you postulated should occur with warming? Until you can show me that data, I have to assume that your theory is defective. (And you have the gall to criticize those whose theory and models predict conditions much nearer to what we are actually observing with real data.)
Speaking of rubbish: As usual, no data or calculations to back up any claims, so rubbish indeed from BO.
Let’s consider the little fact that the atmospheric CO2 percentage has changed from 315 ppm in 1959 to 405 ppm today. (yes, today). So in 58 years, the value has gone up by 90 ppm. Or a 28% increase.
With a linear slope, that would be 1.5 ppm per year. Of course, it is not linear at all but more exponential, and tracks the use of fossil fuels rather well.
Now consider the measured rate of precipitation change:
Since 1901, global precipitation has increased at an average rate of 0.08 inches per decade
so in 58 years, the rainfall increase is 0.464 inches, or 1.16%
Not a large effect, that thermal lifting.
Now BO wants us to believe that that water is going to absorb the CO2. Well the oceans certainly are getting more acidic because of the increase in CO2. Too bad that’s not good for certain needed life forms, eh? Because the changes are happening on human time scales, not glacial time scales.
And just what happens to dissolved CO2 when the water evaporates? Well, some of it goes back into the atmosphere. BO seems to think every bit of it remains in the water.
Motivemagus almost 7 years ago
I have observed the “conservative” Global Warming Deniers cult here for some time. It’s interesting to see that they have progressed.
First, they denied that there was any such thing, and when they doubled down they claimed it was a “hoax,” or it was so Gore or, hilariously, scientists could make money. This simply demonstrated massive ignorance of science and scientists (and scientists’ income).
Then, they might reluctantly admit that some things were happening, but it was all natural, it was normal processes, it was just the sun (as if scientists missed the #1 source of heat on our planet!). And besides, God wouldn’t allow that to happen.
Next, a few people were admitting that this was kind of unusual, but would simultaneously claim we couldn’t be responsible, that the Earth was too big for that, while also claiming that we can’t do anything about it anyway — which implies that we DID have something to do with it, but it’s out of our hands now.
Now…I hear a lot less out of them. I think it’s beginning to sink in. I’m sincerely very pleased by this!
Some still say “but it’s too expensive!” Yeah? Try dealing with another Houston every couple of years, plus costs of continuously rising seas and more intense weather! And note that all the major reinsurance firms – who insure insurance companies – ASSUME warming-related events now.
Then consider the many business opportunities for alternative energy sources. Solar power and and wind power don’t have to be controlled or built centrally by big corporations — which is one reason why ExxonMobil worked so hard against them. I know a number of Republicans who have been converted to solar power once they realized they could produce so much power that they could sell it BACK to the utilities after getting all they needed. Greentech is also very big business, and one the Chinese are getting heavily into. Since the US was the source of much of that innovation early on, why not get back into it now?
lopaka almost 7 years ago
I once worked in an industry that had a saying: “If you are going to err, err in favor of the diver.” I have modified it recently: “If you are going to err, err in favor of our great grand children.”
twclix almost 7 years ago
Why not, asks Motivemagus? Why not indeed? My guess you’d have to get the CONservatives to agree with the evidence. Plus, they’d have to admit they were wrong—so, Dunning Kruger and all that.
Then there’s trump. His love of lying gives him excellent cover. He “could” declare he was “all-in” for a carbon-free energy future. Then fire Scott Pruit and begin talking about how he was right all along about man-made climate change being a big threat to the human species. Then because it was his idea, he would say all the scientists have come to agree with him, and that he’s glad to have cleared up the controversy about man made climate change.
Then the CONservatives would, naturally, be against and the PROgressives would be in favor. And we’d have to wait until 2020 to get that resolved. Getting rid of trump’s not enough. Pence thinks the world is 6,000 years old.
But a trump turnaround on climate change would be completely in character. Think about the amazingly lame explanation he gave about his “birther” nonsense. He certainly cleared up that particular controversy.
