Global Warming Glitch Explained?

Discussion in 'Techforge' started by Lanzman, Aug 21, 2014.

  1. Lanzman

    Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

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    Doubters have been pointing to the relatively flat global temperatures over the last ten years as "proof" that global warming, or climate change, is not the big deal that some are making it out to be.

    Turns out the north Atlantic Ocean may have been acting as a giant heat sink and the warming trend may resume in a couple years. Story.
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  2. gul

    gul Revolting Beer Drinker Administrator Formerly Important

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    Of course, the doubters will claim this is proof that the Earth has built in circuit breakers, so, no need to worry!
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  3. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    The "ocean ate my heating" is old news. It's the latest ad hoc rationalization for the 17 years or so of non-increasing surface temperatures.

    The heat capacity of water is enormous. So if the "missing" heat is going into the oceans, it's changing it by a few hundredths of a degree. If you think the argument about whether the climate is warmer today than it was at some point in the past is contentious, wait until we argue over whether the ocean's temperature has changed by an almost unmeasurable amount.

    In any event, EVEN IF this supports the claim that the earth is still warming, it only goes to PROVE that the science WASN'T settled. No one predicted an almost two decade (and still counting!) lull in surface temperatures in the face of greatly accelerated production of CO2, and no one predicted that the heat would go into making the oceans infinitesimally warmer. This is a significant modification to the theory and shows that there are potentially very significant mechanisms involved in climate that are not well understood, despite claims of scientific certainty.

    The claim was that surface temperatures would get warmer, oceans would rise, growing patterns would be disrupted, etc. When the warming failed to track the theory, it became about climate change: more extreme weather events (that also have failed to materialize). Now it's going to be claims of impending disaster from negligible changes in average ocean temperature. The goalposts are on wheels...
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  4. gul

    gul Revolting Beer Drinker Administrator Formerly Important

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    :bailey:

    Way to go Paladin!
  5. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    I didn't say any such thing.

    The statements "You haven't adequately demonstrated that there is anything I need to worry about" and "There is nothing to worry about" are not identical.
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  6. mburtonk

    mburtonk mburtonkulous

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    How about we make a concerted effort not to screw up the world, and go from there?
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  7. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    Define "screw up the world."

    Spending trillions of dollars needlessly might screw up the world much more than a small increase in average temperatures.
  8. mburtonk

    mburtonk mburtonkulous

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    I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

    In all honesty, the average person wastes a buttload of energy on a daily basis. Scaling that back would almost certainly reduce the amount of pollution.
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  9. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    Yes, but the question always has to be asked: does the benefit of scaling it back outweigh the cost?
  10. mburtonk

    mburtonk mburtonkulous

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    What's the cost?
  11. gul

    gul Revolting Beer Drinker Administrator Formerly Important

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    Actually, I was the one who said "no need to worry." You just confirmed the circuit breaker theory on which my Alfred E. Neuman stance rests.
  12. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    I made no claim about any "circuit breaker."

    I state simply that predictions based on anthropogenic global warming have failed repeatedly and that, as soon as it begins to become apparent the emperor has no clothes, the argument shifts to something else: surface warming -> extreme weather events -> ocean heating.
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  13. Sean the Puritan

    Sean the Puritan Endut! Hoch Hech!

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    There are a LOT of ways that every single person can reduce their energy usage and trash generation, etc. that won't destroy the economy.
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  14. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    I agree. And I support your right to choose to do them.
  15. Sean the Puritan

    Sean the Puritan Endut! Hoch Hech!

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    Yep, my point being that it's not a false dichotomy between doing nothing on the one hand and destroying the economy with extreme measures on the other.
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  16. Steal Your Face

    Steal Your Face Anti-Federalist

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  17. oldfella1962

    oldfella1962 the only real finish line

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  18. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

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    The "little ice-age" referred to in those articles took place over 300 years between 1550 and 1850. There were 3 extra-cold periods around 1650, 1770, and 1850. The sunspot activity that Zharkova predicts is during a single 11 year cycle from 2030-2040 and last occurred during what was called the "Maunder minimum" that lasted from 1645 to 1715: 70 years.

    I'm not one to leap to conclusions, but:
    If we're already in a period of reduced solar output (that would predate a Maunder-minimum type event if I understand those articles' import), then man's impact on the climate is even greater than thought as the climate is still warming. If an 11 year period of reduced sunspot activity reduces solar energy, we may enjoy a break from warming in the 2030s. When the sun returns to normal output after 2040, our goose is cooked. ​

    But I'm not one to leap to conclusions.
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  19. gturner

    gturner Banned

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    There's a catch. Each solar cycle (by sunspot numbers and length) determines the climate during the following cycle. Cycle 22, from '89 to '96, peaked at 158 spots and only had 309 spotless days. Cycle 23, from '96 to '08, peaked at 120 spots and had 821 spotless days. Cycle 24, since '08, has already peaked at 101 spots. That means that in 11 years things will get cold, and then the 2030's solar activity will make the 2040's really cold.

