From the University of Washington some apparent confusion about what sulfates look like.
Injecting sulfate particles into stratosphere won’t fully offset climate change
IMAGE:A polar bear walks along an expanse of open water at the edge of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Manitoba, in 2011. The bears need pack ice to hunt for…Click here for more information.
As the reality and the impact of climate warming have become clearer in the last decade, researchers have looked for possible engineering solutions – such as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or directing the sun’s heat away from Earth – to help offset rising temperatures.
New University of Washington research demonstrates that one suggested method, injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere, would likely achieve only part of the desired effect, and could carry serious, if unintended, consequences.
The lower atmosphere already contains tiny sulfate and sea salt particles, called aerosols, that reflect energy from the sun into space. Some have suggested injecting sulfate particles directly into the stratosphere to enhance the effect, and also to reduce the rate of future warming that would result from continued increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
But a UW modeling study shows that sulfate particles in the stratosphere will not necessarily offset all the effects of future increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Additionally, there still is likely to be significant warming in regions where climate change impacts originally prompted a desire for geoengineered solutions, said Kelly McCusker, a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences.
The modeling study shows that significant changes would still occur because even increased aerosol levels cannot balance changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulation brought on by higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
“There is no way to keep the climate the way it is now. Later this century, you would not be able to recreate present-day Earth just by adding sulfate aerosols to the atmosphere,” McCusker said.
She is lead author of a paper detailing the findings published online in December in the Journal of Climate. Coauthors are UW atmospheric sciences faculty David Battisti and Cecilia Bitz.
Using the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Community Climate System Model version 3 and working at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, the researchers found that there would, in fact, be less overall warming with a combination of increased atmospheric aerosols and increased carbon dioxide than there would be with just increased carbon dioxide.
They also found that injecting sulfate particles into the atmosphere might even suppress temperature increases in the tropics enough to prevent serious food shortages and limit negative impacts on tropical organisms in the coming decades.
But temperature changes in polar regions could still be significant. Increased winter surface temperatures in northern Eurasia could have serious ramifications for Arctic marine mammals not equipped to adapt quickly to climate change. In Antarctic winters, changes in surface winds would also bring changes in ocean circulation with potentially significant consequences for ice sheets in West Antarctica.
Even with geoengineering, there still could be climate emergencies – such as melting ice sheets or loss of polar bear habitat – in the polar regions, the scientists concluded. They added that the odds of a “climate surprise” would be high because the uncertainties about the effects of geoengineering would be added to existing uncertainties about climate change.
The research was funded by the Tamaki Foundation and the National Science Foundation.
“The modeling study shows that significant changes would still occur because even increased aerosol levels cannot balance changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulation brought on by higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
Somebody tell Hansen.
These….people….are….mad…..
Oh my aching gut. “Climate emergencies” is it now? Despite the best efforts of geo-engineering?
It’s “double-down” time, apparently.
Where is the DEA when needed …?
Trying to create a volcano winter …
Once you perturb a complex system, no amount of band-aid after the fact tampering can set things back to where they were. Decades of climate effects from the 40% increase in CO2 is already “baked into the cake” so to speak, and trying to turn off the oven won’t undue the baking that is already underway. But, as a matter of principle, I’m opposed to geoengineering efforts anyway. Just look at the rise of super-bacteria is hospitals caused by the use of ever stronger antibacterial compounds. Unintended consequences can often be worse than the problem they hope to remedy.
Final para:
“……… existing uncertainties about climate change.”
But I thought the science was settled …………………… .
Are they stark staring mad.
Answers on a post card.
My skills are not up to it, but I wonder whether some of WUWT readers could start a programming project. My idea is that some sceptics could make computer models of the CAGW models. They would not have to be based on real world climate or science, but would only need to be models of how the models act. For instance, feed in “world temperatures are increasing”, and the model-model would spit out “expect massive death, ecological disaster, dogs sleeping with cats!” On the other hand, feed in “world temperatures are decreasing”, and the model-model would say, “No! It is REALLY increasing, expect massive death, ecological disaster, dogs sleeping with cats, and besides, it’s our fault anyway!”
Once the model-model was available, I am sure that the CAGW proponents would quickly take advantage of it. After all, it says exactly what they want to hear, and using it would cut their outlay on computer hardware, leaving more funding for travel to highly impacted locations — like Hawaii or Tahiti.
“…such as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or directing the sun’s heat away from Earth…”
Can’t help but cringe when I read stuff like that. Direct the Sun’s heat away from the Earth (I don’t think the solar industry would approve)? The random stuff they propose is like having a blind man try to do complex surgery.
