I attempted to respond to Braden's post on his blog "More Evidence of Global Warming" but the post seemed to cause problems with his server, giving me an "Error 500." Gee, I wonder if that was because I was too wordy?
Anyway, here's my reply to his post, exactly as I would have posted it to his entry. It was written in one of those little comment boxes, so I wouldn't be surprised to find out there's some writing errors somewhere. On the other hand, Firefox does a wonderful job of correcting my spelling, and it's just one more reason to drop Microsoft's Internet Explorer. A quick look makes me realize this wasn't written for a general audience. If you haven't had any significant mathematics above basic high school calculus, there are parts that might be a bit hard to follow. Sorry about that. And the name of the pair of satellites is "GRACE."
My reply to Braden:
Braden,
"How can we accept global warming when meteorologists cannot even accurately predict the weather five days in advance?"
How can we accept chemistry when chemists cannot even accurately predict the motions of the individual atoms? Simple: the small patterns, whether weather or atomic motions, are too noisy. But in large groups, the noise averages out statistically, enabling the scientists to say something about chemical reactions or the future average temperature for the world.
Interestingly, in the theory of control of chaotic systems, an addition of energy is known to drive, at least initially, wider swings of the system. In the case of weather, adding energy results in more unusual weather — you might get snows at odd times, at least when the temperature is low enough to permit it.
Also, remember that Pittsburgh is at the nexus of three weather systems in a hilly region. It's amazing they can predict the weather one day in advance. A lot of places aren't as bad; at the North Face of the Grand Canyon, when we were there on our honeymoon, there was a rainstorm every day at almost exactly the same time. As Pittsburghers, it freaked us out.
In your partial differential equations class, they must have exposed you to this problem: some partial differential equations cannot be solved explicitly — they can only be tackled by numerical methods. The best example of this is the "Three Body Problem" from physics. You can't solve the PDQ for an equation that exactly describes the orbits. Even though you can't solve the equations, you can still do astronomy and spaceflight by using numerical methods — computer models. And there are some things you can say about the system, like the stability of the five Lagrange points.
As far as global warming, let's start off at the basics. Carbon dioxide causes the Earth to hold energy from the sun in, just like glass in a greenhouse. Same for methane, water vapor, etc. Given an increase in CO2 and methane, to the first term or two in the Taylor series, the temperature will go up. The question thus is not "Would we have global warming?" but rather "Can anything stop global warming?" There are competing effects: water vapor, which is in itself a greenhouse gas, also in large aggregates (clouds) reflects sunlight before it enters the atmosphere and becomes trapped. The increased temperature can cause some plants to sequester carbon by improved growth. Then again, increased temperatures cause ice to melt, which reduces the albedo of the Earth, increasing the temperature again.
Scientists have been totaling up these PDQ pluses and minuses, finding out how powerful they are, and seeing what happens when you run the simulations. Weather, like most unsolvable PDQs, is extremely sensitive to initial conditions; there's no way you can measure all the variables sufficiently to make any long-term predictions: hence the "butterfly wings causes a Hurricane" amplification analogy for weather and chaotic systems.
You would expect temperature to wander all over the place, and yet, every simulation, no matter the assumptions or the strengths used of the various effects within their possible range of strengths, the temperature invariably goes up. It's a robust trend; according to theory, the question isn't "Will the temperature go up or down?" but rather "How much will it go up?" That's frightening, because it means there's no hope that a bunch of piddling effects might line up in the opposite direction and save us.
The simulations do a decent job of predicting past behaviors helping to validate the models. Scientists thought the Maunder minimum resulted in the Little Ice age, even though a basic analysis will show you the temperature wouldn't change that much. But in the process of looking into global warming, researchers discovered that the Little Ice Age wasn't an ice age, but rather a localized weather phenomenon involving Europe and the more eastern portions of North America, caused by ocean current changes. The more western North America suffered a drought, which explains a bunch of Native American Indian civilization collapses. The temperature went up in the southern part of the globe, and overall there wasn't a drop in temperature in the Maunder Minimum. What we thought we knew was wrong, and we're learning it. By the way, a mathematical analysis of the Maunder Minimum, with data covering the entire planet and not just Europe and the Eastern United States blows out of the water the theory that global warming is real but due to solar variation and not changes caused by humanity.
