07-05-2003 09:49									#61
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Here's one snipet, admittedly from a critic, explaning what the global warming models predict and showing that the actual evidence is not there.

"While individual GCMs have different characteristics and produce widely varying results, they agree in predicting that most of the warming will occur in the high latitudes in the winter. If these projections are correct, the circumpolar vortex should take on a configuration more like the present summer-time configuration. Thus, we should expect the winter vortex to be weaker and more contracted (figure 2). This weaker winter jet stream should generate fewer and less intense surface low-pressure systems (Beersma et al. 1997; Zhang and Wang 1997)."
http://oldfraser.lexi.net/publicati...ng/weather.html

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	07-05-2003 09:59									#62
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More of the same:

"All GCMs propose that the polar regions will warm significantly more than the tropics and that warming will occur throughout the bottom 40,000 feet of the atmosphere. Furthermore, most of the warming will occur during low sun periods—night and winter. "
http://www.greeningearthsociety.org...15/feature1.htm

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	07-05-2003 10:34									#63
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Ned, since you never responded to my post I assume you missed it. Here it is again:
The real problem is the pertubation of the steady state. Nature is essentially self-correcting. To many rabbits, and there will be more predators. Too few rabbits, and some of the predators will die. Likewise with CO2 - Increase the CO2 level and the growth rate of plants will increase.

But only to a certain extent. Humanity has shown over and over again that we are capable of ruining entire ecosystems by either introducing new species in an environment that can't handle them (lampreys in Lake Michigan, for example) or by killing all the natural predators (Alewives in the same lake).

Global warming follows the same lines. as long as the changes are small, nature will compensate for them. But with a large enough change, nature can't keep up, and disaster follows. If unchecked, global warming will most likely cause changes in sea currents (bye-bye northern europe), extensive flooding in formerly dry areas, draught in formerly fertile areas and so on. It's a small reprive to a farmer in Northern Russia that he has slightly higher temperature when he won't get rain. Or possibly get nothing but rain.

	07-05-2003 10:44									#64
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There is also the much more important consequence of shifting growing areas on the political landscape.

Whenever there have been upsets in the world climate it has usually led to a period of massive movement of peoples, with the plague and wars that go with such things.

So curbing greenhouse gases is not only a matter of enviromental importance, it is also a matter of national security.

	07-05-2003 11:21									#65
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quote: Originally posted by CyberGnu Ned, since you never responded to my post I assume you missed it. Here it is again: The real problem is the pertubation of the steady state. Nature is essentially self-correcting. To many rabbits, and there will be more predators. Too few rabbits, and some of the predators will die. Likewise with CO2 - Increase the CO2 level and the growth rate of plants will increase. But only to a certain extent. Humanity has shown over and over again that we are capable of ruining entire ecosystems by either introducing new species in an environment that can't handle them (lampreys in Lake Michigan, for example) or by killing all the natural predators (Alewives in the same lake). Global warming follows the same lines. as long as the changes are small, nature will compensate for them. But with a large enough change, nature can't keep up, and disaster follows. If unchecked, global warming will most likely cause changes in sea currents (bye-bye northern europe), extensive flooding in formerly dry areas, draught in formerly fertile areas and so on. It's a small reprive to a farmer in Northern Russia that he has slightly higher temperature when he won't get rain. Or possibly get nothing but rain.

Humanity isn't big enough for this. The oceans are one massive buffer solution -- atmospheric CO2 is constantly migrating into oceans, where it reacts with dissolved Ca++ and other metal ions to form CaCO3 and other carbonates. Most of these carbonates have piss-poor solubility and drop out, forming carbonate beds on the ocean floors. There is always an excess of metals ions, thanks to erosion, so the CO2 equilibrium is the controling factor -- the further out from the 'norm' the CO2 concentration is, the faster (or slower if lower) CO2 will dissolve, react, and form CaCO3.

	07-05-2003 12:21									#66
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You are forgetting chemistry 101: Non-Solubility isn't absolute. CaCO3 has a solubility constant of 4.8x10^-9 M^2. This means that one cubic meter of water dissolves 6.9x10^-2 mols of (CO3)2- (or CO2).

There is 326 million cubic miles of water on earth => 1.4x10^18 m^3.

1.4x10^18 m^3 x 6.9x10^-2 = 9.7x10^16 mols.