I thought we could offset the effects of global warming if only we would all paint our roofs white.
Imagine if we covered all those asphalts roads with something more reflective, or just covered them with parasols?
R. Gates says:
“Decades of climate effects from the 40% increase in CO2 is already ‘baked into the cake’ so to speak, and trying to turn off the oven won’t undue the baking that is already underway.”
Can’t let that baseless conjecture pass without a refutation. Yes, there has been a large increase in [entirely beneficial] CO2. However, there are no measurable, testable “climate effects” that can be definitively attributed to CO2. None – as in “N-O-N-E”.
“Baked into the cake” is a nonsense analogy. It is not science, it is evidence-free belief. Come to think of it, that’s what 99.999% of climate alarmism is.
But we’ve done so well at problem-solving mankind our environment! We’ve transplanted rabbits to Australia, possums to New Zealand, nutria to the Gulf Coast wetlands…what the hell, why not have a go at the global climate?
“climate emergencies”
What’s next, “rapid evolution”?
……oh…..
https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/carollee/web/Lee/CORE.html
Isn’t 40% of FA still FA?
DaveE.
“My idea is that some sceptics could make computer models of the CAGW models.”
How hard is it to prorgram “y = mx + b”?
Weren’t they claiming that the lack of warming was due to sulfates? Doesn’t this mean they can’t use that excuse anymore, and have to come up with another explanation for why we haven’t seen the warming they predicted?
bladeshearer,
Don’t forget kudzu. [pics]
So far the global warming has been mild and beneficial. Why bioengineer anything unless that changes for the worse ?
The lie is in the “catastrophe” !
Even if we use significantly more CO2 there will not be a catastrophe in the next 300 years.
After that they can move the planet if they want.
hhhmmm. Models all the way down again!
These people are bat$hit crazy! Holy crap! These people need a hearing to determine that they are of no harm to themselves!
R. Gates says:
January 25, 2012 at 11:56 am
Once you perturb a complex system, no amount of band-aid after the fact tampering can set things back to where they were …
===========================
Several million years ago, Mother Nature, in an apparent fit of reckless tampering with the earth’s climate system, initiated a set of climatic perturbations which resulted in a series of ices ages, each one with a cooling and warming cycle.
You mean to tell us that through the course of these multiple cooling and warming cycles, there was no point in time where the earth’s climate was similar in character, more or less, to a corresponding point in some previous cooling-warming cycle?
Bladeshearer: Would warmistas be the Cane Toads of the scientific world, poisoning the ponds and killing everything in sight, while breeding without limit?
“directing the sun’s heat away from Earth – to help offset rising temperatures.”
If one didn’t know they were just using alarmism to get more money, one might conclude they are actually trying to kill us! Or, at least longing for it.
Are people that stupid to fall for this? And are they that arrogant that they think people WILL fall for it?
Climate surprise?
That sounds fun. Personally I’ve got bored with the dull, boring, old fashioned predictable climate and I’m quite looking forward to some of that.
“could carry serious, if unintended, consequences.”
Exactly what liberal ideas don’t?
With a little luck, Al Gore will not see any polar bears in Antarctica
LOL LOL
Ecotretas
“As the reality and the impact of climate warming have become clearer in the last decade, . . .” [from the press release; author unknown]
The rest of the statement is true.
R. Gates says:
January 25, 2012 at 11:56 am
“But, as a matter of principle, I’m opposed to geoengineering efforts anyway.”
That’s good! Could you tell this to your UCAR buddy, Kevin Trenberth? Thanks!
Trenberth, K.E., 2010: Fixing the planet? Science, 26, 1178-1179, doi:10.1126/science.1197874.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in 2007 that global warming is unequivocal and very likely caused by human activities, mainly through increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Projections suggest future climatic changes at rates that are apt to have major disruptive impacts on societies and the environment. To date, politicians around the world have failed to adequately deal with this major threat. Possible ways forward assessed by the IPCC include mitigation through slowing emissions of greenhouse gases and adaptation through taking steps that might ultimately enhance resilience or reduce vulnerability to observed or expected changes in climate (1). One proposed solution is geoengineering, and Eli Kintisch’s Hack the Planet examines the prospects of and past attempts at this tactic. Roger Pielke Jr.’s The Climate Fix proposes a different approach, one based on decarbonizing the economy and devoting greater efforts to adaptation.