Mr. Blawt almost 7 years ago
Republicans make it illegal to discuss Global Warming, they thought the problem was solved. They thought New York and New Jersey should have prepared for a hurricane, they thought voting against emergency funding would solve their problems. They don’t like government programs that aren’t helping businesses, so they though they could solve problems by slashing the FEMA budget. They don’t like when facts tell them pollution causes climate change, so they solve their problem by removing regulations on pollution. They thought Obama was so mean getting us into the Paris agreement, so they solved their problems by electing Trump.
So what happened? Why are we seeing the greatest flood of our time during Trump’s presidency in a red state? I thought they prayed this stuff away?
Dtroutma almost 7 years ago
My area is all smoke from fires. Warm winters don’t kill bug larvae, trees die. Also that poor land use planning not only screws up ecologic balance, but put homes and development in the direct path of both fire, and flooding, from hurricanes or otherwise. Neat to put the most dangerous petrochemical plants in the world along the gulf coast in the direct path of many hurricanes, not just this one!
Radish the wordsmith almost 7 years ago
Lets wait until the Trump admin destroys all the government data, thanks Republicans!
Andylit Premium Member almost 7 years ago
Idiotic. Typhoons have been killing millions in Africa and the Indian sub-continent for all of recorded history. Hurricanes have been slamming the North America gulf and Atlantic coasts as well.
montessoriteacher almost 7 years ago
This isn’t a question of weather and what has happened with weather in the past. It is the fact that humans have polluted the air and sea and it has made a dramatic difference, which has been validated by 99% of scientists in the world. The 1% of scientists who don’t believe in global warming have been bought off by industries who don’t want regulation. Just like the irresponsible politicians in Texas who now are dealing with chemical explosions due to a company which didn’t have reasonable regulations placed upon it. Similarly, some “scientists” didn’t believe that tobacco caused cancer.
twclix almost 7 years ago
@brass… I don’t have the expertise to assess your statement, though I suspect someone like Baslim does.
It does seem exceedingly unlikely that you have better data and insight into this than the scientists around the world from multiple disciplines who study it 24-7-365.
You might ask yourself why you feel an ongoing need to take this stance. It doesn’t seem like your views are widely held by scientists. I guess that makes you an exception, and maybe that’s your real point. Maybe you want to feel as though you have special knowledge that all those scientists are too dumb or blind to comprehend. But why on earth would you be right and all the scientists wrong?
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member almost 7 years ago
The thing about dealing with BO is that he makes me understand quite well what Wolfgang Pauli meant when he said of someone’s theory, “It’s not even wrong.” So it is with BO. .Contrary to his bluster, scientists have understood the physics he claims they do not understand. What BO refuses to recognize is that natural events that take place at glacial speeds are not relevant to any discussion about the effects of AGW. AGW is concerned with actions and consequences on human civilization time scales, not glacial time scales.
Just look at the time interval of glacial cycles. Over than last several hundred thousand years, the time it took for CO2 to go from minimum to maximum ( a difference of roughly 85 ppm) was no less than 7000 years. No less than 7000 years. That’s a glacial scale. Changes in global climate on that sort of time scale allow living systems to adapt to the slowly changing conditions.
In contrast, humans have dumped enough CO2 into the atmosphere and the oceans such that the CO2 has increased by 85 ppm in 50 years. That would be the amount of increase from the time when CO2 and temperatures are near their minimums. 50 years for AGW, so far, versus 7000 years!
BO talks about warm waters evaporating and moving to the land. Obviously that happens, contrary to his assertions that scientists don’t believe him. We know the water came from the oceans because we have physical evidence that during the ice ages, water levels are lower. He’s describing, however, a process that proceeds at a glacial pace. You know, really, really slow on the human time scale. Moreover, his “analysis” does not allow for the fact that humans are using up groundwater stored over millions of years at a pace that leads to their exhaustion in centuries… or less. The amount of sea level rise due to that factor alone is nearly equal to the rise due to the melting of ice.
cont’d
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member almost 7 years ago
These changes to the environment from human civilization are too fast for living systems to adapt, as we see all around the world. Living systems, you know, those things which are supposed to benefit from an increase in CO2, but which somehow don’t, because, gosh willikers, increasing temperatures which will follow increasing CO2, tend to affect plants and animals in adverse ways. Adaption occurs in some cases, but there are limits to the speed of adaption and to the speed with which different species colonize more favorable land (or sea). This, the deniers uniformly fail to understand.