Closer to our time, scientists had a problem: satellite temperatures from the 1960s and early 1970s showed temperatures that contradicted global warming theory. An analysis of these satellite's measurement hardware showed a systematic bias in the early construction, a bias that was eliminated unintentionally as new hardware used different methods of getting the answer.
And that brings us to the biggest reason for accepting global warming. Forget theory; the actual temperature data for the planet shows a consistent warming trend. It's not just one source of data, either. Look at temperatures and temperature analogs for the last 1000 years — there's a dramatic warming, more rapid than anything ever seen on the planet as far back as we can measure — and that's back to before dinosaurs were top of the food chain. There's two satellites orbiting the Earth, one following the other. They measure the distance between them, and the changes in that distance are due to inhomogenaities in the mass distribution of the Earth. They show dramatic loss of ice in Antarctica and Greenland — merely in the time they've been in orbit! And man, I hate to think about the numerical analysis required for those satellites. Sorry, I'm blanking on their name, but a Google search ought to turn it up. More straightforward analysis of the Arctic ice shows there's loss of ice. Alaska's permafrost is being damaged; it's increasing the cost of road and building maintenance. Even under the best case analysis, global warming will cost Alaska an additional $10 billion in maintenance.
Hey, just measure the average temperature of the Earth, and it goes up. Look at the list of the yearly temperatures for the last 100 years: Do you notice anything strange about the distribution of years? The closer to our time it is, the more likely the temperature will be high. It's not a random distribution.
Finally, and most disturbingly, the computer models are wrong, terribly wrong. The loss of ice from both the Arctic and Antarctic, from glaciers and Greenland, all around the world, is far worse than predicted by the models.
The computer models are wrong, but they're not wrong in a good way. Global warming is worse than predicted. Melt Siberia, and you're going to have a nasty release of methane that may devastate civilization as it adds far more than humans cause — or can logically remove — to the greenhouse gas level. That's a tipping point, and we're close to it.
Braden, it's not Kool Aid. It's basic science. The rejection of global warming as fact is the result of an anti-science bias in this country that says if we squeeze our eyes tight enough, evolution will be wrong, laetrile (or whatever the latest medical scam is) works, and Star Wars will work (and dang it, until recently, I've been one of the ones to close my eyes real hard on that one, even though a physicist friend who was working on Star Wars in 1985 told me differently).
Braden, global warming is going to put our country at risk economically and militarily. The Bush administration has been unwilling to deal with it, even to the point that they are putting us in military danger from the social changes that increased sea levels, drought, and weather changes will cause.
Years from now, I hope "There is no global warming" is not remembered in the same way Chamberlain's "peace in our time" is remembered.
Rob,
A valid argument to some extent, however you failed to take into account:
(1) Why the temperature increases on Mars then? Are humans the cause of this? No. I suppose we can quickly deduce that the temperature increase on Mars are due to the sun shining hotter, correct? That being said, shouldn’t the above be taken into consideration regarding Earth’s temperatures getting hotter?
(2) The polar ice caps are just that..ice. Ice which is floating on water just like an ice cube floats in a cup of hot tea which is filled to the rim. When the ice melts, does the cup of tea overflow? Nope. Why? Because the ice already displaced the water.
The same can be said for the polar ice caps, no? If they were to melt, would not the flooding be minimal because the ice caps themselves have already displaced the water in the first place just by being there?
(3) C02 is a tree’s best friend. What do trees need? C02. What do trees give off in exchange for C02? Oxygen.
I guess what I am trying to say is this: The earth was here long before we as humans were around, and the earth will be around long after we as humans are all but gone. The earth adapts, as it always has. That’s how nature works. Look at evolution. Animal and plant species adapt to their surroundings. The same can go for the planet earth.