R. Gates says:
Decades of climate effects from the 40% increase in CO2 is already “baked into the cake” so to speak, and trying to turn off the oven won’t undue the baking that is already underway. </i.
The atmosphere of the earth is not a cake. Your crummy (not crumby) analogy is half baked.
But, as a matter of principle, I’m opposed to geoengineering efforts anyway. Just look at the rise of super-bacteria is hospitals caused by the use of ever stronger antibacterial compounds. Unintended consequences can often be worse than the problem they hope to remedy.
So you oppose, as a matter of principle, the antiseptic revolution. You honestly believe that we would be better off if Pasteur and Lister had lost their battle against the scientific consensus of their day?
There is a very disturbing consistency in that.
R. Gates how come we never boiled, fried in the past when C02 was much much higher? Is there a model for that?
The amazing part is that they are not embarrassed in the slightest………..
Jason Calley says: make computer models of the CAGW models.
How about starting off with an entry for “Catastrophic Man Made Global Warming” for an online version of Mad-Libs (note cheap double entendre ) called Mad-Glibs?
Not to worry. NatGeo has a solution.
“Even with geoengineering, there still could be climate emergencies – such as melting ice sheets or loss of polar bear habitat – in the polar regions, the scientists concluded.”
Oh dear.
Poor climate scientists. Do geoengineering and the poley bears may drown in a ‘climate emergency’ – don’t do climate engineering and the poley bears may drown because of … ‘climate emergencies’ due to AGW.
What are they to do …!
Hint: when in doubt, do nothing. Count poley bears instead – you may be in for a surprise …
R. Gates says:
“But, as a matter of principle, I’m opposed to geoengineering efforts anyway.”
Exactly what moral rule or personal belief leads you to oppose geo-engineering? Does this principle extend to other planets or just Earth? If you could go back in time and stop the first photosynthesizing organisms from geo-engineering Earth with oxygen, would you? Do you oppose the practice of agriculture?
This article is polar Bearlocks.
The aerosol optical physics ion the climate models is wrong because it fails to take account of a second optical process for clouds with a bimodal droplet size distribution. The mistake was made by Sagan but he inherited part from van der Hulst.
So, the IPCC claims are wrong, as is this!
Isn’t “inject[ed] sulfates” what the ecoterrorists used to call “acid rain”?
R. Gates says:
January 25, 2012 at 11:56 am
Once you perturb a complex system, no amount of band-aid after the fact tampering can set things back to where they were. Decades of climate effects from the 40% increase in CO2 is already “baked into the cake” so to speak, and trying to turn off the oven won’t undue the baking that is already underway.
============================================
What are your plans now that it’s over?
Hansen calls coal trains “death trains” yet people who agree with him – Australia’s Tim Flannery for one, an owner of multiple waterfront properties – advocate performing experiments with the planet in an attempt to control a slight increase in average temperature which may or may not ever occur ??
Who are the insane ??
“The research was funded by the Tamaki Foundation and the National Science Foundation.”
Well that’s another few million wasted !
I think even “blind freedie” could see that there are unintended consequences to almost anything.
The other thing I can never get over is the confidence alarmists express in statements like – “Decades of climate effects from the 40% increase in CO2 is already “baked into the cake” so to speak, and trying to turn off the oven won’t undue the baking that is already underway.”
There is absolutely no empirical evidence that CO2 is responsible for the 0.7, 0.8 degrees C increase in average temperature since the little ice age ended – hell there is no verifiable evidence that this “increase” is actually not an artifact of poor temperature record keeping and an increasing urban heat island effect.
Arhennius believed in the aether.
Gotta love the symbolism though – “baked into the cake” etc – I hope it doesn’t get too hot for the icing to set – can’t stand runny icing.
“”They also found that injecting sulfate particles into the atmosphere might even suppress temperature increases in the tropics enough to prevent serious food shortages and limit negative impacts on tropical organisms in the coming decades””.
If ever this stupidity is technologically advanced enough for deployment, ya can expect some drones over ya head, and we won’t be putting cameras in them.
“Injecting sulfate particles into stratosphere won’t fully offset climate change”
The Chinese have been doing exactly that already!
Don’t these people read WUWT? See
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/05/pat-michaels-on-aerosols-china-coal-and-lack-of-recent-warming/
“The Current Wisdom: The Lack of Recent Warming and the State of Peer Review
by Patrick J. Michaels
Boston University’s Robert Kaufmann and colleagues recently published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examining the causes of the recent dearth of “global warming.” They concluded that it’s simply natural variability, augmented by increasing sulfate emissions from dramatically growing coal consumption by China.”
