Puzzle me this? Oceans COOLING?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(glenhead @ Sep 7 2006, 04:23 PM) [snapback]315695[/snapback]</div>

All of the glaciers in the Alps have shrunk more in the lat 100 years than in the rest of recorded (i.e. written) history. This shrinking is accelerating.

The ice caps are melting faster. Fact. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2005-176 (I work on Grace).

As the fresh water in the oceans increase, the Gulf flow in the Atlantic will stop (its happened before and that lead to the last mini ice age). http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0824-whri.html

According to research, the next mini ice age could be as close as 100 years away. http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0824-whri.html

Of course putting your head in the sand and ignoring these facts and prediction is a way of dealing with things, but does it make sense? No The only real option, if we are to survive as a species, is to tackle the problems now before its too late.

Of course everybody researching these things may be wrong, but is that a risk that we should take?

 

Post copied from digg


http://digg.com/environment/New_data_shows_ocean_cooling

 

Taking a look at the digg post... it seems that in one way we are actually arguing the same point.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(victor @ Sep 7 2006, 02:40 PM) [snapback]315868[/snapback]</div>

Okay, so global warming is going to cause the next ice age? :huh:

 

OK... this is going to sound very obtuse... but if we, as a whole, aren't reduce GHG emissions... and we are headed for a MOC shutdown/change... could we compensate for the mini-ice age trend by further increasing GHG's?

This sounds like what Hansen must have known when he iterates that we are approaching a point of no return in anthropomorphic-aided climate change.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TimBikes @ Sep 7 2006, 04:03 PM) [snapback]315884[/snapback]</div>

Its a big, non-linear system, we can at least agree on that. So we are adding all this CO2 and we know that CO2 & temperature are closely correlated. This extra energy will manifest itself in various ways, most of them unpleasant, especially to sedentary species like vegetation & those species unable to adapt. We might be seeing some tipping-point process underway - its not good and its certainly a cause for worry/mitigation.

This is a legitimate accusation of selection bias - this does not mean that this is "highly disputed". You have to agree that even without Oreske, there remains a highly coherent consensus that GW is happening (not disputed anymore) just the AGW and the degree to which we can mitigate the situation (carbon rationing, etc, etc.). Unfortunately the emphasis on a manufactured controversy (very similar to the "teach the controversy" strategy of the Intelligent Design folks) is confusing and leading people to think that climate scientists are not in agreement regarding GW. A lot of this is funded by the fossil fuel industry (XOM, BTU, etc, etc) in order to protect their extensive interests in the Status Quo. Unfortunately the Status Quo could result in the largest die-off in human history.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TimBikes @ Sep 7 2006, 04:14 PM) [snapback]315891[/snapback]</div>

I can't respond to that... it's up to the experts for that one... I can only question his reasoning for saying so... errr... why not? (Don't have time to look at the study and see if he elucidated his reasoning)

 

What climatologists look at is not specific events such as ocean cooling. Rather, they take the temperatures around the globe and average them out. The fears of global warming are born out of the fact that the average temperature has been steadily increasing.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(victor @ Sep 7 2006, 03:40 PM) [snapback]315868[/snapback]</div>

Here's an interesting article that I blundered across during a google search. It's about one climatologist that claims that the Gulf Stream is not responsible for keeping Europe warm, but rather the Rocky Mountains and it's effects on the Jet Stream are responsible.

Against The Current

Against The Current
Pouring cold water on a climate myth
By Robert Kunzig

6/2/03

Climatologist Richard Seager blames one of the first oceanographers, Matthew Fontaine Maury of the U.S. Navy, for putting about the story that the Gulf Stream is what keeps Europe warm. "It is the influence of this stream upon climate that makes Erin the `Emerald Isle of the Sea,' and that clothes the shores of Albion in evergreen robes," Maury wrote in 1855, "while in the same latitude, on this side, the coasts of Labrador are fast bound in fetters of ice." For "Erin" read Ireland, for "Albion" England--and to this day guidebooks credit the Gulf Stream for the relatively mild winters that permit, say, tropical plants to thrive in Cornwall. And not just guidebooks; scientists do too. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change attributes "the relatively mild climate in western Europe" to ocean currents, including the Gulf Stream.

It's all an old oceanographer's tale, says Seager--"the climate equivalent of an urban myth." Labrador is indeed 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit colder in January than England, which is at the same latitude. But that difference, he and his colleagues at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory argue in a recent and much talked about paper, has little to do with the Gulf Stream. Instead, it has everything to do with the prevailing winds and, more surprising, the Rocky Mountains. That would mean one widely publicized fear about global warming--that it might actually freeze western Europe by shutting off currents including the Gulf Stream--is unfounded.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TimBikes @ Sep 7 2006, 04:25 PM) [snapback]315905[/snapback]</div>

There has historically been a disconnect between ocean scientists and climate scientists for the very simply reason that the fields are disjoint. This is now moot as all of the major climate models include the behavior of both the atmosphere and the worlds oceans. You point is moot - this is a new finding and does not mean that all previous research & data is invalid. This will be studied & incorporated into the body of knowledge.

Here are some studies that revealed that the ocean heat content has been increasing significantly over recent decades (Willis et al, 2004; Levitus et al, 2005; Lyman et al, 2006). This is something that has been predicted by climate models (and confirmed notably by Hansen et al, 2005), and has therefore been described as a 'smoking gun' for human-caused greenhouse gases.

(quoted from RealClimate.org)

PS. Interested to know what your motivation is and what your qualifications are (TimBikes)? I am interested in leaving a healthy world to my children and grandchildren and am an interested bystander.

 

The Source of Europe's Mild Climate
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/...3?fulltext=true

A slice of text from Paul Seager's article:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(triphop @ Sep 7 2006, 11:28 AM) [snapback]315764[/snapback]</div>

Remember, "experts" in "peer-reviewed papers" used to agree that smoking was good for you - scientists backed up the claims with reams of documentation, and doctors prescribed smoking for all sorts of ills. Why? Because of an incomplete understanding of a highly complex system, the human body, and its interactions with outside influences. "Experts" in "peer-reviewed papers" said at one point that computers would never leave the lab, and would never be viable for the average Joe to use. Why? Because they couldn't predict what was going to happen in the realm of research - the aftereffects of a little thing called the transistor. There are countless examples of where "experts" looking at "macro trends" with "no serious, scientific challenge" all "agreed" something based on human beings' inability to comprehend a complex, chaotic megasystem.

Yes, it's quite simple - follow the money. The people who publish any kind of results on anything have the potential for their fifteen minutes in the limelight - interviews by pretty newspeople, lucrative speaking engagements, publishing contracts to put their interpretation of the results out for the unwashed masses, and so forth. Nobody is going to pay a bit of attention if someone comes out and says "Everything is going fine." People don't go to the racetrack to see cars go around in circles for four hours - they go in case there's a good, fiery wreck. People don't slow down on the freeway when everything is going fine, they slow down to see the guts and body parts strewn across the highway after a wreck. Non-bad news doesn't sell publications or airtime commercials. However, if an "expert" (like a social anthropologist, one of the most vocal proponents of the idea of global warming(?)) comes out and says "The human race is DOOOOOOOOMED! We're all going to DIIIIIIE! And it's all our own fault!!!", it's going to bring the media out like ants to a picnic, because they know it's going to make them money. The "experts" soon discover that the limelight and its associated perquisites are pretty nice; they tell their buddies, who join the money train, and they're off to the races (to mix way too many metaphors). If someone has the unmitigated audacity to speak out against their brilliance, they go into full "burn the heretics" mode, to protect their fame.

Once again, we can't even predict for sure what's going to happen in the weather three days from now. We have a helluva lot of historical data showing exactly what happened with previous local weather systems - no guesswork, no extrapolation - data that goes directly into predicting what will happen in seventy-two hours within a 150-mile circle, and can't predict it for sure. The idea that humans might now be able to predict what's going to happen long-term to worldwide weather patterns is, at best, a bit silly.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TimBikes @ Sep 7 2006, 03:25 PM) [snapback]315905[/snapback]</div>

They aren't less significant, you're quite right in this. However, it's important to note that this is a nonlinear event - that is, for twenty years the temperatures increased, then two years there was a significant decrease. If you look at the original paper there was a cooling event like this in 1980-1983, and now one in 2003-2005. However, it didn't remove all the heat that was gained, more like a 5 steps forward, one step back kind of thing.

Which is why this is important for climate modeling - it's been largely assumed that you're always inching forward, and it doesn't matter what happened the year before, with X amount of new GHG, this year will be .Y degrees warmer. So this will have to be digested and used to refine the models again - and that's the point of the article. It doesn't change the general layman's picture however - we're still faced with the fact that human activity causes GWG, and GWG cause some increase in global temperatures in the long term, and global temperatures have indeed increased, in general, over the last 100 years, particularly since 1970.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mirza @ Sep 7 2006, 05:00 PM) [snapback]315932[/snapback]</div>

This was exactly what I was thinking while I read through all these posts.

What if this process isn't some sort of tipping point mechanism but the start of some sort of compensatory mechanism?

Obviously I don't think we should do nothing about it... but it could be like hypovolemic shock in humans... the body can compensate for a while before it crashes, giving you time to resolve the problem.

 

I am going to reply this last time since you did not read what I posted earlier.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(glenhead @ Sep 7 2006, 05:08 PM) [snapback]315947[/snapback]</div>

Actually - can you provide some kind of references for that? I was under the impression that it was a well coordinated PR campaign with "for sale" "experts" that were involved. Nothing like that is applicable to the GW debate because there is no financial incentives for scientists.

What nonsense - if you really going to say that someone who studies to get their PhD to work in climate science is doing it for the money, then you are sadly mistaken. Its a thankless job, having to defend your research to paid shills from the fossil fuel industry, paid-for politicians and the rest of the microbial environment. Its not a well paid job, the working conditions are sometimes atrocious and there is very little scope for glory.

If your research could show that there is no co2 linkage to GW, then XOM would throw money at you in large unmarked bills. Why, because all the climate denial scientists (all 10 of them) are financed by said industries. Read, and weep: XOM, BTU, etc

You obviously did not read what I stated earlier. Weather != Climate. Different words, different things. To say that we cannot predict with great exactitude what the weather is going to do, does not mean that we cannot make predictions about the CLIMATE. To do nothing, or to ignore the problem is merely ostrich in the sand behavior .

Now, its great fun debating and, all - next time provide some actual data, or expert opinion because I am heartily sick of reading peoples opinions about stuff they know nothing about.

Noah did not wait for the rain to start before he started building the Ark. Neither should we wait for climate change to start devastating our world.

 

Oooh, this one looks too easy
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(glenhead @ Sep 7 2006, 04:08 PM) [snapback]315947[/snapback]</div>

yes - doctors in the 17th-19th centuries! By WWII, doctors were no longer saying this, but industry-paid stooges were still claiming there were no ill effects and no addiction caused by smoking into the 1970's. By then science had come to a consensus against it, but the tobacco companies were able to generate enough publicity and controversy that much of the public wasn't really sure who to believe. We're in that stage now with global warming.

Really? What peer-reviewed paper said computers wouldn't leave the lab? I know of industry experts (like the head of IBM) who said that personal computers were impractical and wouldn't sell, but I don't know of any research article that said computers wouldn't leave the lab.

Scientists don't become scientists to be in the limelight :lol: That's about the last profession you'd choose for that! Many scientists do not like to be interviewed and do not like the way their reports are presented by the media. Doomsday prophesizers are likely to be scorned by their peers, so if anything, there's a tendency to downplay their results. Add to this, scientists work with uncertainties and levels of accuracy all the time which are hard to be easily explained on the evening news, so they are very reluctant to say something specific will definitely happen, usually it's something like "it's rather likely that sea levels will rise 2 to 3 cm", not "sea levels will rise 2.6 cm by summer of x", because then if it rises 3.1 cm or 2.2 cm people would say he was wrong. So scientists often run the risk of being so vague that people don't understand the urgency.

Yes, but we've gotten a lot better - we don't have any more massive deaths from hurricanes like we did in Galveston 100 years ago. Tornado outbreaks are predicted, etc. Still, that's a different area of science.


So what's your recommendation - continue wasting energy (& money), ignore the emerging markets of alternate energy, and send our money to terrorist-friendly countries for their dwindling supplies of oil and hope to God they don't cut us off?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(nerfer @ Sep 7 2006, 05:38 PM) [snapback]315975[/snapback]</div>

All too easy!