My belief in Global Warming is getting shaky

[Flying Binghi]

.....yet, cools it does !

[modest]

Originally Posted by Turtle

curious about where/how the heat from the core figures in to what is radiated from surface?

Good question!

The heat flux from the internal heat flow of the earth is approximatly 75 . This is given here:

Google book source

To convert 75 to watts per meter squared (since those were the units we were using),



The contribution is then 0.075 . This is verified by this source:

Allen's Astrophysical Quantities

which gives values of .078 W/m^2 for the ocean and .0565 for land.

Thus, the heat contribution available to the lower atmosphere and upper crust from the core is approximately 0.075 W/m^2 compared to the approximately 1360 W/m^2 available from the sun. That's about .005%—it is not significant for the calculation.

I hesitate to point at this source, because the first 4 paragraphs are unhelpful and slightly wrong, but it does (at the bottom) the same calculation in the same context as above.

~modest

[Flying Binghi]

I have read several posts in this forum commenting on the oceans absorbing excesive CO2.

Seems there is a different view


Scientists have issued a new warning about climate change after discovering a sudden and dramatic collapse in the amount of carbon emissions absorbed by the Sea of Japan.

The shift has alarmed experts, who blame global warming.

Sea absorbing less CO2, scientists discover | Environment | The Guardian

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by Flying Binghi

I have read several posts in this forum commenting on the oceans absorbing excesive CO2.

Seems there is a different view


Scientists have issued a new warning about climate change after discovering a sudden and dramatic collapse in the amount of carbon emissions absorbed by the Sea of Japan.

The shift has alarmed experts, who blame global warming.

Sea absorbing less CO2, scientists discover | Environment | The Guardian

The ocean, like all natural systems, has a limited capacity. There is a point where the ocean becomes acidified with carbonic acid and cannot absorb as much CO2.

Carbon sink - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Flying Binghi]

The ocean, like all natural systems, has a limited capacity. There is a point where the ocean becomes acidified with carbonic acid and cannot absorb as much CO2.

Thats interesting.... Hmmm, I wonder what happens to excess CO2 trapped under the Artic ice ?

Aparently there are some very big undersea volcanoes under the Artic ice cap, and some big bangs of late (has been covered in other threads)

Massive amounts of CO2 released - where did it go ? absorbed by the sea water ?

(extract)
During the first half of 1999, a long-lived volcanic-spreading event occurred on the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean. The seismicity associated with this event was unprecedented in duration and magnitude for a seafloor eruption.

Perhaps the closest analogue to the Gakkel event would be the 1783 Laki fissure eruption in Iceland, which produced 14 km3 of lava over about 8 months of seismic activity covering a section 27 km long...

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~tolsto...toy_Gakkel.pdf


(extract)
...data demonstrate that eruptions along the (Gakkel) ridge are larger and more frequent than previously theorized.

G. Michael Purdy, director of Lamont-Doherty, said, "A recent eruption on such a slow spreading ridge reaffirms the fact that we live in an era of discovery in ocean sciences. There remains much that is unknown, and even more that is not understood about the sea floor of our own planet

News Archive - The Earth Institute at Columbia University

And a map - Earthquake record, Artic area
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/avetiso...es/avfig06.gif

Map from here - http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/avetisov/TOC.htm

[Galapagos]

I stuck my nose in the climate science blogosphere and turned up some interesting stuff.

First, C Beck from A Few Things Ill Considered shares a gargantuan compilation of climate science news, and apparently one that can be expected weekly:
A Few Things Ill Considered : Another Week of GW News, January 11, 2009


Also, a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters on Dec 30 2008 entitled "How unusual is the recent series of warm years?" attempts to answer the question asked in the title:

Originally Posted by Abstract

Previous statistical detection methods based partially on climate model simulations indicate that, globally, the observed warming lies very probably outside the natural variations. We use a more simple approach to assess recent warming at different spatial scales without making explicit use of climate simulations. It considers the likelihood that the observed recent clustering of warm record-breaking mean temperatures at global, regional and local scales may occur by chance in a stationary climate. Under two statistical null-hypotheses, autoregressive and long-memory, this probability turns to be very low: for the global records lower than p = 0.001, and even lower for some regional records. The picture for the individual long station records is not as clear, as the number of recent record years is not as large as for the spatially averaged temperatures.

Good coverage for those of us out of the loop over at Open Mind:

‘Tain’t Likely Open Mind
Every year this century is among the top-10 hottest years on record. In fact the clustering of hottest years is even more lop-sided than that would indicate; by the end of 2006 it was noted that the 13 hottest years on record had all occurred since 1990 (and we’ve added a couple more to that list since then). How unlikely is that?

Precisely that question is addressed in “How unusual is the recent series of warm years?” (Zorita et al. 2008, Geophysical Research Letters 35, L24706 doi:10.1029/GL036228). The conclusion can be summed up in a phrase best said with a strong Maine accent: ’tain’t likely.