“The bears need pack ice to hunt for”
Maybe they should’ve learnt to hibernate during the summer month’s then instead of during the winter. Dumb as* bears or stoopid hippies?
R. Gates says:
January 25, 2012 at 11:56 am
” Decades of climate effects from the 40% increase in CO2 is already “baked into the cake” so to speak,”
I would just point out that you have, no doubt inadvertently, ommitted to cite scientific references to support this claim.
“”Rosco says:
January 25, 2012 at 1:46 pm
Arhennius believed in the aether.””
You’re up front of the pack, Rosco, congratulations.
R. Gates says:
January 25, 2012 at 11:56 am
“Once you perturb a complex system, no amount of band-aid after the fact tampering can set things back to where they were.”
Says the person who clearly has no idea what “complex system” means mathematically. Did it occur to you that points of stability can exist in complex systems?
Given the short shadow cast by the polar bear in the Image Das bear is in summer mode.
No ice? Churchill dumpsters, here we come!
R.Gates – so you state that are against hospitals and against anti-biotics, as this all breeds resistance. You also state that you are against “meddling” because of “unintended consequences”. So logically you must be against man’s invention/discovery of “fire” and ultimately the discovery of coal and other fossil fuel which can be burned to generate energy (as these activities also have “unintended consequences”).
You and Pol Pot would get along just fine.
However, I have a suspicion that, like most liberal hypocrites, when you are desperately ill with a serious bacterial infection that you will quote willing take your Doctor’s recommended prescription of anti-biotics.
So models set up with the assumption that CO2 is the main climate driver show that other inputs into these models don’t offset changes in CO2. I’m shocked
Surviving at or near the poles in the harshest of habitats on the planet makes those species that live there among the most resilient ones on the planet. Polar bears apparently had no problem surviving through sustained past periods that were several degrees warmer than this one (prior interglacial) as well as periods that were many more degrees colder making all of their claims of ‘endangerment’ from ‘climate change’ nothing but a big pile of BS to keep grant money flowing in their direction.
I notice that these charlatans generally concentrate on pointing to ‘catastrophe’ only in places where people do not live so there will be few if any witnesses in the area to refute their stories. Glaciers, Arctic ice packs, the top of some tree in Ecuador, the bottom of the ocean, etc. – it’s never about sea level rise threatening tourism in Boston or birds in my back yard starting to nest in March.
In the last 10,000 years polar bears have enjoyed a very stable climate that has varied less than ~10% of the variation they have survived over the past 120 thousand years. If anything is actually going to endanger them it is severe cold not warmth in the next ice age when they migrate south and run into us. We’ll start eating them because we won’t be able to grow enough food with half the USA covered in ice. (Who knows, maybe the last time we ate up all the wooly mammoths and mastodons?)
It’s all a matter of scale, “in character, more or less” fall apart whether its a year or 100 millennia is the only question; the scientific term is sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Edward Norton Lorenz an MIT educated mathematician and meteorologist discovered this while developing computer models of a simplified planetary weather system
So where do seals go when the pack ice is thin?
R. Gates says:
January 25, 2012 at 11:56 am
Once you perturb a complex system, no amount of band-aid after the fact tampering can set things back to where they were. Decades of climate effects from the 40% increase in CO2 is already “baked into the cake” so to speak, and trying to turn off the oven won’t undue the baking that is already underway.
The atmosphere is a heat engine. If more throttle is given, it revs up, take off throttle, revs down. See it daily & seasonally. There’s no “baking” going on, and nothing to do with cakes whatsoever.
Gates, you’re a piece of work…
Latitude says:
January 25, 2012 at 1:34 pm
@R.Gates
What are your plans now that it’s over?
Cry-o-preservation? For eventual thawing in a boiling ocean, of course. The I-toldya-so’s will be sweet.
“there still is likely to be significant warming in regions where climate change impacts originally prompted a desire for geoengineered solutions,”
What regions? I’d love to know what they are because it is freaking impossible to locate any such areas because there has been no warming in 16 years! Only an egregious ignorance of how various regions work would lead these idiots to think that there are such areas.
It is patently arrogant to assume that we influence climate match at all, let alone to the level they would like to think. But, then, to also assume that we can fix it by geoengineering, with little understanding of the consequences and effects is just stupid.
As CO2 is harmless, beneficial, and has no downside, NOT causing changes in climate, it is a given that geoengineering efforts, if effective, would have undesired consequences, as there is nothing to counter in the first place and would have a stand alone effect.
