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To: metmom
No hard evidence of that.

That's not how science works. Science is about data supporting an explanatory framework (colloquially called a "theory", but that gets confusing). Data and analyses of the data are interpreted in terms of how well they support alternate frameworks. A framework that gets considerable support from the observational data is considered a good explanation.

Thus, you get something like this:

Climate sensitivity constrained by CO2 concentrations over the past 420 million years (PDF)

Here's a readable summary:

Long-term geological record puts minimum value on climate sensitivity

Quote: "We were able to accomplish this tuning because one of the factors in the geochemical model is the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature," said Royer. "We found that the deep-time geological records exclude the possibility of weak climate sensitivities: we conclude that the amount of warming for every doubling of carbon dioxide must be at least 1.5 °C."

Thus, the data and analyses of this study support the explanatory framework -- the relationship of atmospheric CO2 concentrations and global temperatures.

Nowadays, man-made global warming caused by increasing CO2 levels are being blamed for taking us into the next ice age. ... You did know, didn't you, that global warming causes temperatures to drop?

Yes. Read about the Younger Dryas

If you can make sense of that, let me know.

"The dense water masses that sink into the deep basins are formed in quite specific areas of the North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean. In these polar regions, seawater at the surface of the ocean is intensively cooled by the wind. Wind moving over the water also produces a great deal of evaporation, leading to a decrease in temperature, called evaporative cooling. Evaporation removes only molecules of pure water, resulting in an increase in the salinity of the seawater left behind, and thus an increase in the density of the water mass. In the Norwegian Sea evaporative cooling is predominant, and the sinking water mass, the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW), fills the basin and spills southwards through crevasses in the submarine sills that connect Greenland, Iceland and Great Britain. It then flows very slowly into the deep abyssal plains of the Atlantic, always in a southerly direction. Flow from the Arctic Ocean Basin into the Pacific, however, is blocked by the narrow shallows of the Bering Strait."

If the cold water masses don't sink, extremely cold water stays at the ocean surface and thus the polar cold is not shunted into the deep ocean. So instead it would cool the atmosphere, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere and predominantly in North America and Europe.

46 posted on 03/20/2008 9:26:48 AM PDT by cogitator
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To: cogitator

There are far more variables to weather and climate than just CO2. There’s just no way it can all be attributed to one factor.

CO2 is only the third strongest greenhouse gas to begin with.

There’s no way the ocean’s circulation is going to stop.

Even if all that cold water got dammed up at the poles, doesn’t necessarily mean that it would cool the continents south of it. The Hadley cells don’t permit much interchange of atmosphere between the polar regions and the temperate regions so you’re not going to have much cooling through the atmosphere. And if the oceans circulation stops, unlikely as it seems, then there’s no cold water being drawn out to cool the continents.

The alleged drop in temperatures of the poles is not going to cool the whole planet. All it would do is increase the temperature gradient some between the equator and the poles.

Global warming is not going to cause global cooling. SOME parts, might temporarily get colder than others but that happens now anyway and that’s called weather.


47 posted on 03/20/2008 10:07:31 AM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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