All of BO’s snide, yet in the end really foolish, comments are meant to obscure the issue. The goal of CO2 reduction is not to create an ice age. All his questions are trying to shift attention from what can be done on the human time scale, not on the glacial time scale.
Reducing Greenhouse gas release into the atmosphere slows down the rate of increase of temperature rise. That will eventually slow down sea level rise. Glacier melt? Maybe. I don’t address his other stupid stuff because it is not relevant.
As another example of BOs insufferable arrogance, it is in fact, well understood that warming will cause precipitation increases on land. And is already doing so. But here’s the fly in the BO ointment. Precipitation increases are found (using models and actual measurement) to be gaining more in intense precipitation than otherwise. In other words, the effect is not just more rain, but more intense rain. Remember all that recent flooding in so many places? That was good for the humans affected, wasn’t it? Guess what? More to come.
The above paragraph was written exactly one year ago. More to come, indeed!
cont’d
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member almost 7 years ago
Letting the warming continue unabated will only continue to result in things which adversely affect civilization as we have it now. BO paints a rosy picture of the Sahara greening, but that happened because of a solar insolation change. Solar insolation, which BO refuses to acknowledge as the driving factor in ice ages. All of that took place over long time scales..http://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/how-earths-orbital-shift-shaped-the-sahara/. BO poses his remarks to make you think that scientists believe that reducing carbon emissions will reverse the effects of AGW. In fact, no scientist (AL Gore is not a scientist) thinks that. The increase in CO2 and its effects on climate are going to linger, even if we could shut off all fossil fuel burning this instant. The effects would linger for far more than a century. And the extra growth of plants at higher CO2 levels, isn’t going to cut it. Because what else do plants need? Water, which will be slow in coming..An analogy to AGW and the BO “solution” is this. You are in a boat along the coast, which the faster it goes, the more water it takes on through a hole in the bow. If you keep going fast, you cannot bail out the water fast enough and you sink faster. If you slow down, you can bail until you can get the boat to shore. It’s hard work to do that. Some people on the boat can swim, some cannot..The BO response is to say, well, keep speeding, we’ll get closer to land! And if we sink before we get to land? Tough nuts for the non-swimmers. But, in a few thousand years, sea level will decrease and the boat will be on dry land. Well, he’s right of course. But his solution is of little use to those in the boat.
In contrast, AGW scientists suggest slowing down (not stopping as the deniers love to claim) enough so that bailing can keep up with incoming flow, allowing us to get the boat to shore with all on board and then fix the boat.
Brass Orchid, not even wrong, not even remotely relevant.
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member almost 7 years ago
An even older post about BO
The problem with BO has always been that he doesn’t know how to explain things in a logical and coherent manner. How many people have responded to his comments with “WTF are you talking about?” Quite a few over the time I have read his posts. And his response to such people has always been to reply with condescension that they simply cannot understand some point of physics (and it’s usually the same point, according to him).
But one-liners aren’t appropriate for a complicated topic, whether it is his convert heat to potential energy (and he rarely expressed it that clearly) or “It’s the CO2, dummy!” Neither is sufficient or acceptable. In the beginning he was even more obscure, with a claim that the warm water was going to lead to an ice age. I mentioned some time ago that he wasn’t the only person to suggest that about the Arctic.
I pointed out early on that the ice ages are dependent on a change in insolation, and he kept up the argument that the accumulation of snow would overcome the temperature problem. No calculations, no evidence of a serious model. Sorry, but in science we want to see the work. The word of some guy posting on a comics site doesn’t suffice.
He later went on about how the warm water would be carried to the land and turn desert to greenery. Yes, that can certainly happen. It happened to the Sahara, but it turns out that was related to insolation as well (the tilt of the earth’s rotational axis with respect to it’s orbital plane varies in time.) I provided a reference. (see a prior post)
cont’d
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member almost 7 years ago
I was able to drag out some of his reasoning for all this. When I got the main picture, it was clear he wasn’t spouting nonsense as it initially appears to most people. I defended him on that basis, but pointed out that getting individual processes right did not automatically mean that the global process would work as he said. The climate system is complex. He could not or would not offer up any concrete evidence (in the form of calculations or a model) that things would go as he said.
