Certainly with the GW debate there is a huge value laden subtext - as there should be - and when that is not clearly visible then differing assumptions come into play ( so it is topical ).
Thus one may have a group who agree with the goal, don't crap in the nest, but not the implementation. Generally this derives to the question of who pays, or who has to change from status quo. And if some find discomfort in the implications of changes, then their stance may alter on account of that alone. I think this is what many fear about the GW debate.
If you take those who exempt themselves either from the issue or the impact ( various means ), say a nation state, you'll probably find short or near term economics underneath the decision. Alas neither human lifetimes, or the even briefer political or institutional ones, have the right timescale for this.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Even if Alpha Centauri had planets with perfect conditions for humans, we have no serious hope of reaching it.
Well, not unless we have some major breakthrough in the generation of stable, very large wormholes, or it turns out there are indeed more dimensions than we can normally see and travelling through them is shorter than going the obvious way. ;) In fact, wasn't there some discussion recently about a theoretical spacecraft that would shrink space-time ahead of itself to achieve faster-than-light speeds this way? I don't remember the details (although I wonder if Einstein@Home would be able to detect its effect)
That said, this is the qualm I have with searching for aliens - most of them would be so far away that there's no guarantee even if we find something that they're still around. It'd be nice to have confirmation that we're not alone I guess, but I'm far more interested in the possibility of communicating, and that's just not feasible except on extremely long time scales. (I guess if we all become robots it would work, you never know :) )
More Atmospheric CO2 today than in the past 2.1 Millions Years
Researchers have been able to determine the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the past 2.1 million years in the sharpest detail yet by analyzing the shells of single–celled plankton. Their findings shed new light on CO2's role in the earth's cycles of cooling and warming, confirming many researchers' suspicions that higher carbon dioxide levels coincided with warmer intervals during the study period. But it also rules out a drop in CO2 as the cause for earth's ice ages growing longer and more intense some 850,000 years ago.
Barbel Honisch
with a mass spectrometer used to measure boron isotopes to reconstruct past CO2. Credit: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
The study, published in the June 19 issue of the journal Science shows that peak CO2 levels over the last 2.1 million years averaged only 280 parts per million; but today, CO2 is at 385 parts per million, or 38% higher. This finding means that researchers will need to look back further in time for an analog to modern day climate change.
In the study, Bärbel Hönisch, a geochemist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and her colleagues reconstructed CO2 levels by analyzing the shells of single-celled plankton buried under the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Africa. By dating the shells and measuring their ratio of boron isotopes, they were able to estimate how much CO2 was in the air when the plankton were alive. This method allowed them to see further back than the precision records preserved in cores of polar ice, which go back only 800,000 years.
Around 850,000 years ago, the climate cycles on Earth switched from being dominated by 40,000 year cycles, to the stronger 100,000 year cycles of the more recent times. The time period from 800 – 1,000 kyr ago is called the mid-Pleistocene transition, and since the rhythms of the Earth’s orbit didn’t change, some scientists have attributed that shift to falling CO2 levels. But the study found that CO2 was flat during this transition and unlikely to have triggered the change.
"Previous studies indicated that CO2 did not change much over the past 20 million years, but the resolution wasn't high enough to be definitive," said Hönisch. "This study tells us that CO2 was not the main trigger, though our data continues to suggest that greenhouse gases and global climate are intimately linked."
The timing of the ice ages is believed to be controlled mainly by the earth's orbit and tilt, which determines how much sunlight falls on each hemisphere. Two million years ago, the earth underwent an ice age every 41,000 years. But some time around 850,000 years ago, the cycle grew to 100,000 years, and ice sheets reached greater extents than they had in several million years—a change too great to be explained by orbital variation alone.
A global drawdown in CO2 is just one theory proposed for the transition. A second theory suggests that advancing glaciers in North America stripped away soil in Canada, causing thicker, longer lasting ice to build up on the remaining bedrock. A third theory challenges how the cycles are counted, and questions whether a transition happened at all.
The low carbon dioxide levels outlined by the study through the last 2.1 million years make modern day levels, caused by industrialization, seem even more anomalous, says Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Pennsylvania State University, who was not involved in the research.