It’s my firm belief that global warming has been put into the spotlight because those with political power want more even political power, and they’ll use the threat of global warming to achieve it. It’s all about political power, nothing more, nothing less.
Look at Al Gore. He talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk until he himself gets caught with his “hands in the cookie jar” with his huge utility bills, not to mention his jets/limos, etc. Hey, if he walks the walk and is a firm believer in what he preaches, why not practice it then? As far as I am concerned, Al Gore a phony and should be addressed as such.
Global warming? Sure, the sun is going through a hotter cycle as evidenced by the temperature increases on Mars. The earth also goes through cycles on its own, too. And what’s this thing about cow and sheep flatulence (http://rucus.ru.ac.za/~wolfman/Essays/Cow.html)?
Ok, so lets kill all the cows and sheep then, right? Of course not. This is nature taking it’s course.
Man made Global warming? I don’t buy it. Present me with a SOLID model proving humans are the cause of global warming that the entire scientific community can all agree upon and I’ll take a closer look. Until then, I stand by my words.
Braden,
1. Mars has a strange orbit. It’s more eccentric than Earth’s. A summer in a hemisphere that occurs during apoapsis is warmer — Mars is significantly closer to the sun. A winter occurring at the same time is warmer. At periapsis, the opposite is true: summers and winters are both colder. While there’s a summer in one hemisphere, there’s a winter in the other; so if one summer occurs at periapsis, the other must occur at apoapsis. Overall, it’s the same.
The summers move through the orbit (yeah, if you’re thinking of Mithrais, you’ve got the idea — they realized the position of the celestial axis was changing, and it indicated to them there was a God above the gods in the universe that everyone else worshiped). The average temperature on Mars will remain the same — it’s just the strength of the swings in the northern and southern latitudes that change.
That’s all that’s happening. There’s no corresponding increase in solar output that would account for a temperature increase at Mars. The Martian example has nothing to do with the Terran example. I’ve already debunked Pluto elsewhere in this blog, and the same would apply to Triton. Jupiter, in the very article cited by the anti-global warming folks, points out the change in Jupiter is localized and apparently due to weather systems; the average Jupiter temperature stays the same. Jupiter, by the way, contracts because of gravity and so it actually puts out more energy than it receives from the sun. It’s not a failed sun by a wide margin, but it still emits its own heat.
2. The arctic ice cap is just ice. The antarctic ice cap is sitting on top of Antarctica. The Greenland ice is sitting on top of Greenland, etc. Put a mug full of water in a pan, with an ice cube floating in the water and a second ice cube on the handle. Let the ice melt. Water winds up in the pan.
3. CO2 is a tree’s best friend, but there are limits as to how much a tree can use; carbon dioxide is not the rate limiting step for tree and plant growth. This is why it’s been suggested that iron powder be dumped in the oceans, so that algae will grow (one guess what the rate-limiting step is!). Turns out it doesn’t work very efficiently, and you’d need a dangerous amount of iron.
The Earth was balanced when we started to add CO2 through industrialization and domestication of animals. Like any system, there was some buffering capacity — just as your blood pH doesn’t change much when you exercise, the Earth was able to absorb some CO2 with little change. We’ve pushed the buffering capacity to the limit — it’s been failing to buffer large amounts of CO2 for a while now; reserve capacity is nearly depleted. When you push the buffering capacity of the blood to the limit, the pH of the blood starts changing. The pH changes, despite breathing faster you can’t blow off enough CO2, the kidneys can’t excrete bicarb fast enough, and the heart starts having ectopy. Eventually the system regains equilibrium, but only the equilibrium of death.
See, this is why it’s important to have the computer models. The computer models show conclusively that, even assuming there might be mechanisms for CO2 sequestration we’re not familiar with, they can’t possibly be large enough to make any difference. The trees and plants won’t be enough. Look at the giant increase in CO2 in human history: that it can increase in the atmosphere shows the buffering system isn’t adequate.