So, the bottom line is that we have not been changing climate with CO2, but they want to change climate by geoengineering. I say, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it!
After all of the hand-wringing about altering climate by human activities, they want to actually do exactly what they are all upset about. However, they want to kick us directly to an ice age.
“Did it occur to you that points of stability can exist in complex systems?”
It is the understanding of those points that we relate mathematically.
And to be fair to R. Gates, I think his inference, was that some understanding of them is wrong.
We are rapidly, with a new perspective, codifying those very points of stability, that will allow us a more complex understand of the system as a whole.
R Gates,
You say “once you perturb a complex system…..” When the final wash is over our climate will be found to operate on simple principals. Research mostly has been intense on secondary principals that are the result or the eddy currents of the first principals.
Some what like trying to understand a forest, by the intense investigation of the leaves of one tree, and ignoring the forest, recent studies have given me some heart, that some are now starting to look at the forest.
R Gates – “Decades of climate effects from the 40% increase in CO2 is already “baked into the cake” so to speak,”
Are you calling this cake half baked?
(+/- 10%)
“”They concluded that it’s simply natural variability, augmented by increasing sulfate emissions from dramatically growing coal consumption by China.””
Nope, couldn’t be a natural phenomenon, as man are so powerful , we must be some cause of it.
The ice melts off of Hudson Bay every summer, but the folks in Churchill, Manitoba are up to their arm pits in polar bears. Every documentary film maker who wants to make a tear jerker about polar bears goes to Churchill for that reason. The bears must be eating at McDonalds.
If this is an example of University of Washington research, somebody should work on pulling their accreditation.
I wonder if these researchers even know what sulfates (sulphates for those in the UK and Oz) are? One good definition is a salt of sulfuric acid. That would be solids such as ammonium sulfate, copper sulfate, and etc. In the atmosphere the EPA classes these as particulates, and has ambient air standards for the amount allowed in the air. Liquid aerosols such as sulfuric acid itself are also measured as particulates.
And how do sulfates get into the air? A lot of them are formed by the conversion of SO2 in stack gases to the SO3 radial in sunlight. The SO3 combines with the water vapor in the air to form sulfuric acid- which comes out the air as- you guessed it- “acid rain”. Which is why the EPA has ambient air standards for SO2.
So for 40 years the EPA has been trying to get sulfates out the air, because they are unhealthy. And they have been successful at it. The EPA maps of those U.S. Counties that exceed the standards show very few counties exceeding the standard. See:
http://www.epa.gov/oar/oaqps/greenbk/index.html
And now climate researchers want to put sulfates back in the air to solve a non-existent problem? Madness! But is does keep the grant money flowing.
“So where do seals go when the pack ice is thin?”
I dunno. If you see a crowd of Polar Bears, or of Inuits, ask them.
Scott Brim says:
January 25, 2012 at 12:31 pm
R. Gates says:
January 25, 2012 at 11:56 am
Once you perturb a complex system, no amount of band-aid after the fact tampering can set things back to where they were …
===========================
Several million years ago, Mother Nature, in an apparent fit of reckless tampering with the earth’s climate system, initiated a set of climatic perturbations which resulted in a series of ices ages, each one with a cooling and warming cycle.
You mean to tell us that through the course of these multiple cooling and warming cycles, there was no point in time where the earth’s climate was similar in character, more or less, to a corresponding point in some previous cooling-warming cycle?
—————
Your analogy makes no sense. The climate responds to forcings. “Mother Nature” is a human created anthropomorphism, as is the the notion of “reckless tampering”. Some forcings on the climate system are gradual and cycle back and forth over long periods of time, while some are rapid, resulting in sudden changes to climate. In all cases, the Earth is never the same way twice, and the law of entropy and times arrow will guarantee that no two periods of Earth’s history are ever exactly the same as the conditions, arrangement of the continents, output of the sun, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere are never ever exactly the same way twice. The best thing you can hope for in studying the climate are close analogues between two periods.
In the case of the rapid climate changes, which, because they are such a shock to the climate system, they can also be quite violent and disruptive of course. One can think of events such a comet strike, a large supervolcanic eruption, etc as perfect examples. The world is rapidly changed and never the same again. The question remains open as to what the rapid build up in greenhouse gases will bring as the earth system repsonses to this have only begun. In any case, I do not support any sort of geoengineering attempts to “fix” things, as we don’t even know what might be broken or the unintended consequences of such a fix.
slow to follow says:
January 25, 2012 at 3:36 pm
R Gates – “Decades of climate effects from the 40% increase in CO2 is already “baked into the cake” so to speak,”
Are you calling this cake half baked?