"We know from looking at much older climate records that large and rapid increase in C02 in the past, (about 55 million years ago) caused large extinction in bottom-dwelling ocean creatures, and dissolved a lot of shells as the ocean became acidic," he said. "We're heading in that direction now."
The idea to approximate past carbon dioxide levels using boron, an element released by erupting volcanoes and used in household soap, was pioneered over the last decade by the paper's coauthor Gary Hemming, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty and Queens College. The study's other authors are Jerry McManus, also at Lamont; David Archer at the University of Chicago; and Mark Siddall, at the University of Bristol, UK
Australia is in a similiar position, as we can make no meaningful practical difference regardless of sentiment when, say China, consumes more carbon fuels in a day than we could in over a thousand years. Any effort is symbolism at best.
His analogy with Y2K is notable. Indeed that, and other media beat-ups like swine flu ( yes, it did transfer to us from pigs a millennium or three ago ), has likely hardened attitudes toward 'scientific' pronouncements. Particularly if such are made with a strident certainty that doesn't exist in the data, and then when that data is examined the whole agenda and proponents then become suspected.
re Honisch : an interesting study. If I've read it right, the data shows/confirms CO2 rises with temperature, but it doesn't drop with cooling. However alot of bottom dwellers cop it when CO2 rises. Suggests the astronomical factors as dominant, with oceanic soaking/sinking of CO2 to buffer. Makes me want to rush out and find the solubility curves for CO2 in salt water. One wonders what the events were 55 million years ago, as I don't recall that time known as being overly notable. A big fire? Volcanoes?
Alas both sides will probably selectively use this, to try and force polarity of thinking - "You must choose!" So while GW proponents will quote the headline, detractors will say why bother burning less as a drop makes no odds.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Report Debunking UN's Global Warming Alarmism is Backed by 31,478 U.S. Scientists
....Unlike the UN's IPCC, which is chaired by Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian economist
with no formal climatology training, the NIPCC is headed by two esteemed climatologists,
each with a large body of work in the field.
All Alpine glaciers are sinply disappearing. Debunk this if you can.
Tullio
Alas Tullio, this comes under the heading of "I assert something. No-one has contradicted me. Thus I must be right".
This is fine as a debating tactic/assertion/advocacy but it is not a scientific method/explanation, nor is likely to yield one. We are still left with trying to determine an explanation ( ie that explains all extant data ) in preference to others ( which don't ). Otherwise you're left with the old style tit-for-tat - "it is", "it isn't", "it is", "it isn't" .......
Bill952's point ( I think ) is that some proponents have claimed 'majority ruling' of opinion as proof of GW claims - the IPCC particularly. Thus ( assuming such plurality matters ) if the converse occurs, weight of numbers, then that should count too ( by the same logic ). If that is rejected ( the 'credentials' approach ) then one suspects the enrollment of any argument to suit the case. Again, neither is illuminating of facts ( as they are not referred to ).
So with reference to Ms Honisch ( as an example ) her assertion "This study tells us that CO2 was not the main trigger, though our data continues to suggest that greenhouse gases and global climate are intimately linked." is one which ought be challenged with regard to all other known data relevant to the statement. Simply lining that conclusion up on one or other side of the divide proves nothing.
I'm not wanting to be personally critical of anyone, but I feel it is important to clearly distinguish fact ( measurements ) from assertion ( interpretation thereof ).
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) One must be inclusive in possible explanations to include in the set, too. For example originally it was thought strange that polar bears 'needed' to be white, as they had no known predators from which they ought hide from ( and thus have such a coat color being a selective pressure ). The problem here wasn't with the bears, but lack of experience with bears. The Inuit immediately knew the answer - it's the bear's prey which was selecting their color. The darker bears were too obvious, and were less successful in catching prey that ran away with forewarning.
My point being that an assumed dichotomy of explanations ( it EITHER is OR isn't global warming ) may be a false survey of possibilities. Again, testing with respect to data is the key signal here.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
All I know is that glaciers I have climbed in the Sixties are reduced to one fourth of the area they had then. If the cause is not global warming "then give me another word for it" (Joan Baez, Diamonds and rust).
