Global cooling

[Pat McCotter]

what is the goal of the discussion?

How about:

I pledge I will try not to create release more carbon than I consume.

how exactly does one consume CO2?

I meant to say "more carbon than I remove from the commons." Sorry, Frank.

[KBCraig]

My bad, my apologies.

'Sokay. I doubled your karma for being a trucker. 

[Ear]

I've pretty much said all that I have to say on this subject, and I'm going to turn my back on it now.  In closing, I have just one more thing to offer:



Science.  It works, bitches.

[Braddogg]

And by the way, I'm not a scientist, I'm a trucker.

[Braddogg]

Something being in a peer-review journal is not proof that it is true.  Of course.  The peer review process tries to ensure that certain procedures -- namely, the scientific method -- is followed.  It's a reasonable idea, because without some basis for determining truth -- namely, that it is really true -- then science is nothing but religion.  For Ben Franklin, it's true that a peer-reviewed journal didn't "discover" that lightning was an electrical phenomenon, and it would be true even if it was never published in a journal.  However, such a discovery would be accepted by the peer review process (eventually), because it is repeatable, it could be disproven if false, and it was logically consistant.  The peer review process isn't a cabal, it's the scientific method.  Some things will slip through the crack.  But if journals only published orthodoxy, no one would read them.  Ideas that challenge the orthodoxy are valued by journals -- so long as they pass review based on adherence to the scientific method.

[Kat Kanning]

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html

A cold spell soon to replace global warming
13:54   |   03/ 01/ 2008
   




MOSCOW. (Oleg Sorokhtin for RIA Novosti) – Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.

Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.

The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason—solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.

Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.

This is my point, which environmentalists hotly dispute as they cling to the hothouse theory. As we know, hothouse gases, in particular, nitrogen peroxide, warm up the atmosphere by keeping heat close to the ground. Advanced in the late 19th century by Svante A. Arrhenius, a Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner, this theory is taken for granted to this day and has not undergone any serious check.

It determines decisions and instruments of major international organizations—in particular, the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Signed by 150 countries, it exemplifies the impact of scientific delusion on big politics and economics. The authors and enthusiasts of the Kyoto Protocol based their assumptions on an erroneous idea. As a result, developed countries waste huge amounts of money to fight industrial pollution of the atmosphere. What if it is a Don Quixote's duel with the windmill?

Hothouse gases may not be to blame for global warming. At any rate, there is no scientific evidence to their guilt. The classic hothouse effect scenario is too simple to be true. As things really are, much more sophisticated processes are on in the atmosphere, especially in its dense layer. For instance, heat is not so much radiated in space as carried by air currents—an entirely different mechanism, which cannot cause global warming.

The temperature of the troposphere, the lowest and densest portion of the atmosphere, does not depend on the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions—a point proved theoretically and empirically. True, probes of Antarctic ice shield, taken with bore specimens in the vicinity of the Russian research station Vostok, show that there are close links between atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and temperature changes. Here, however, we cannot be quite sure which is the cause and which the effect.

Temperature fluctuations always run somewhat ahead of carbon dioxide concentration changes. This means that warming is primary. The ocean is the greatest carbon dioxide depository, with concentrations 60-90 times larger than in the atmosphere. When the ocean's surface warms up, it produces the "champagne effect." Compare a foamy spurt out of a warm bottle with wine pouring smoothly when served properly cold.

Likewise, warm ocean water exudes greater amounts of carbonic acid, which evaporates to add to industrial pollution—a factor we cannot deny. However, man-caused pollution is negligible here. If industrial pollution with carbon dioxide keeps at its present-day 5-7 billion metric tons a year, it will not change global temperatures up to the year 2100. The change will be too small for humans to feel even if the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions doubles.

Carbon dioxide cannot be bad for the climate. On the contrary, it is food for plants, and so is beneficial to life on Earth. Bearing out this point was the Green Revolution—the phenomenal global increase in farm yields in the mid-20th century. Numerous experiments also prove a direct proportion between harvest and carbon dioxide concentration in the air.

Carbon dioxide has quite a different pernicious influence—not on the climate but on synoptic activity. It absorbs infrared radiation. When tropospheric air is warm enough for complete absorption, radiation energy passes into gas fluctuations. Gas expands and dissolves to send warm air up to the stratosphere, where it clashes with cold currents coming down. With no noticeable temperature changes, synoptic activity skyrockets to whip up cyclones and anticyclones. Hence we get hurricanes, storms, tornados and other natural disasters, whose intensity largely depends on carbon dioxide concentration. In this sense, reducing its concentration in the air will have a positive effect.

Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man's influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.
 

Earth is unlikely to ever face a temperature disaster. Of all the planets in the solar system, only Earth has an atmosphere beneficial to life. There are many factors that account for development of life on Earth: Sun is a calm star, Earth is located an optimum distance from it, it has the Moon as a massive satellite, and many others. Earth owes its friendly climate also to dynamic feedback between biotic and atmospheric evolution.

The principal among those diverse links is Earth's reflective power, which regulates its temperature. A warm period, as the present, increases oceanic evaporation to produce a great amount of clouds, which filter solar radiation and so bring heat down. Things take the contrary turn in a cold period.

What can't be cured must be endured. It is wise to accept the natural course of things. We have no reason to panic about allegations that ice in the Arctic Ocean is thawing rapidly and will soon vanish altogether. As it really is, scientists say the Arctic and Antarctic ice shields are growing. Physical and mathematical calculations predict a new Ice Age. It will come in 100,000 years, at the earliest, and will be much worse than the previous. Europe will be ice-bound, with glaciers reaching south of Moscow.

Meanwhile, Europeans can rest assured. The Gulf Stream will change its course only if some evil magic robs it of power to reach the north—but Mother Nature is unlikely to do that.

Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

[Lloyd Danforth]

Thats what I've always thought..............well...............for the last couple of years, anyway

[Riddler]

......how's that snowmobile idea lookin' to ya now, Kat?

[Sheep Fuzzy Wool]

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080104/BREAKINGNEWS/80104002/1086

Reptilians freezing over!

[Riddler]

leapin' lizards!

[Kat Kanning]

......how's that snowmobile idea lookin' to ya now, Kat?

  I think I'd be more of a snowshoe kind of person, though I haven't tried either.

[erisian]

If industrial pollution with carbon dioxide keeps at its present-day 5-7 billion metric tons a year, it will not change global temperatures up to the year 2100.

Not by itself, maybe, but...
Unfortunately, or with intent, he is flatly ignoring the rest of human-produced CO₂. The amount produced form burning fossil fuels alone is at least 30 billion metric tons per year, and the total amount of human-produced CO₂ is on the order of 100 billion metric tons per year, adding the equivalent of a layer of CO₂ about 3 inches thick over the entire planet every year. That's a lot more than a "drop in the ocean". Then, by following his own estimate, this will affect temperatures a lot sooner than 2100.

Saying that the planet is too big for us to have any effect on it is the same old tired excuse that has been used by all kinds of polluters for decades. Then you find DDT affecting eagle eggs, and mercury killing loons thousands of miles away from the pollution sources. Earth is a closed system, chemically.
Mess with the atmospheric chemistry at your peril. You won't get a second chance.

[Riddler]

If industrial pollution with carbon dioxide keeps at its present-day 5-7 billion metric tons a year, it will not change global temperatures up to the year 2100.

Not by itself, maybe, but...
Unfortunately, or with intent, he is flatly ignoring the rest of human-produced CO₂. The amount produced form burning fossil fuels alone is at least 30 billion metric tons per year, and the total amount of human-produced CO₂ is on the order of 100 billion metric tons per year, adding the equivalent of a layer of CO₂ about 3 inches thick over the entire planet every year. That's a lot more than a "drop in the ocean". Then, by following his own estimate, this will affect temperatures a lot sooner than 2100.

Saying that the planet is too big for us to have any effect on it is the same old tired excuse that has been used by all kinds of polluters for decades. Then you find DDT affecting eagle eggs, and mercury killing loons thousands of miles away from the pollution sources. Earth is a closed system, chemically.

Mess with the atmospheric chemistry at your peril. You won't get a second chance.

guess i'm NOT going to sell a snowmobile to this guy, eh?

[erisian]

guess i'm NOT going to sell a snowmobile to this guy, eh?

You never know. If the Gulf Stream shuts down, we'll all be driving snowmobiles.

[John Edward Mercier]

Not unless you find another source of energy...
But the IPCC testimony to Congress by the originator of that hypothesis testified that new data suggests that it will not happen.