——–
Yeah, something like that. We’ve got a lot of earth system changes still to be played out from the greenhouse gases already added, and of course, we are still inching up the forcing thermostat year by year.
beng says:
January 25, 2012 at 3:12 pm
R. Gates says:
January 25, 2012 at 11:56 am
Once you perturb a complex system, no amount of band-aid after the fact tampering can set things back to where they were. Decades of climate effects from the 40% increase in CO2 is already “baked into the cake” so to speak, and trying to turn off the oven won’t undue the baking that is already underway.
The atmosphere is a heat engine. If more throttle is given, it revs up, take off throttle, revs down. See it daily & seasonally. There’s no “baking” going on, and nothing to do with cakes whatsoever.
————–
Sorry you fail to understand the momentum of the climate system can take decades and even centuries to work back to equilibrium once a forcing has been initiated on the scope of a 40% increase in CO2, and similar large increases in methane and N2O. The analogy to a cake was a bit allegorical, but perhaps such things are lost on certain people.
Jeremy says:
January 25, 2012 at 2:38 pm
R.Gates – so you state that are against hospitals and against anti-biotics, as this all breeds resistance.
——–
Never stated I was against hospitals. Please quote me correctly, or don’t attempt to quote me at all.
R Gates is concerned about unintended consequences,
when his Lefties allies in Congress have been on a 100-year rampage
of unintended consequences of follies from rent control to high tax rates.
Hell, the unintended consequences of Big Government of the last century
has been a reduction of present GNP by at least a factor of 10,
to say nothing of rampant illiteracy, illegitimacy, and fatherlessness.
One thing all Lefties never care a whit about is unintended consequences.
If hysteria takes hold and aerosols start being placed on purpose, those responsible may end up being mass murderers of billions of people. We’re already nearing the end of the interglacial (geologically speaking) this would really be tempting fate and could pull in the end point by thousands of years.
I think that we should take this research very seriously and listen to what this young researcher has to say.
If I’m not very mistaken, her main conclusion is that there is more to this world’s glories and mysteries, dear Horatio, than you have ever dreamed about. More even than the quantity of yon aerosols, forsooth. So DO NOT, under pain of expulsion from the great cult of AGW ….. Do not go meddling with things that you do not understand in any which way.
now who could quarrel with that?
R. Gates says:
January 25, 2012 at 11:56 am
Take a closed container of air at room temperature and inject into it sufficient CO2 to raise the CO2 concentration to 5,000 PPM. After two weeks time what will be the temperature inside the container? After one month? One year?
Human-induced versus Natural Changes
The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 and the subsequent effects seen in the stratosphere from all those natural sulphates happened despite the hand-ringing of R Gates and others in any event.
Nature’s mighty inventions in the stratosphere in form of Krakatoa, Tambora, Pinatubo, (unlike the FRAUDULENT computer-modelled CONCOCTIONS of Mann, Tremberth & Co) actually result in observable phenomena with verifiable consequences.
Personally, I still believe that events are not random in the least but behind all the events that we witness there is a determining and directing hand.
As Einstein put it so eloquently, God does not play dice with the universe.
With undying gratitude to Newton, Darwin and Einstein, mankind can understand the phenomena we witness.
We not longer have to fear the wrath of Zeus or sacrifice humans for the sake of soil fertility.
The extent of nature’s interventions are in most cases many orders of magnitude greater than the pathetic and ultimately futile proposals of the self-serving warmista freakshow and their hangers-on such as their fervent supporters, including Lehman CEO, Dick Fuld.
When all else fails, there is always the carbon trading fall-back position to fleece a few more sheep.
The opportunity to pick the pockets of the unwary was to good for the present Australian Government to resist.
Next year, the sheep of Perth, who have not cottoned onto the extent of the fraud perpetrated upon them, will find that they cannot run their air-conditioners because of the extortionate carbon tax on electricity and the subsidies being paid for supposedly green power.
The warmistas are purporting to solve a problem that clearly does not exist except in very localised circumstances in the real world. The IGNoble prize for cherry picking data is richly deserved.
Anybody remember King Canute and his claim to fame?
Unfortunately some forms of Human Bio-engineering in the form of deforestation, stripping the world’s oceans of its fish, unsustainable industrial agricultural practices, air pollution resulting in the formation of the Asian Brown Cloud and the list goes on, are truly catastrophic!
Those who adapt to the coming cold will survive. The mammoths, unlike their cousins the elephants, despite their woolly coats did not make it.
