Climate Change - The Scientific Debate
Discussion
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said:
Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings such as modulations of the solar cycles, volcanic eruptions, and persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change said:
"Climate change" means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.
Figures being bandied about, if the Icelandic ice shelf melts it will raise sea levels
by 6 to 7 metres
Seeing as the earths water surface area is a total of 510,082,000 sq. km
see below.
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/etopo1_ocean_v...
They recon that the Icelandic ice is 2,800,000 cubic km. Is this enough to raise the
levels by 6 - 7 metres or are building a big pile of BS for us to believe
If I remember correctly, ice is less dense than water - that is why it floats.
by 6 to 7 metres
Seeing as the earths water surface area is a total of 510,082,000 sq. km
see below.
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/etopo1_ocean_v...
They recon that the Icelandic ice is 2,800,000 cubic km. Is this enough to raise the
levels by 6 - 7 metres or are building a big pile of BS for us to believe
If I remember correctly, ice is less dense than water - that is why it floats.
109er said:
Figures being bandied about, if the Icelandic ice shelf melts it will raise sea levels
by 6 to 7 metres
Seeing as the earths water surface area is a total of 510,082,000 sq. km
see below.
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/etopo1_ocean_v...
They recon that the Icelandic ice is 2,800,000 cubic km. Is this enough to raise the
levels by 6 - 7 metres or are building a big pile of BS for us to believe
If I remember correctly, ice is less dense than water - that is why it floats.
6 or 7 meters are above the highest IPCC projections, if I remember correctly. If it's being reported it's probably a value for a localised rise rather than global average.by 6 to 7 metres
Seeing as the earths water surface area is a total of 510,082,000 sq. km
see below.
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/etopo1_ocean_v...
They recon that the Icelandic ice is 2,800,000 cubic km. Is this enough to raise the
levels by 6 - 7 metres or are building a big pile of BS for us to believe
If I remember correctly, ice is less dense than water - that is why it floats.
It's something like 0.7m by 2100 and several meters by 2500 but the further out you get the bigger the error bars get. You can't just take the ice volume either, it's not that simple. Thermal expansion plays a big role and you need to know volumes which are floating as opposed to sitting on land etc.
The most glaring quick point is their continued stressing of "hottest decade ever" - now extended to the last 3 decades being the hottest 3 ever. That's completely meaningless in terms of whether or not it's still warming - you'd expect the decades at, and possibly slightly beyond, the end of a warming period to be hotter than earlier ones.
If you turn a gas ring on under a saucepan of water, it will heat up. Every 5 minutes will be the "hottest ever" in the pot. If you now turn the ring down to maintain a constant heat, then the next 5 minutes will STILL be the hottest ever, and the 5 minutes after that will be tied for hottest, as will the 5 after that. It's only if you turn the ring down so the pot cools that you'll start to see "not hottest" again. Yet this is still the best talking point they seem to be able to come up with.
The reduction-in-ice scares are also debateable. NH sea ice has undoubtedly declined, although possibly not as much as it did in the early / mid 20th century. We didn't have satelites to watch it then but we did have things like submarines surfacing in clear water at the pole around WWII.
But, against that, SH ice is at record levels and growing so that the global level is staying remarkably constant. From the albedo point of view, SH ice also has far more effect than NH because (a) it extends further away from the pole, so the insolation hitting it is higher and (b) in SH winter we're closer to the sun, so the insolation hitting it is higher. That means that every extra square kilometer of ice in the south reflects far more heat than every "missing" square kilometer in the north.
Then there's the "evidence" for warming, in which they include the increased CO2 levels. That's entirely circular logic - "we know our CO2 emissions are still warming the planet because our CO2 emissions are greater than ever" - even though the planet seems to be conspicuously NOT warming for almost 2 decades now despite those increasing emissions.
The sea level change that they've reported is 19 cm between 1901 and 2010. That's 2/3 of a normal ruler over 110 years, or about 7 inches per century. Scary stuff!!! Go to the beach and watch the water - you get ripples bigger than that, and tides that change by at least 10 to 20 times that much every 6 hours in most places. It's also slowed down over the past 10 years or so.
And so on......
If you turn a gas ring on under a saucepan of water, it will heat up. Every 5 minutes will be the "hottest ever" in the pot. If you now turn the ring down to maintain a constant heat, then the next 5 minutes will STILL be the hottest ever, and the 5 minutes after that will be tied for hottest, as will the 5 after that. It's only if you turn the ring down so the pot cools that you'll start to see "not hottest" again. Yet this is still the best talking point they seem to be able to come up with.