The molecular weight of CO2 is 44 g/mol, which means that the ocean can dissolve 9.7x10^16 x 44 = 4.2x10^18 grams of CO2, or 4.2x10^6 million tons of CO2. The annual human CO2 emissions are measured to ~45 million tons. If we were waiting for Calcium Carbonate to fall out, we would have to wait for 94.000 years...

Chemistry on a vast scale is fun, isn't it?

Now, before you say "but that means that CO2 should just accumulate in the oceans, right", the answer is a resounding NO. There is also an equilibria between CO2 in the ocean and CO2 in the atmosphere. When we increase the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmospehere we push some of it into the oceans, but only until equilibria is restored. In reality, about 30% of human emissions are sequesterd in the oceans.

	07-05-2003 13:28									#67
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You are forgeting one important fact:

The oceans are already at saturation for just about every salt in them.

Don't argue geology 101 with a geologist.

	07-05-2003 14:43									#68
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Sorry, doesn't wash.

The ocean contains about 4 weight percent salt. One percent of this is Calcium. This means that oceanic water has a [Ca2+] of ~1.0x10^-5M. The CO2 levels in oceans are roughly 240ppmv, which translates into a concentration of 1.06x10^-6.

Even if you assume that all the CO2 converts to (CO3)2-, (which it can't, due to the acidity this would cause), that still gives a product of 1.06x10^-6 x 1.0x10^-5 = 1.06x10^-11, i.e. about 50 times lower than the saturation limit.


I think you are confusing this with biological sequestration. Some lifeforms (like coral) can take Ca2+ and (CO3)2- and make Calcium Carbonate from it, to make their shells or supports. I don't know how they drive this, possibly by neutralizing the formed acid and driving the thermodynamics that way, but the net effect is that quite a bit of CO2 is scrubbed from the oceans by lifeforms - but not even close to the levels necessary for negation of global warming.

Don't argue chemistry 101 with a chemist

BTW, did I mention that I taught General Chemistry for a while?

	07-05-2003 14:44									#69
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Addition: the 240ppmv level is from surface water. The CO2 levels in the oceanic depths are about twice as high, due to the breakdown of deitrus.

	07-05-2003 14:52									#70
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The point, though:

Don't let the smoke and mirrors from the conservatives fool you. It's easy to throw around lots of scientific facts, enough to trick even a trained professional, unless you sit down and go through the actual numbers.

Quite frankly, Monk, how many on this board even are able to follow the conversions I did? I know that if I gave a problem like that to a bunch of freshmen, they would scream foul so loudly my ears would hurt for days... And this is fairly general chemistry...

And this is one of the worst problems with global warming. It is such a ridicilously complex issue that the vast majority of people have absolutely no chance of understanding the issue, unless they go back to college first... And even then they probably wouldn't be able to delve through most of the material. Hell, I have a PhD in chemistry, and I don't understand everything the enviro people talk about...

And it scares the hell out of me that we allow politicians to decide issues they have no clue about. We don't let politicans dictate at what temperature we run nuclear cores, right? Why do we allow them to decide about this?

	07-05-2003 18:28									#71
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CyberGnu, I have no reason to doubt that speed of change is a factor in adaptability. Two points, though: First, whatever effect emissions have had on global temperatures, it hasn't been much. Ordinary weather, year-to-year variances are much greater. I give you el Nino and el Nina. We seem to survive. Second, the Earth has undergone the predicted changes in temperature before and has survived.

As to the ocean currents being adversely affected, you will still have to convince me. The reason I am skeptical is that we have been a lot warmer even during the current interglacial period without affecting the currents.

As with melting the glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica where it takes 50,000 years to respond to changed conditions, the necessary conditions to significantly affect the ocean currents in the short term would have to be extraordinary due to the sheer mass of the moving water. The last major event that so affected the Gulf Stream was the closing of the Isthmus of Panama three million years ago.

BTW, it is interesting to note in those articles I linked that the circumpolar vortexes were expanding, not receding, since 1947; and only recently began receding. Expanding vortexes are consistent either with normal, short term, cyclical variations, and/or with the hypothesis that we are entering a new ice age.