Tullio
All I know is that glaciers I have climbed in the Sixties are reduced to one fourth of the area they had then. If the cause is not global warming "then give me another word for it" (Joan Baez, Diamonds and rust).
Tullio
Same again I'm afraid. :-)
But if you insist - there are plenty indeed convergent explanations.
Err, lower altitude deforestation for one ( increased runoff altering the subterranean water flows, with raised subsurface temperatures ).
Change in rainfall patterns due to local warming ( cities particularly causing the rain to drop at lower altitudes ) and for that matter airborne particulates ( nucleation for droplets )
Increase in water usage ( similiar effect to deforestation ie increased runoff from the downstream end of the glacier )
Dirty snow - the well known regenerative effect of albedo loss. The darker the snow the more heat it absorbs and thus melts.
All these are quite likely anthropogenic in nature ( secondary to human habitation and land use patterns ) for sure. Other varieties of 'our fault'.
Please note I said 'convergent' not 'competing' explanations.
T'is your choice of course as to which you care to attribute ( and degree thereof ).
For myself the polarising of the debate to a degree beyond which is supported by the data is the worry. Given the appearance of the 'moral high ground' being taken by GW exponents ( not yourself personally I'd hasten to add ) then any data which reduces the 'certainty' is a significant risk for such a stance. Personally I've never quite understood the stretching of facts taken in the name of such good causes ( not crapping in our own nest ). Suppression of alternatives, without testing of same within the data, only subtracts from plausibility.
So if, for instance, a given area has glacier loss - but attributed to global factors only. Then that unfortunately has the effect of relieving responsibility for local action on local problems, the effect of which ( and hence correction of ) may be greater. How would we know? By examining the data ......
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Certainly with the GW debate
Certainly with the GW debate there is a huge value laden subtext - as there should be - and when that is not clearly visible then differing assumptions come into play ( so it is topical ).
Thus one may have a group who agree with the goal, don't crap in the nest, but not the implementation. Generally this derives to the question of who pays, or who has to change from status quo. And if some find discomfort in the implications of changes, then their stance may alter on account of that alone. I think this is what many fear about the GW debate.
If you take those who exempt themselves either from the issue or the impact ( various means ), say a nation state, you'll probably find short or near term economics underneath the decision. Alas neither human lifetimes, or the even briefer political or institutional ones, have the right timescale for this.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: Even if Alpha Centauri
Well, not unless we have some major breakthrough in the generation of stable, very large wormholes, or it turns out there are indeed more dimensions than we can normally see and travelling through them is shorter than going the obvious way. ;) In fact, wasn't there some discussion recently about a theoretical spacecraft that would shrink space-time ahead of itself to achieve faster-than-light speeds this way? I don't remember the details (although I wonder if Einstein@Home would be able to detect its effect)
That said, this is the qualm I have with searching for aliens - most of them would be so far away that there's no guarantee even if we find something that they're still around. It'd be nice to have confirmation that we're not alone I guess, but I'm far more interested in the possibility of communicating, and that's just not feasible except on extremely long time scales. (I guess if we all become robots it would work, you never know :) )
Just a point of view from my
Just a point of view from my country (Canada) on Global Warming
Rex's Point of View
There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold
More Atmospheric CO2 today
More Atmospheric CO2 today than in the past 2.1 Millions Years
Researchers have been able to determine the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the past 2.1 million years in the sharpest detail yet by analyzing the shells of single–celled plankton. Their findings shed new light on CO2's role in the earth's cycles of cooling and warming, confirming many researchers' suspicions that higher carbon dioxide levels coincided with warmer intervals during the study period. But it also rules out a drop in CO2 as the cause for earth's ice ages growing longer and more intense some 850,000 years ago.
Barbel Honisch
with a mass spectrometer used to measure boron isotopes to reconstruct past CO2. Credit: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
The study, published in the June 19 issue of the journal Science shows that peak CO2 levels over the last 2.1 million years averaged only 280 parts per million; but today, CO2 is at 385 parts per million, or 38% higher. This finding means that researchers will need to look back further in time for an analog to modern day climate change.