The reduction-in-ice scares are also debateable. NH sea ice has undoubtedly declined, although possibly not as much as it did in the early / mid 20th century. We didn't have satelites to watch it then but we did have things like submarines surfacing in clear water at the pole around WWII.
But, against that, SH ice is at record levels and growing so that the global level is staying remarkably constant. From the albedo point of view, SH ice also has far more effect than NH because (a) it extends further away from the pole, so the insolation hitting it is higher and (b) in SH winter we're closer to the sun, so the insolation hitting it is higher. That means that every extra square kilometer of ice in the south reflects far more heat than every "missing" square kilometer in the north.
Then there's the "evidence" for warming, in which they include the increased CO2 levels. That's entirely circular logic - "we know our CO2 emissions are still warming the planet because our CO2 emissions are greater than ever" - even though the planet seems to be conspicuously NOT warming for almost 2 decades now despite those increasing emissions.
The sea level change that they've reported is 19 cm between 1901 and 2010. That's 2/3 of a normal ruler over 110 years, or about 7 inches per century. Scary stuff!!! Go to the beach and watch the water - you get ripples bigger than that, and tides that change by at least 10 to 20 times that much every 6 hours in most places. It's also slowed down over the past 10 years or so.
And so on......
It's a tragedy that all those climate scientists have managed to keep their jobs, let alone be believed by gullible governments, when there are so many expert laymen whose knowledge and common sense are clearly superior to their so-called expertise in this area. All the money spent on their training and salaries, on weather balloons, ice-core boring, super-computers etc etc; it's shameful.
driverrob said:
It's a tragedy that all those climate scientists have managed to keep their jobs, let alone be believed by gullible governments, when there are so many expert laymen whose knowledge and common sense are clearly superior to their so-called expertise in this area. All the money spent on their training and salaries, on weather balloons, ice-core boring, super-computers etc etc; it's shameful.
Assuming that's intended as sarcastically as it comes across, the answers are far more appropriate to a politics thread rather than a "science" one.On a science basis, I'd say it's more of a tragedy that:
despite all their training, salaries, weather baloons, ice core boring, super-computers etc etc they still find themselves having to change their story every year or two as the climate itself keeps refusing to do what they say it should.
If my boss* had spent that much on my training, super computers, etc and I still kept getting it wrong then I'd be looking for a new area of employment long before now! And I'm self employed so sacking myself for incompetence would really hurt!!!
- Then again, if my boss had also invested his own private money heavily in all the green technologies that my continued inaccurate forecasts supported, and attracted subsidies for, then he might just let me carry on for a while.
Variomatic said:
Ahh, yes - the acidity of all that alkaline seawater, that's nicely buffered by carbonates anyway 
Your knowledge and revelations may be wasted on us mere PHers. You really should add your contribution to articles such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification, which is based on a paltry 104 scientific papers.driverrob said:
Your knowledge and revelations may be wasted on us mere PHers. You really should add your contribution to articles such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification, which is based on a paltry 104 scientific papers.
Chemistry wasn't one of your better subjects at school, was it? Did you have any?
grumbledoak said:
Chemistry wasn't one of your better subjects at school, was it?
Did you have any?
Are you saying there's something wrong with the chemistry used in the article above?Did you have any?
My degree is in Physics, which is why I do not claim to have superior knowledge to the scientists contributing to the various committees whose work has recently been published.
driverrob said:
Your knowledge and revelations may be wasted on us mere PHers. You really should add your contribution to articles such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification, which is based on a paltry 104 scientific papers.
As rovermorris says, it would be usual to describe a move towards pH7 as being "neutralising" of either an acid or an alkali. Since seawater is alkaline (pH typically around 8), dissolving CO2 will, at most, tend to neutralise it. Only, because of the presence of huge amounts of carbonate, it will actually change the pH very little because the carbonate buffers it.There's also the small fact of the instability of carbonic acid in the presence of water - it decomposes almost immediately. Pure, anhydrous, carbonic acid has a half-life of around 180000 years, during which it decomposes into CO2 and water. But the presence of water reduces that to about 10 seconds.
In other words, if you dump a million tons of pure carbonic acid into the oceans, then 5 minutes later you'll only have a bag of sugar's worth left and the rest will have turned inot CO2 and H2O, neither of which will affect the alkalinity of the sea by any appreciable amount.