I also stumbled across this: a recent Pew survey indicates that the same crowd known for rejecting the fact of evolution--conservative Republicans -- also doubt that humans have played a part in climate change more than other affiliations.
Why is the Right associated with such anti-scientific sentiments? Is this really the best we can do-- either the Democrats, or the anti-science religious nutters? It didn't seem like much of a choice on election day, and this data further reflects that asymmetric dichotomy.

[Flying Binghi]

Why is the Right associated with such anti-scientific sentiments? Is this really the best we can do-- either the Democrats, or the anti-science religious nutters? It didn't seem like much of a choice on election day, and this data further reflects that asymmetric dichotomy.

Well, this atheist Labour voter me, knows i'm winning an AGW debate when somebody trys to bring that sort of a comment to the debate

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by Flying Binghi

Thats interesting.... Hmmm, I wonder what happens to excess CO2 trapped under the Artic ice ?

Aparently there are some very big undersea volcanoes under the Artic ice cap, and some big bangs of late (has been covered in other threads)

Massive amounts of CO2 released - where did it go ? absorbed by the sea water ?

(extract)
During the first half of 1999, a long-lived volcanic-spreading event occurred on the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean. The seismicity associated with this event was unprecedented in duration and magnitude for a seafloor eruption.

Perhaps the closest analogue to the Gakkel event would be the 1783 Laki fissure eruption in Iceland, which produced 14 km3 of lava over about 8 months of seismic activity covering a section 27 km long...

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~tolsto...toy_Gakkel.pdf


(extract)
...data demonstrate that eruptions along the (Gakkel) ridge are larger and more frequent than previously theorized.

G. Michael Purdy, director of Lamont-Doherty, said, "A recent eruption on such a slow spreading ridge reaffirms the fact that we live in an era of discovery in ocean sciences. There remains much that is unknown, and even more that is not understood about the sea floor of our own planet

News Archive - The Earth Institute at Columbia University

And a map - Earthquake record, Artic area
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/avetiso...es/avfig06.gif

Map from here - Seismic Arctic Earthquakes G.P. Avetisov.

If you were trying to make a point, it was lost on me.
Sure, there are natural sources of CO2. There's also human induced CO2.

Are you arguing that climate change is occurring regardless of human impact?

[Biochemist]

Gentlemen-

This is a 20 minute video from 2007 that nicely encapsulates the opposing view. This video is not proprietary.


Discovery Institute


To my knowledge, there is no contest that CO2 rose over the last century. There is also certainly no contest about whether C02 can act as a greenhouse gas. The issue is whether the increase in CO2 is causal for global warming.

In this video, the argument is that warming is better correlated with solar activity over the long term (300 to 1000 years) and that the increase in temperature over the last 100 years is more likely from solar activity than from CO2 increases. It also argues that CO2 increases are generally a result of warming, not a cause (since warm oceans undeniably store less CO2 than cold ones). The recent drop of global temperatures (2008) back to about the 100 year mean supports this position.

In this discussion it is nice to avoid references to the "consensus" of scientists. Nothing in science is decided by consensus. Science is not a democracy.

Most folks see this sort of presentation and proceed to attempt to discredit the source or the sponsor (as has been done in previous posts). I think this forum deserves to focus on the underlying science, not the perceived biases of the contributors.

[Galapagos]

Originally Posted by Flying Binghi

Well, this atheist Labour voter me, knows i'm winning an AGW debate when somebody trys to bring that sort of a comment to the debate

That post wasn't directed towards you or anyone in particular, it was a few relevant links and an observation(somewhat off topic, oops!) about the party system in the USA and anti-scientific pseudoskepticism. I have not been following your debate closely(nor do I plan on it), feel free to carry on without me.

Originally Posted by Biochemist

Gentlemen-
This is a 20 minute video from 2007 that nicely encapsulates the opposing view. This video is not proprietary.


Discovery Institute

Most folks see this sort of presentation and proceed to attempt to discredit the source or the sponsor (as has been done in previous posts). I think this forum deserves to focus on the underlying science, not the perceived biases of the contributors.

The Discovery Institute is a religious propaganda mill and their websites should only be linked to on a decent science forum as a demonstration of what deceptive pseudoscience looks like.

I now quote from the wiki article:

Discovery Institute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Discovery Institute is a conservative public policy U.S. think tank based in Seattle, Washington, best known for its advocacy of intelligent design and its Teach the Controversy campaign to teach creationist anti-evolution beliefs in United States public high school science courses.[2][3][4][5][6] A federal court, along with the majority of scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, say the Institute has manufactured the controversy they want to teach by promoting a false perception that evolution is "a theory in crisis", through incorrectly claiming that it is the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community.[7][8][9] In 2005, a federal court ruled that the Discovery Institute pursues "demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions",[10] and the institute's manifesto, the Wedge strategy, describes a religious goal: to "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions".[11][12]