The earth was here long before and will be long after, but we are capable of affecting it. The Earth will survive, but the question is, will we, and even if we do, what sort of effect will it have on civilization. Yes, Earth will adapt, but how many people will die? How many will be forced to move from their homes? How many wars will start because of the global changes? How much will our economy be damaged by global warming if allowed to run unchecked?
You believe global warming is put in the spotlight as a way to get more power. Just as easily, the rejection of global warming could be believed to be a way for coal, gas and oil to make as much money as possible.
Forget why, and ask what the data actually says. The data actually says there’s global warming. Unequivocally.
So Al Gore screws up. That makes global warming wrong, or that makes Al Gore wrong? Al has done more than most at reducing his carbon footprint. The problem is, we don’t have the infrastructure developed to enable most people to reduce their carbon footprint. Al’s taking a strategic stance: If, by keeping his carbon footprint up, he can get us to change sufficiently that mechanisms are created for all to reduce their carbon footprint, then the net effect on global warming will be to reduce far more carbon than had he merely cut back on his own.
I don’t have the mechanisms to reduce my footprint enough, although you really ought to see our backyard, which has been a work of permaculture in progress since 9/11/2001 (coincidentally, but still an easy way to remember). I buy the best car I can afford (couldn’t afford a hybrid, darn it). I can’t afford solar cells on my roof. If we get these things at costs people can afford based on economies of production scale, everyone will be able to do these things.
The sun is not going through a significantly hotter cycle. The Earth goes through cycles, too, but this isn’t one of them. You’re ignoring the data to say that. NASA has been monitoring solar output — it hasn’t changed enough to change the temperatures this way.
And yes, domesticated farm animals do contribute to global warming. That’s still anthropogenic, because humans clear land and overbreed these animals.
This is nature taking its course. But we don’t want nature to take its course, because that will mean deaths of millions, increased suffering, military insecurity for our country, and possibly the destruction of the industrialized economy — and that’s without capping carbon.
Braden, there are plenty of good models out there and they all are solid and they all say global warming is occurring. I’ve debunked each of the points you’ve made, and you’ve done nothing to put a dent in any of mine:
A. CO2 is increasing greatly in the atmosphere, and it’s not due to cows. Explain how an increased CO2 level will not affect the temperature of the Earth.
B. We see evidence of global warming now, and there is insufficient increase in solar output or any other mechanism other than human causes to explain the change.
One other question:
Do you remember acid rain? The Republicans claimed sulfur from humans wasn’t causing acid rain. Eventually, the Reagan administration had to back down and institute caps on sulfur emissions. Once done, the acid rain decreased greatly. The same with ozone — and if you’re going to quote Rush Limbaugh on this, first look up the difference between “reactant” and “catalyst” and then ask yourself what the stoichiometry of ozone destruction looks like and whether the free chlorine atoms are reactants or catalysts. Rush gets it wrong.
So here’s the question: Why should we believe the Republicans when they say there’s no global warming…oops, ok, so there’s global warming but it’s not caused by humans…oops, ok, so there’s global warming, but it’s not entirely caused by humans, and besides we like global warming?
Frankly, their track record is rather poor. They’ve been dead wrong so many times before, I wouldn’t take them seriously even if I didn’t go by the science instead of what the Republicans or Democrats say.
You can believe what you want, but it’s political ideology not based in science any more than Creationsim is scientific or HIV can be spread by shaking hands is scientific. You can stand where you want, but currently, it’s not reality.
Me thinks we agree on one thing. And that is we both agree to disagree with one another.
Funny, I don’t see you bringing up the scare we all heard in the 1970s about Global Cooling. Remember that? It turned out to be hogwash, too. Nothing is ever brought up about that, now that the same crowd who brought us global cooling now brings is global warming.
Given their track record, I find it hard to digest.
Braden,
The “scare” in the 60s and 70s was all in the public, not in the scientific community.