	07-05-2003 18:38									#72
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quote: Originally posted by CyberGnu The real problem is the pertubation of the steady state. Nature is essentially self-correcting. To many rabbits, and there will be more predators. Too few rabbits, and some of the predators will die.

No such thing as a steady state in nature. The quiet peacefulness of nature is a romantic fallacy. Natural selection and daily competition for food make nature an ever evolving system, not some stagnant system.

	08-05-2003 04:47									#73
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Ned:

quote: CyberGnu, I have no reason to doubt that speed of change is a factor in adaptability. Two points, though: First, whatever effect emissions have had on global temperatures, it hasn't been much.

Not much? Global surface air warming over the past 25 years is ~0.5C, and in the past century is ~0.75C! (J. Hansen et al., J. Geophys. Res. 106, 23947, 2001) Compare that to the difference between now and the last ice age, which is ~5C.

quote: Ordinary weather, year-to-year variances are much greater.

But that doesn't mean anything... It's the overall increase that matters. Look, just consider glacial formation as an example. A glacier advances during winter, and then receedes during summer. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the mean temperature during summer is 10C, while the mean during winter is -12C. The overall mean is -1C, which will result in a net advance of the clacier. The variation between the two seasons is 22C, while the most extreme variation (the coldest winter night and the hottest summer day) might be >40C.

Now let's assume that the mean temperature changes 1.0 degree. Summer is going to be 11C, while winter is -11C. The overall mean is 0C. This would result in no net advance or recess for the glacier.

Let's assume that the mean temperature changes one more degree, so that the overall mean is +1C. This leads to a net recess of the glacier.

So despite an extreme variation of >40C, a mean change of just 2C would be enough to significantly change the glaciers behavior.

And I'll again refer to the last Ice Age... 5 degrees celsius is all it took to cover most of northern europe and north america in ice.

quote: I give you el Nino and el Nina. We seem to survive. Second, the Earth has undergone the predicted changes in temperature before and has survived.

It's not Earth I'm worried about - It's civilization. Can't remember who said "any society is only 3 meals away from revolution", but I have no doubt that is true. What do you think would happen to humanity if changing weather patters make deserts out of central US, Ukraine and China? And then when changing ocean patterns prevents industrial fishing?

quote: As to the ocean currents being adversely affected, you will still have to convince me. The reason I am skeptical is that we have been a lot warmer even during the current interglacial period without affecting the currents. As with melting the glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica where it takes 50,000 years to respond to changed conditions, the necessary conditions to significantly affect the ocean currents in the short term would have to be extraordinary due to the sheer mass of the moving water. The last major event that so affected the Gulf Stream was the closing of the Isthmus of Panama three million years ago.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conte...tdate=5/31/2003

Abstract:
Meltwater pulse 1A (mwp-1A) was a prominent feature of the last deglaciation, which led to a sea-level rise of ~20 meters in less than 500 years. Concurrent with mwp-1A was the onset of the Bølling-Allerød interstadial event (14,600 years before the present), which marked the termination of the last glacial period. Previous studies have been unable to reconcile a warm Northern Hemisphere with mwp-1A originating from the Laurentide or Fennoscandian ice sheets. With the use of a climate model of intermediate complexity, we demonstrate that with mwp-1A originating from the Antarctic Ice Sheet, consistent with recent sea-level fingerprinting inferences, the strength of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation increases, thereby warming the North Atlantic region and providing an explanation for the onset of the Bølling-Allerød warm interval. The established mode of active NADW formation is then able to respond to subsequent freshwater forcing from the Laurentide and Fennoscandian ice sheets, setting the stage for the Younger Dryas cold period.

Basically, the tenet of the paper is that the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica, played a pivotal role in deglaciation. At one point 14,700 years ago a pulse of meltwater from Antarctica into the Southern Ocean influenced events 10,000 kilometers away, triggering the biggest climate shift of the past 25,000 years.

quote: [quote]BTW, it is interesting to note in those articles I linked that the circumpolar vortexes were expanding, not receding, since 1947; and only recently began receding. Expanding vortexes are consistent either with normal, short term, cyclical variations, and/or with the hypothesis that we are entering a new ice age.

As far as I know, the current theory about that is that the net increase in ocean temperature causes massive water circulation. I'm sure you are familiar with the spring and fall water circulation in lakes, this works on the same principle but on a much larger scale.