In the study, Bärbel Hönisch, a geochemist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and her colleagues reconstructed CO2 levels by analyzing the shells of single-celled plankton buried under the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Africa. By dating the shells and measuring their ratio of boron isotopes, they were able to estimate how much CO2 was in the air when the plankton were alive. This method allowed them to see further back than the precision records preserved in cores of polar ice, which go back only 800,000 years.
Around 850,000 years ago, the climate cycles on Earth switched from being dominated by 40,000 year cycles, to the stronger 100,000 year cycles of the more recent times. The time period from 800 – 1,000 kyr ago is called the mid-Pleistocene transition, and since the rhythms of the Earth’s orbit didn’t change, some scientists have attributed that shift to falling CO2 levels. But the study found that CO2 was flat during this transition and unlikely to have triggered the change.
"Previous studies indicated that CO2 did not change much over the past 20 million years, but the resolution wasn't high enough to be definitive," said Hönisch. "This study tells us that CO2 was not the main trigger, though our data continues to suggest that greenhouse gases and global climate are intimately linked."
The timing of the ice ages is believed to be controlled mainly by the earth's orbit and tilt, which determines how much sunlight falls on each hemisphere. Two million years ago, the earth underwent an ice age every 41,000 years. But some time around 850,000 years ago, the cycle grew to 100,000 years, and ice sheets reached greater extents than they had in several million years—a change too great to be explained by orbital variation alone.
A global drawdown in CO2 is just one theory proposed for the transition. A second theory suggests that advancing glaciers in North America stripped away soil in Canada, causing thicker, longer lasting ice to build up on the remaining bedrock. A third theory challenges how the cycles are counted, and questions whether a transition happened at all.
The low carbon dioxide levels outlined by the study through the last 2.1 million years make modern day levels, caused by industrialization, seem even more anomalous, says Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Pennsylvania State University, who was not involved in the research.
"We know from looking at much older climate records that large and rapid increase in C02 in the past, (about 55 million years ago) caused large extinction in bottom-dwelling ocean creatures, and dissolved a lot of shells as the ocean became acidic," he said. "We're heading in that direction now."
The idea to approximate past carbon dioxide levels using boron, an element released by erupting volcanoes and used in household soap, was pioneered over the last decade by the paper's coauthor Gary Hemming, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty and Queens College. The study's other authors are Jerry McManus, also at Lamont; David Archer at the University of Chicago; and Mark Siddall, at the University of Bristol, UK
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/06/18/more-atmospheric-co2-today-than-in-the-past-2-1-millions-years/
RE: Just a point of view
There's a thoughtful fellow.
Australia is in a similiar position, as we can make no meaningful practical difference regardless of sentiment when, say China, consumes more carbon fuels in a day than we could in over a thousand years. Any effort is symbolism at best.
His analogy with Y2K is notable. Indeed that, and other media beat-ups like swine flu ( yes, it did transfer to us from pigs a millennium or three ago ), has likely hardened attitudes toward 'scientific' pronouncements. Particularly if such are made with a strident certainty that doesn't exist in the data, and then when that data is examined the whole agenda and proponents then become suspected.
re Honisch : an interesting study. If I've read it right, the data shows/confirms CO2 rises with temperature, but it doesn't drop with cooling. However alot of bottom dwellers cop it when CO2 rises. Suggests the astronomical factors as dominant, with oceanic soaking/sinking of CO2 to buffer. Makes me want to rush out and find the solubility curves for CO2 in salt water. One wonders what the events were 55 million years ago, as I don't recall that time known as being overly notable. A big fire? Volcanoes?
Alas both sides will probably selectively use this, to try and force polarity of thinking - "You must choose!" So while GW proponents will quote the headline, detractors will say why bother burning less as a drop makes no odds.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Report Debunking UN's Global
Report Debunking UN's Global Warming Alarmism is Backed by 31,478 U.S. Scientists
....Unlike the UN's IPCC, which is chaired by Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian economist
with no formal climatology training, the NIPCC is headed by two esteemed climatologists,
each with a large body of work in the field.