In fact, carbonic acid is so unstable in the presence of ANY water (ie: anywhere in the natural environment) that its existance was only fully accepted within the last decade or two - just in time to use for climate scares!
Since you have a degree in physics, you should be perfectly intelligent enough to find and understand the literature available on that
I suspect that those marine organisms that rely on a particular pH or partial pressure of CO2 to form their shell/skeletal structures really couldn’t give a toss whether one calls what is happening acidification or neutralisation. For them, a lowering of pH, even by a quite small margin, can have dire consequences. When you consider that many of these organisms are at the lower end of the food chain, ecosystem consequences may be quite significant.
CR6ZZ said:
I suspect that those marine organisms that rely on a particular pH or partial pressure of CO2 to form their shell/skeletal structures really couldn’t give a toss whether one calls what is happening acidification or neutralisation. For them, a lowering of pH, even by a quite small margin, can have dire consequences. When you consider that many of these organisms are at the lower end of the food chain, ecosystem consequences may be quite significant.
Or not. Normal monthly variations in ocean pH range from .024 to 1.23 pH units:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.137...
and the TOTAL decrease between 1751 (!!!) and 1994 is quoted in the Wikipedia propaganda linked above as .09 units.
Seeing as you warmists just love to take trends and extend / project them ad absurdum, that .09 decrease over 243 years is a whopping 0.000031 units per month, and will take 777 months, or 65 years, to equal the smallest observed natural monthly variation. To equal the biggest natural monthly variation, it will take 33 centuries!!!
The crabs will cope - unless, of course, you're a warmist who also doesn't believe in evolution?
Edited by Variomatic on Tuesday 1st April 22:21
The extreme of that natural pH variation is measured next to a CO2 vent.
I'm also a physicist and I'd rate my chemistry as pretty poor. It is pretty clear to me though that the chemistry is well understood and that if you increase CO2, you'd expect lower ocean pH. It also seems pretty reasonable to expect that this is going to cause problems for some sea life (and not others).
Good ocean chemistry primer here; http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/o...
I'm also a physicist and I'd rate my chemistry as pretty poor. It is pretty clear to me though that the chemistry is well understood and that if you increase CO2, you'd expect lower ocean pH. It also seems pretty reasonable to expect that this is going to cause problems for some sea life (and not others).
Good ocean chemistry primer here; http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/o...
hairykrishna said:
The extreme of that natural pH variation is measured next to a CO2 vent.
Yes, and the minimum is around the Antarctic. The rest of the world's oceans are, by definition, somewhere in between those variations.So, every month all life in the ocean, wherever it is, is subjected to variations equivalent to between 65 and 3300 years worth of the current pH trend. It seems to cope ok.
As a physicist you should be more concerned than most by the fact that all projections of effects are placed so far in the future that they're effectively unverifiable and, much as with Nostradamus or the End of The World (as annonced on sandwich boards), every time one of the projected dates approaches or passes, it gets put back by a couple of decades to keep it alive.
Edited by Variomatic on Tuesday 1st April 23:34
Variomatic said:
Or not.
Normal monthly variations in ocean pH range from .024 to 1.23 pH units:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.137...
and the TOTAL decrease between 1751 (!!!) and 1994 is quoted in the Wikipedia propaganda linked above as .09 units.
Seeing as you warmists just love to take trends and extend / project them ad absurdum, that .09 decrease over 243 years is a whopping 0.000031 units per month, and will take 777 months, or 65 years, to equal the smallest observed natural monthly variation. To equal the biggest natural monthly variation, it will take 33 centuries!!!
The crabs will cope - unless, of course, you're a warmist who also doesn't believe in evolution?
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but there are plenty who believe you are quite wrong. Some light reading for you, and, if you wish to explore more thoroughly, there is a comprehensive list of references at the end... Normal monthly variations in ocean pH range from .024 to 1.23 pH units:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.137...
and the TOTAL decrease between 1751 (!!!) and 1994 is quoted in the Wikipedia propaganda linked above as .09 units.
Seeing as you warmists just love to take trends and extend / project them ad absurdum, that .09 decrease over 243 years is a whopping 0.000031 units per month, and will take 777 months, or 65 years, to equal the smallest observed natural monthly variation. To equal the biggest natural monthly variation, it will take 33 centuries!!!
The crabs will cope - unless, of course, you're a warmist who also doesn't believe in evolution?
Edited by Variomatic on Tuesday 1st April 22:21
http://www.igbp.net/download/18.30566fc6142425d6c9...
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