He has also made some very simple errors in physics that suggest he has not thought things through. So I stopped paying attention.
From the beginning he has maintained a sneering contempt for “the scientific establishment.” Deriding scientists for using dogma. Yet, never ever providing proof. He has made similar derisive, but vague comments about statistics — never being clear on exactly what he was complaining about.
Vague defenses, vague attacks and then the scientists who demand clear answers and evidence of work done are trolls.We’re supposed to bow in wonder to that?
cont’d
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member almost 7 years ago
So by calculations presented to the reader and reasonable, if somewhat conservative calculations, I showed that the rate of semi-permanent transfer of water from ocean to land is slow. And it was clear that the transfer would be most effective, and therefore quickest if water were retained as ice.
Which sounds like a win for BO, but there are two points to consider.
1) What is the time scale for the transfer? Is it fast enough to offset the warming from greenhouse gases?
2) Will the transfer actually result in an increase of ice?
The rate of annual precipitation is increasing, and may increase more. (No one, and that includes BO, knows what that increased rate might be.)
Without the ability to calculate the increased rate as a function of time, Occam’s razor says, use the present rate for an estimate. So I did, and the conclusion is that it would take centuries to be of any use.
I did not address the thermodynamics of BOs concept, because I don’t know the right number for the efficiency of his “heat engine.” But it will not exceed 50%, which means that there is a greater amount of waste heat given to the environment than the amount cooled. Because greenhouse gases mean less heat escaping, this results in an increase in temperature of the atmosphere (as heat from the ocean is transfered to the atmosphere by this “engine.”)
The question of whether the transfer from water to ice will “take” is answered by the fact that we are not in a time where the insolation is going to decrease anytime soon. (You can ignore silly reports about the new maunder minimum, it will in fact have very little impact. The Little Ice Age was caused by the products of repeated large volcanic eruptions.) Without a decrease in insolation, there is no way that ice expands in an environment where the temperature keeps rising.
cont’d
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member almost 7 years ago
The point of all of the above is that while BOs concept works for the slow behavior of the glacial cycle, there is no suggestion (other than from him — and none from calculation) that his concept will overcome the increase heat retention from burning fossil fuels on a time scale that matters to present human societies.
From April, 2016
martens almost 7 years ago
@brass orchid
On the other hand, you have made predictions about what you think global warming is doing. In true scientific method, one should show that the predictions of one’s theory are in fact seen in the data testing those predictions. Where are your data showing the changes in water distribution that you postulated should occur with warming? Until you can show me that data, I have to assume that your theory is defective. (And you have the gall to criticize those whose theory and models predict conditions much nearer to what we are actually observing with real data.)
Baslim the Beggar Premium Member almost 7 years ago
Speaking of rubbish: As usual, no data or calculations to back up any claims, so rubbish indeed from BO.
Let’s consider the little fact that the atmospheric CO2 percentage has changed from 315 ppm in 1959 to 405 ppm today. (yes, today). So in 58 years, the value has gone up by 90 ppm. Or a 28% increase.
With a linear slope, that would be 1.5 ppm per year. Of course, it is not linear at all but more exponential, and tracks the use of fossil fuels rather well.
Now consider the measured rate of precipitation change:
Since 1901, global precipitation has increased at an average rate of 0.08 inches per decade
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-us-and-global-precipitation
I’m going to use 40 inches for the global average annual rainfall:
https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2008/VernonWu.shtml
so in 58 years, the rainfall increase is 0.464 inches, or 1.16%
Not a large effect, that thermal lifting.
Now BO wants us to believe that that water is going to absorb the CO2. Well the oceans certainly are getting more acidic because of the increase in CO2. Too bad that’s not good for certain needed life forms, eh? Because the changes are happening on human time scales, not glacial time scales.
And just what happens to dissolved CO2 when the water evaporates? Well, some of it goes back into the atmosphere. BO seems to think every bit of it remains in the water.
Rubbish