    [​IMG]
  20. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

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    It will be interesting to watch this over the next 30 years.

    So I'm guessing you're of the "protect the world with extra CO2 emissions" school? It's ok if you are.
  21. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    The only way to really know if projections of a complex system are accurate is...wait and see what happens.

    But this brings up an interesting point.

    Let's suppose that we humans somehow (miraculously) got off the carbon teat 20 years ago. And let's suppose the climate actually cooled. Wouldn't we then be in a more dangerous position if the projections about the sun come to pass?

    Or is strong, fast climate change brought about by the sun acceptable because "natural?"

    And let's suppose we really are courting disaster with our release of CO2. Might a decade or two of cooler temperatures give us a little more room to find alternatives before disaster arrives?
  22. Steal Your Face

    Steal Your Face Anti-Federalist

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    So you are a global cooling denier then?
  23. oldfella1962

    oldfella1962 the only real finish line

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    We won't have time or money for alternate fuel research. The epic global turmoil from failing crops, flooding, ports freezing, food shortages, etc. will keep us plenty busy!
  24. gturner

    gturner Banned

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    From Scientific American (and I use that term loosely).

    Global Warming Means Longer Flights, More Pollution

    Airline flights could get longer and emit more CO2 in a warming world

    The Environmental Protection Agency announced in June that it plans to declare commercial airplane emissions a danger to public health because of the role they play in climate change — the first step in regulating airplanes’ emissions and engine fuel efficiency.

    Climate change is causing wind patterns to change over the Pacific Ocean, leading to longer commercial airline flight times and causing airplanes to burn more fuel and emit more greenhouse gases.

    Those are the conclusions of a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, showing that the shifting jet stream over the Pacific Ocean is increasing flight times between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland, leading to more of the pollution that fuels climate change.

    What the article should actually say is "Global Warming Alarmism Makes People Stoopid."

    But then I had to walk to school, uphill both ways.
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  25. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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    Yeah, so? I had to do that in the snow, no shoes, and only had barbed wire for traction :diacanu:
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  26. gul

    gul Revolting Beer Drinker Administrator Formerly Important

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    Here is a good example of why science skeptics fail. It is very possible to walk up hill both ways. Indeed, all three of my children faced that situation through the third grade. A skeptic sees a slope and assumes that means the return path is downhill. But he fails to study the entire system, and therefore misses the pertinent fact that the school is at the bottom of the other side of the hill. Up hill to get there, up hill to get back.
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  27. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

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    I'm not one to leap to conclusions, but the evidence points to global warming in spite of a drop in solar output. What does that tell you?
  28. gturner

    gturner Banned

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    And you're a good example of how global warming alarm makes people stupid.

    All airline flights will be into a headwind. All of them. In most cases that means all the flights will be one way only, and planes will just pile up at the destination because returning would mean flying in a tailwind, and airliners just don't fly with tailwinds.
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  29. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

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    Nice return. But the jetstream is used one way to cut travel time. If this is farther north, then that advantage is gone.

    From your link:
    “What we found was that, for the particular airline routes that we focused on, the flight-level wind changes were such that westbound flights should take longer in the future while eastbound flights will be shorter,” study lead author Kristopher Karnauskas, an associate scientist of geology and geophysics at Woods Hole, said.

    Shorter flights going eastbound burn less fuel, but the team found that the fuel savings going east didn’t cancel out the additional fuel burned on flights heading west toward Hawaii.
    I admit they'd have to average all flights and not just selected routes, but I can see how if the jet stream can't be used as advantageously for the majority of traffic, a net loss might result. I don't think the SA article did a good job relating the Woods Hole study. The original article goes much farther.

    Through a database maintained by the Department of Transportation they were able to download departure and arrival data by each airline and the routes traveled—for every single flight that has occurred over the past 20 years. Because the upper level winds blow from west to east, the eastbound leg of a roundtrip flight is generally faster than the westbound leg. After quality controlling the data, Karnauskas plotted the differences in flight times for eastbound and westbound flights and noticed that regardless of the airline carrier, the difference for all the carriers looked the same, over the past 20 years.

    “Whatever was causing these flights to change their duration, was the exact same thing, and it wasn't part of the airline’s decision-making process,” Karnauskas says. The hypothesis was born that climate variability (not just day-to-day weather) determines flight times.​

    It's an interesting bellwether as airlines are very conscious of eking every rPM per G they can. Something is causing a higher disparity between east/west flight times. I guess it could be attributed to global cooling.
  30. gturner

    gturner Banned

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    Well, they should've looked at wind speed data, because global warming has meant slower winds. Oddly enough, that fits a pattern where the hottest planets have the slowest winds and the coldest planets have the fastest winds. Some climatologists have argued that since global warming will have a much greater affect in the polar and temperate regions than the tropics, the effect is really just to extend the warm regions away from the equator, spreading out and thus weakening the temperature imbalances that drive winds.

    But then they'd have to come up with a different way that we're all doomed, perhaps by predicting a drop in wind power that will plunge civilization into darkness.