So it’s still Scientists 3, Republicans 0. More, if you include Creationism and the HIV absurdities they promoted. Add in pollution, cigarettes, etc. and the score looks like a blowout in baseball — because that’s what it is.
I could insert a cheap shot about how Nixon is responsible for the Challenger disaster (Nixon canceled the LRBs and had them switched to SRBs because he hated the space program, which he associated with JFK) but I won’t. Even the Republicans shouldn’t be blamed for Nixon. He was just a whack job.
Have you noticed that no one in the anti-Global Warming group has attempted to model greenhouse gas concentrations and show that it won’t lead to global warming? There’s not, because they can’t.
If you look around the net, there are plenty of people who have theories that disagree with mainstream science. They have theories of how the universe came into being, how quantum mechanics is wrong and you can determine everything exactly, how relativity is wrong, how the universe is shaped only by magnetic fields, not gravity, how subatomic particles don’t really exist, how the universe is only 8,000 years old, the Earth is hollow, spaceships don’t really fly, etc. These people have one thing in common: there’s no mathematical modeling, no equations, no actual calculations. Well, that and I suspect there’s some sort of mental disorder involved with a fair number of them, but that’s not the important point.
The lack of math is the hallmark of scientific nonsense, and it’s a hallmark glaringly obvious in the anti-global warming group. The only one in the anti-global warming group who’s even attempted to do things mathematically is Abdusamatov, and because of his reports, additional research was done that debunked the Maunder Minimum and showed the change in solar radiance can’t account for global warming.
Instead, the anti-global warming people point to Mars (without doing the calculations that show how the temperature there is affected by orbital mechanics and axial tilt, Pluto, and all the other discredited anecdotes. Even after having the incorrectness of the anecdotes pointed out (the melting ice one is classic — I heard both Rush Limbaugh and the late afternoon guy on 104.7 repeat that one (Limbaugh cut off someone who attempted to point out the flaw) — they still keep repeating them (reminds me of the Creation Research Institute and the Second Law of Thermodynamics).
BTW: Are you getting most of your talking points from Limbaugh? Those points are the ones he’s used. The man isn’t a scientist. He’s an entertainer, and the science is about as accurate as one finds in entertainment.
I’m sorry, but as a scientist, I look at your side and see nothing scientific.
Instead of “Where’s the Beef?” it’s “Where’s the Math?” There isn’t any.
For the record, I don’t listen to Rush…and no, I didn’t get my talking points from him.
C’mon Rob, you’re going to sit there and blame Nixon for the Challenger disaster? Ohh-kay.
I guess using your blame game methodologies, I could blame Clinton for 9/11 then.
We’re getting nowhere here.
Braden,
SRBs should not be used. They can’t be turned off, and you can’t assemble them in one piece. Nixon forced the SRBs on NASA. Without SRBs, you never have the Challenger disaster. It’s one of the most egregious political interferences in engineering ever.
If you say we’re not getting anywhere…
One thing: will you grant me that reasonable, scientific people unmotivated by political considerations can believe in anthropogenic global warming?
I’ll accept that reasonable people unmotivated by political considerations can believe that there isn’t global warming.
Yeah, I left out the word “scientific.” Best I can do.
Ok, this is off the topic….
After the Columbia disaster occurred, I thought (and still do) the current Space Shuttle fleet should be immediately retired from service. The entire design is too expensive to maintain, not to mention to dangerous to operate. I also think the Space Shuttle design is flawed, based on the two Shuttles we’ve lost.
What I want to know is, whatever happened to the Prometheus Project NASA was supposedly set on? I’ve heard nothing.
With the current Space Shuttle designs, we are completely incapable of breaking Earth’s orbit….why not perfect and implement the Prometheus Project design specifications of a nuclear powered rocket?
This way, we’d be able to at least venture out “ankle deep” (in the immortal words of Carl Sagan … I loved watching him on Cosmos…I’ve got the entire DVD set by the way).
Thoughts?