• 04Jan

    The Earth is Warming…So What?!

    Global Warming, Science

    In the Alberta engineering community, there’s a lively (and mostly civil) debate occurring on global warming*. Being an engineer in Alberta,  I figure why should I leave the debate out of EE.

    That said, there are limits to the debate that I will allow here at EE. Those limits are perhaps best described by my position on the subject:

    1. I accept that the Earth may be in the midst of a warming trend.

    2. I have not seen any evidence that has withstood scrutiny that humans are the cause of this trend.

    3. I have not seen any evidence that has withstood scrutiny that this warming trend is catastrophic/runaway/etc.

    So let’s have some fun with this. The asylum is now open.

    *This debate can be (mostly) found in the “Reader’s Forum” section of the APEGGA newsletter: The PEGG. It’s interesting to follow – once you get past the kooks on the extreme ends of the spectrum.

    Posted by JJS P.Eng. @ 1:48 pm

7 Responses

WP_Cloudy
  • JJS P.Eng. Says:
    January 6th, 2010 at 8:16 am

    Before anyone mentions that most climate models predict “such and such” and “agree with one another”, take this into account:

    The current generation of climate-prediction models are, as Lowell Wood puts it, “enormously crude.” …

    “The climate models are crude in space and they’re crude in time,” he continues. “So there’s an enormous amount of natural phenomena they can’t model. They can’t do even giant storms like hurricanes.”

    There are several reasons for this, [Nathan] Myhrvold [of Intellectual Ventures (IV)] explains. Today’s models use a grid of cells to map the earth, and those grids are too large to allow for the modeling of actual weather. Smaller and more accurate grids would require better modeling software, which would require more computing power. “We’re trying to predict climate change 20 to 30 years from now,” he says, “but it will take us almost the same amount of time for the computer industry to give us fast enough computers to do the job.”

    That said, most current climate models tend to produce similar predictions. This might lead one to reasonably conclude that climate scientists have a pretty good handle on the future.

    Not so, says Wood.

    “Everybody turns their knobs” — that is, adjusts the control parameters and coefficients of their models — “so they aren’t the outlier, because the outlying model is going to have difficulty getting funded.” In other words, the economic reality of research funding, rather than a disinterested and unco-ordinated scientific consensus, leads the models to approximately match one another. It isn’t that current climate models should be ignored, Wood says — but, when considering the fate of the planet, one should properly appreciate their limited nature.

    As Wood, Myhrvold and the other scientists discuss the various conventional wisdoms surrounding global warming, few, if any, survive unscathed.

    The emphasis on carbon dioxide? “Misplaced,” says Wood.

    Why?

    “Because carbon dioxide is not the major greenhouse gas. The major greenhouse gas is water vapour.” But current climate models “do not know how to handle water vapour and various types of clouds. That is the elephant in the corner of this room. I hope we’ll have good numbers on water vapour by 2020 or thereabouts.”

    Myhrvold cites a recent paper asserting that carbon dioxide may have had little to do with recent warming. Instead, all the heavy-particulate pollution we generated in earlier decades seems to have cooled the atmosphere by dimming the sun. That was the global cooling that caught scientists’ attention in the 1970s.

    The trend began to reverse when we started cleaning up our air. “So most of the warming seen over the past few decades,” Myhrvold says, “might actually be due to good environmental stewardship!” [emphasis mine]

    from “Paging Dr. Who” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner @ NP

    If one also includes the particular revelation from “Climategate” that the computer models can’t even balance the energy budget, then current climate models, while a good endeavour to pursue, cannot be considered as solid evidence or even a useful scientific tool.

    From the link:

    On Oct 14, 2009, at 10:17 AM, Kevin Trenberth wrote:

    Hi Tom [Wigley]
    How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty! [emphasis mine]

  • JJS P.Eng. Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 12:34 pm

    More great stuff from Levitt & Dubner:

    Not so many years ago, schoolchildren were taught that carbon dioxide is the naturally occurring lifeblood of plants, just as oxygen is ours. Today, children are more likely to think of carbon dioxide as a poison. That’s because the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased substantially over the past 100 years, from about 280 parts per million to 380.

    But what people don’t know, say the scientists at Intellectual Ventures labs in Bellevue, Wash., is that the carbon dioxide level some 80 million years ago — back when our mammalian ancestors were evolving — was at least 1,000 parts per million. In fact, that is the concentration of carbon dioxide you regularly breathe if you work in a new energy-efficient office building, for that is the level established by the engineering group that sets standards for heating and ventilation systems.

  • JJS P.Eng. Says:
    February 24th, 2010 at 10:09 am

    Since I’m the only one commenting here, allow me to continue with another gem, “Carbon dioxide is already absorbing almost all it can”:

    The natural greenhouse effect is real, and it does keep us warm, but it’s already reached its peak performance.

    For a better picture, see the graph on the linked page. It’s an eye-opener.

    Joanne Nova also deals with the graph’s critics nicely:

    There have been plenty of people who have claimed the log graph is totally, completely, utterly wrong. Desmog argued that Earth’s atmosphere wasn’t even close to saturated: “…look at Venus.” So I did, and demolished that point in this reply. (Basically, Venus’s atmosphere is 90 times denser than Earth’s. No wonder it’s hot. It wouldn’t matter what gas was in it’s atmosphere).

    JunkScience.com provides another demoltion of the “runaway greenhouse effect on Venus” argument here.

  • JJS P.Eng. Says:
    March 5th, 2010 at 7:54 am

    There’s a saying: “What goes around, comes around.”

    Some global warming skeptics are using the enduring deep freeze and record snowfalls to attack the idea of global warming. Believers are crying foul. “You’re confusing weather with climate!” they insist.

    And they’re right. But they invented the game a long time ago and have been deftly playing it ever since. [Emphasis mine]

    Weather Hype, Climate Tripe @ National Post

  • William Wallace Says:
    March 26th, 2010 at 2:17 am

    But do you accept that the Earth may be in the midst of a cooling trend?

  • JJS P.Eng. Says:
    March 29th, 2010 at 9:07 am

    Good day WW. Long time no see/comment.

    But do you accept that the Earth may be in the midst of a cooling trend?

    It depends on your starting point. The implied starting point from the OP was around 1800. However, if you mean since 1998 “the Earth may be in the midst of a cooling trend”, I can’t argue with the data. Time will tell if this is another “short” cooling trend (similar to 1940-1970) or part of a greater, longer term cooling trend.

    BTW, did you have a Carbon Party on Saturday? ;)

  • JJS P.Eng. Says:
    April 23rd, 2010 at 9:23 am

    I believe chunkdz posted a similar link at TT, but I think this list deserves a place at EE, too.

    700 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming
    -Popular Technology.net

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