Report Debunking UN's Global Warming Alarmism
http://www.dailytech.com/Report+Debunking+UNs+Global+Warming+Alarmism+is+Backed+by+31478+US+Scientists/article15467.htm
I predict that this report will be simply dismissed
by the fanatical global warming believers on here.
Bill
All Alpine glaciers are
All Alpine glaciers are sinply disappearing. Debunk this if you can.
Tullio
RE: All Alpine glaciers are
Alas Tullio, this comes under the heading of "I assert something. No-one has contradicted me. Thus I must be right".
This is fine as a debating tactic/assertion/advocacy but it is not a scientific method/explanation, nor is likely to yield one. We are still left with trying to determine an explanation ( ie that explains all extant data ) in preference to others ( which don't ). Otherwise you're left with the old style tit-for-tat - "it is", "it isn't", "it is", "it isn't" .......
Bill952's point ( I think ) is that some proponents have claimed 'majority ruling' of opinion as proof of GW claims - the IPCC particularly. Thus ( assuming such plurality matters ) if the converse occurs, weight of numbers, then that should count too ( by the same logic ). If that is rejected ( the 'credentials' approach ) then one suspects the enrollment of any argument to suit the case. Again, neither is illuminating of facts ( as they are not referred to ).
So with reference to Ms Honisch ( as an example ) her assertion "This study tells us that CO2 was not the main trigger, though our data continues to suggest that greenhouse gases and global climate are intimately linked." is one which ought be challenged with regard to all other known data relevant to the statement. Simply lining that conclusion up on one or other side of the divide proves nothing.
I'm not wanting to be personally critical of anyone, but I feel it is important to clearly distinguish fact ( measurements ) from assertion ( interpretation thereof ).
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) One must be inclusive in possible explanations to include in the set, too. For example originally it was thought strange that polar bears 'needed' to be white, as they had no known predators from which they ought hide from ( and thus have such a coat color being a selective pressure ). The problem here wasn't with the bears, but lack of experience with bears. The Inuit immediately knew the answer - it's the bear's prey which was selecting their color. The darker bears were too obvious, and were less successful in catching prey that ran away with forewarning.
My point being that an assumed dichotomy of explanations ( it EITHER is OR isn't global warming ) may be a false survey of possibilities. Again, testing with respect to data is the key signal here.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
All I know is that glaciers I
All I know is that glaciers I have climbed in the Sixties are reduced to one fourth of the area they had then. If the cause is not global warming "then give me another word for it" (Joan Baez, Diamonds and rust).
Tullio
RE: All I know is that
Same again I'm afraid. :-)
But if you insist - there are plenty indeed convergent explanations.
Err, lower altitude deforestation for one ( increased runoff altering the subterranean water flows, with raised subsurface temperatures ).
Change in rainfall patterns due to local warming ( cities particularly causing the rain to drop at lower altitudes ) and for that matter airborne particulates ( nucleation for droplets )
Increase in water usage ( similiar effect to deforestation ie increased runoff from the downstream end of the glacier )
Dirty snow - the well known regenerative effect of albedo loss. The darker the snow the more heat it absorbs and thus melts.
All these are quite likely anthropogenic in nature ( secondary to human habitation and land use patterns ) for sure. Other varieties of 'our fault'.
Please note I said 'convergent' not 'competing' explanations.
T'is your choice of course as to which you care to attribute ( and degree thereof ).
For myself the polarising of the debate to a degree beyond which is supported by the data is the worry. Given the appearance of the 'moral high ground' being taken by GW exponents ( not yourself personally I'd hasten to add ) then any data which reduces the 'certainty' is a significant risk for such a stance. Personally I've never quite understood the stretching of facts taken in the name of such good causes ( not crapping in our own nest ). Suppression of alternatives, without testing of same within the data, only subtracts from plausibility.
So if, for instance, a given area has glacier loss - but attributed to global factors only. Then that unfortunately has the effect of relieving responsibility for local action on local problems, the effect of which ( and hence correction of ) may be greater. How would we know? By examining the data ......
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal