Posted on 05/17/2002 8:45:25 AM PDT by cogitator
Ummm...this is bad?
Yeah, a 5 degree C increase in the tropics would be bad. But a 5 degree C rise in arctic temperature still leaves it too !@#$%%^ cold to be habitable.
I'm sorry, but here at the 45th parallel (give or take), a little warming makes for milder winters, a longer growing season, and generally better living. Let's think about humans first, polar bears second.
No...in the worst case, you just need to marinate their steaks a little longer, and make sure you don't overcook them.
Ha ha ha. The phrase 'suggested trend' should not be conflated with 'accurate predictor' IAC. Two entirely different things.
I've been saying for years that a modest amount of global warming exists (how much is manmade is quite conjectural), as well as pointing out that 90% of it will be at high latitudes, during the winter and at night, something the IPCC is just starting to officially admit. A corollary of this effect is that cyclonic weather patterns which drive hurricanes and tornadoes will tend to diminish in strength, although average precipitation will probably increase slightly.
Average global warming will amount to only one or two degrees Celsius by 2100, and ocean levels will not rise by more than about six inches, and probably less than that, which is far less than average tidal variations. Look for the envirowhackos' doom and gloom guesses to converge to these predictions over time.
Actually, I look for the predictions to get worse. They are lying now and will lie even more because nobody is listening to them. There might be a couple of honest modelers out there, but they will soon lose funding. The IPCC is a corrupt organization whose sole foundation is spreading lies.
Well, if one was to bet on a subject like this, one would have be quite specific about the terms, and the determination of whether or not a predicted outcome had been realized. Now, you are proposing to wager that none of the "worst-worst-worst case computer simulations" will turn out to be close to correct. I think that's a pretty safe bet! Thus, I (or anyone) would be pretty dumb to take you up on it.
Now, here's a clearer statement of my prediction. If you can figure out how to quantify it, then I'd put a 12-pack of Blue Ridge Amber Lager on the line. To make it fun.
"A variety of indicators exhibit trends as of year 2002 that if continued would support the observtion of a basic decline in global environmental quality. By the year 2012, these trends will be clearly more indicative of declining environmental quality than in 2002. While a few of these trends may be reversible via concerted action, the majority of the trends will not reverse by 2012."
I'd suggest proposing 15 indicators that have a defined trend over 1992-2002. I'd predict that by 2012 a majority (8) of these indicators will have a more pronounced trend in the same direction as current.
So, if one wanted to use the Hudson Bay polar bears as an example, we'd need to have data showing a decreasing trend in average weight or average fat rating (the article linked describes that assessment). I'd make two predictions that could be assessed on this indicator: a) that the population of Hudson Bay polar bears will decline 2002-2012; and b) that the remaining population will have a lower average weight and fat content in 2012 than in 2002.
But the 5 C figure is a magical one to global warming theories. That is the size of the difference between ice ages and the present. It was the size of change predicted by the first theorists of CO2 induced warming 100 years ago, when they knew precious little about the subject. It was the size of change predicted by the initial mid 1970s computer models, with large known errors since found in their assumptions. The real source of ice ages, long-scale variations in earth's orbital eccentricity, was rediscovered and became widely understood only in the 1970s, soon after the first global warming computer models.
The 5 C figure remains the key prediction of the UN climate modeling group, no matter how many extra mystery power terms they have to add, when CO2 changes are shown to be unable to produce effects that large. One wag called it "Planck's constant" - a law of nature. The theory can change, but the prediction never. Because the whole thing originated in an attempt to explain ice ages, and so is tied to predicting a change of the same scale as ice ages.
Ever since we found out what really causes ice ages, all such theories have "overexplained" them. Meaning, if such theories were right ice ages should have been twice as intense as they actually were, because they are independently explained twice over. This is one of two basic problems with all the existing CO2 warming theories.
The other basic problem is they predict the wrong scale of temperature response from the power terms they find for greenhouse effect of increased CO2 concentration. The power expected from the scale of changes seen in the past is on the order of 1 watt per square meter, while that for projected future changes, up to doubling of atmospheric CO2, are around 2-2.5 watts per square meter.
But they only arrive at large scale predicted temperature changes from those by the mistake of a linear predicted response between power and temperature. When the well known physical law in the matter is that the power needed to maintain a higher equilibrium temperature goes as the fourth power of the temperature (in degrees kelvin). So even on the highest projections of CO2 effects, they are missing 3/4ths of the power they need.
The real scale of expected effect from observed CO2 variations is in 10ths of 1 degree C. Which fits the data better than their own models. Since they must save the 5 C prediction to maintain the scare mongering interest and policy implication aspects of the whole affair, they just wave their hands and pretend there must be positive feedbacks somewhere that quadruple the power effect, for some reason only of CO2 variations, without amplifying every other variation in the system. Which is just an epicycle hunt. They have no reason to expect such things physically, and can't even name the power source.
Whenever they are asked for one, they wave their hands and invent some possible mechanism without any evidence. When it is checked by serious physicists, the sign is usually in the wrong direction or the wrong order of magnitude or both. For instance, for a long time they hope to find such amplifiers in cloud effects. But clouds are net coolers, and cloud cover has shown a small net increase since the CO2 spike, making it a damping force not an amplifying one.
The global warming emperor has no clothes. They engage in this sort of popular-opinion astrology instead of explaining where the missing power is supposed to come from because they can't do the latter, while the former is as easy as prophesying doom due to unfavorable omens. Which is all it amounts to, until they produce a non-mystical power budget explaining what is supposed to keep the "lights" on in their predicted future.
It takes an enourmous amount of power operating continually to keep a big object glowing even slighter hotter indefinitely. Just like an electric stove, unless the power is still on, any warmer body just cools off again rapidly by radiating away its heat energy in the infrared. Any allegation of a higher equilibrium temperature therefore requires a power budget to explain where the sustaining power is coming from.
They don't have one. Yes, atmospheric greenhouse from CO2 can contribute a continually operating power source for this, but it is an order of magnitude too small for the scale of effects they are predicting, and can only account for 10ths of a degree C temperature changes. It is easy to see why.
CO2 is a trace element in the atmosphere, far below 1% of its composition. Changes on the order of double or half in its concentration are therefore changes on the same order - less than 1% of the atmosphere. And CO2 acts only slightly differently than other gases, due to different sensitivities to this or that color of light. Second order changes in 1000s of parts of the atmosphere, therefore. And the atmosphere as a whole is only the third factor in global temperatures, behind sunlight heating and rotation cooling. Neither of which changes with atmospheric concentrations of anything.
Small changes in marginal effects of trace elements in the third cause of earth mean temperature do not produce enourmous changes in earth mean temperature.
Haven't seen you around Freeperville for awhile, JasonC.
No, I considered it; see reply 15.
Ummm...this is bad?
No, it's quite a good thing. Envirowhackos like to sit in their air conditioned offices and cubicles and try to dictate to the world that we have to freeze global ecology forever exactly where it was 300 years ago at the end of the Little Ice Age, when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were at the lowest levels in geological history, and to 'restore' wetlands which are mostly artifacts of glaciation, so that hordes of disease carrying mosquitoes can proliferate. They don't really know what they're talking about and a lot of them are misanthropes, IAC.
That's an easy one. Warmer ocean waters produce more atmospheric water vapor by evaporation, which leads to more precipitation (snow). Glacial advance is caused by more snow on the glacial source if ablation rate remains constant. Even if ablation rate increases, if snowfall on the glacial source increases (and there's a lag time of several years, too), then the glacier will advance.
That's why glacial advance/retreat is not a good indicator of short-term (decadal scale) global warming or cooling trends, because glacial advance and retreat is a combination of meteorological factors.
A more specific reference as to where this comment is directed would allow an actual response.
This is directed at one specific population of organisms. The Hudson Bay polar bears are the southernmost population of polar bears in the world. A warming trend (and specifically a change in sea ice dynamics) will affect them first and more drastically than polar bear populations in colder zones.
I think what you're saying is that other populations may expand their range. That's true and it's also an indicator. So I should have said that borderline populations will be stressed most by an environmental trend that is negative with respect to their survivability. Other borderline populations could be augmented by the same trend because it is positive with respect to their survivability. Right?
Polar bears hunt seals. They have to be on the ice to do that. Longer winters mean more time to catch and eat seals.
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