And again, it is the NET heat buildup that we are worrying about, not the local variations.

	08-05-2003 05:07									#74
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quote: No such thing as a steady state in nature. The quiet peacefulness of nature is a romantic fallacy. Natural selection and daily competition for food make nature an ever evolving system, not some stagnant system.

Gunkulator, I think you are confusing "steady-state" with "equilibrium".

I think the best way to explain it is to compare the earth to a chemical reactor. You feed the reactor chemicals, let's call them A and B, which reacts to form a chemical C. As long as the reactor operates in the steady-state region, it is actually selfcorrecting. If the temperature goes up a little, the speed of the reaction goes up a little, which causes the concentrations of A and B to go down, which slows down the reaction, which cases the temperature to go down, and so on. In a perfect world we wouldn;t have these microcycles, but in reality we always do.

Now, what happens if the reactor goes outside the steady-state range? Well, the reaction isn't self-correcting any more, so it either runs amok (if the temperature is to high) or the reactor "dies" (if the temperature goes too low). And if a reactor runs amok, you don't want to be close by, trust me...

Evolution in nature can be thought of as an engineer tinkering with the reactor. Increasing the flow of the cooling water while also increasing the amount of chemical A might improve the reaction efficiency by 1% or so, which in industrial terms is a huge increase. But the key is gradual changes - if the engineer makes any drastic changes he will most likely cause the reactor to move out of the steady-state region.

There will be a pop-quiz on reactor design in our next lecture. Be sure to be prepared

	08-05-2003 05:13									#75
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CyberGnu, I don't have access to the linked article. However if I understad the Abstract, a pulse of fresh water from the Antarctic drifted North and caused warming and then later cooling.

Since I cannot read the linked article I can only speculate on how fresh water might cause warming and then cooling. But, as I understand the current arguments being made about the NADW formation being "interrupted," is that fresh water has only one effect, cooling.

But if one pauses and considers for a moment, the only reason the Gulf Stream sinks in the NA is because it is saltier than surrounding ocean water. If it were fresher instead, it would not sink, or sink further North, in either case leading to warmer Northern termperatures.

The only way it would cool is if the current itself stopped. But, this is where MOMENTUM enters my thinking. It would have to take a lot more than a pulse to stop the current.

	08-05-2003 05:17									#76
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CyberGnu, I could use a little more explanation as to why increased water circulation, transfering heat to colder regions I suppose, would cause the circumpolar vortexes to expand. Expansion means the polar areas are cooler, not warmer.

	08-05-2003 05:28									#77
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Ahh, sorry, I forgot that I have access to Science through Caltech. I can't reprint the article for copyright reasons, but I can send you a pdf if you want.

The basic idea seems to be that the freshwater pulse restarted the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation, which is part of the thermohaline cycle, I believe.

	08-05-2003 05:30									#78
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By Thermohaline cycle you are basically refering to changes in the temperature and salinity of sea water?

	08-05-2003 05:31									#79
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quote: CyberGnu, I could use a little more explanation as to why increased water circulation, transfering heat to colder regions I suppose, would cause the circumpolar vortexes to expand. Expansion means the polar areas are cooler, not warmer.

Ned, I quite frankly don't know... This is the point where I just take the oceanographs word for it... They seem to understand the actual process, although there is some debate on the effects.

	08-05-2003 05:33									#80
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Oerdin, well, sort of. Just like Ned pointed out in his previous post, the Gulf Stream transports warm water with somewhat higher salinity (and less density) to the polar regions. After it cools down the salinity and density increases and the water sinks, to be replaced with fresh warm water.

	08-05-2003 05:35									#81
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Ned, just to clarify: I'm not saying that a freshwater pulse will lead to catastrophic global warming, it is just an example to show how even a fairly innocous change in the environment can have a huge effect... Usually referred to as "synergy".

	08-05-2003 05:54									#82
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CyberGnu, a pdf would be appreciated. Here is the part of the abstract that does not make sense on its face:

" the strength of North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation increases, thereby warming the North Atlantic region "

The authors state that the NADW is strenghtened, not started. But I do not understand how fresh water could possibly strenghten the effect, which depends on the relatively higher salt content to work.

	08-05-2003 05:56									#83
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Can I send an attachment through the PM system? I'll try