The cake as R. Gates has correctly pointed out is already baked.
The bed has been made and for better or worse you have no choice other than to sleep in it.
The cold is well on its way. Be prepared.
Robert in Perth (soon to be back in South Africa) says:
January 25, 2012 at 7:15 pm
Human-induced versus Natural Changes
The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 and the subsequent effects seen in the stratosphere from all those natural sulphates happened despite the hand-ringing of R Gates and others in any event.
____
Sorry, but I wasn’t around in 1883, and had I been, I’m not the type for “hand-ringing”. Yes, natural forcings from volcanoes, the sun, and ENSO have relatively short-term impacts on climate. But the largest and most rapid increase in CO2 in 800,000 years, and likely several million years, is a much different kind and degree of forcing, with longer-term impact that will be felt in the climate system for far longer than even Krakatoa.
Interstellar Bill says:
January 25, 2012 at 5:26 pm
R Gates is concerned about unintended consequences,
when his Lefties allies in Congress have been on a 100-year rampage
of unintended consequences of follies from rent control to high tax rates.
Hell, the unintended consequences of Big Government of the last century
has been a reduction of present GNP by at least a factor of 10,
to say nothing of rampant illiteracy, illegitimacy, and fatherlessness.
One thing all Lefties never care a whit about is unintended consequences.
______
While you prattle on, let those who are wise see that some of the most profitable companies in the world right now…Google & Apple, are run mainly by “lefties” and all those liberal types from California, who know both how to make tons of money, and that the old models and old ways of thinking are just that…Old. Moreover, the notions of “liberal and conservative” are also old ways of thinking, and those who continue to use them indicate that they just don’t get the way the world is changing…just as those who still refer to China as “Red China”. It’s all about how to make money, and the “lefties” seem to be doing quite well at it, thank you very much. It took a person with a brilliant mind and a new way of thinking to become the youngest self-made Billionare in history. Facebook was a new way of thinking about what is possible and how people want to live.
Looks like time to drop this thread–all of the useful information had been exchanges and we are down to the mindless drivel.
R Gates
As with all liberals and Lefties,
those billionaires you mention don’t practice leftism
on their own turf–after all, they’re not suicidal.
It’s only in other people’s lives do they advocate meddling.
In their own they keep every penny they can from the IRS.
It’s exactly in the political arena where their ignorance shows
on any topic outside their business experience.
Their guilt at their great wealth has to be assuaged
by the Leftist allegiance of the philosophically shallow.
While they support politicians trying to tax their income,
why should they care? They already have their wealth
and like any old money they instinctively resent
any increase in the supply of ultra-rich,
so they support politicans who cut off the ladder
for the productive, who get taxed as if they were already wealthy.
All their mental abilities are restricted to their specialty, business,
so regarding any other topic they”re the shallowest in the room.
You also need to be a gentleman and apologize for the insulting aspersion of ‘prattling’,
which is a bit much coming from an ally of AlGore, who does nothing but prattle.
Save your Warmista insults for those not posting here.
For information – sulfate and nitrate aerosols are heavily implicated in pulmonary morbidity and some mortality (ie death amongst the elderly). Any suggestion of injecting these aerosols into the atmosphere in a manner that allows them to circulate to the ground level troposphere is likely to increase rates of morbidity and mortality. To put it simply the solution could harm more people than the problem.
“Sorry you fail to understand the momentum of the climate system can take decades and even centuries to work back to equilibrium once a forcing has been initiated on the scope of a 40% increase in CO2, and similar large increases in methane and N2O. The analogy to a cake was a bit allegorical, but perhaps such things are lost on certain people”.
That forcing you speak of R. Gates, is the changes to the gravitation force on atmosphere relative to our rotation velocity and placement in our planetary system, that determine changes in the points of atmospheric pressure and ultimately its temperature gradiant and hence our climate. It is so.
Where did you get the invalid view of greenhouse from?
Some superstitious scientific dope of the nineteenth century no doubt.
World temperatures could be going down fast soon and scientists are look ing at methods of cooling the planet. How long will it be before they are also looking at methods of warming the planet?
Only fools do not have a back up plan!
Ask yourself gentlemen, how its it a greenhouse when its hotter on the outside?
Or, do we right off the statosphere and mesophere?
What climate equilibrium?
The idea that doofusses are thinking about tryng to ecoengineer the climate sends cold chills up my spine. Talk about hubris.
Another model based load of suspect research on Polar bears. A warming Arctic will kill them all off claim that is refuted by the facts. These animals do not require an ice flow from which to hunt it is that at the moment their main prey lives off the ice pack. Where did these prey animals live and pup during previous much warmer warm periods? On land if ice was scarce and there they were hunted by the bears.
Any plan to try to mess with the atmosphere to get what is perceived to be the ‘ideal’ surface temperature is a plan by megalomaniac idiots.Any cure worse than the disease must be dumped.
“There is no way to keep the climate the way it is now. Later this century, you would not be able to recreate present-day Earth just by adding sulfate aerosols to the atmosphere,” McCusker said.
Gee! Climate changes. Who’da thunkit?
Robert in Perth mentions King Canute (Knut!) .. This much-maligned man was trying to prove that a man could NOT turn back the tide, despite the flattering of his courtiers. I am not sure if this proves anything about our current situation.
Anthea
Yeah.. but only in the GCM’s which are clearly wrong in regard to water vapor. Where is the SOLID evidence your ‘thermostat’ can be moved by CO2? On top of that our contribution is around 3%. Every summer we see a robust rate of CO2 decrease followed by a slightly greater rate of increase six months later. Doesn’t that suggest a natural system with a dynamic capacity that easily over-powers our teenie weenie contribution of an essential trace gas whose true ‘greenhouse effect’ contribution is not yet actually known and may even have a net cooling affect at such small concentrations? There is zero evidence that CO2 ever drove global temperatures up so why is it so difficult to believe that maybe they really do not?
True or false, CO2 would be going up right now if we humans never existed. Not only do I think that that is true, I believe the difference in concentration would be too so small to even detect.
How about we make a deal? I’ll stop calling them the commie dictators they actually are when they step down and have an open, democratic, freely elected form of government …right after they admit to and apologize for the thousands of students they murdered in and around Tiananmen Square back on June Fourth 1989.
How much would you bet that their nuke tipped ICBM target list no longer includes the USA?
The cries of “i’m melting, I’m melting” are nothing more than the distant echoes of the Wicked Witch of The West. Next it’ll be Chicken Little they’ll be rallying behind.
The h*** with them, I’m going ice fishing.
To explain the lack of global warming one guy blames sulphates, even though the levels were higher in the 1980s. In AGW, if it gives the ‘right’ answer correlation=causation, no proof required!
Rather than admit the lack of warming rubbishes all their models the AGW crowd jump on the bandwagon. Now they are proposing it as a solution even though it is not proved as a cause!
Science=zero.
=======================================================
It appears you take a very mechanistic viewpoint as to how the earth’s climate system would respond to significant changes in the state of various physical parameters, those which you choose to label here as being forcings.
So I ask these two questions, which are founded in a similarly mechanistic type of paradigm concerning how the earth’s climate system actually behaves:
(1) What would be the atmosphere’s normal operating temperature range, stated in terms of global mean temperature, in the absence of rapid and significant changes to the quantitative values of those physical parameters which you label here as forcings?
(2) How long should we expect the atmosphere’s normal operating temperature range to persist over time, stated in terms of an expected time of persistence, in the absence of rapid and significant changes to the quantitative values of those physical parameters which you label here as forcings?
What I am asking for are specific quantitative values for the normal operating temperature range and for the expected period of persistence of that temperature range.
If climate science truly is a science, and if it is a science which operates within a largely mechanistic analytical paradigm — this is what the GCMs are all about; i.e., taking a highly mechanistic viewpoint concerning how the earth’s climate system operates — then values for these two parameters ought to exist somewhere in the peer reviewed climate science literature.
Unfortunately, I myself have been unable to find a source for these values, whatever it is they are.
Mr. Gates, in recognition of your extensive knowledge of the topic, could I ask you to quote the actual values for these two parameters; i.e., the atmosphere’s normal operating temperature range and the expected period of persistence for that temperature range?
A citation would be very useful as well, if you can provide it. Thanks in advance.
To paraphrase the NRA:
Climate doesn’t kill polar bears, guns do!
From 5,000 in the late 1960s to 25,000 today. All you have to do is stop shooting them and the population rebounds nicely.
As to geo-engineering. Where is the brake pedal and reverse gear? Getting rid of smallpox was a nice bit of GE but spending trillions to cool Earth? Have they looked at the temps for the past decade? Have they ever looked at the ice core records of “inter-glacial” periods? They are called that for a reason.
[Increased winter surface temperatures in northern Eurasia could have serious ramifications for Arctic marine mammals not equipped to adapt quickly to climate change.]
So maybe the brown bear habitat will move north. Do they taste any different than a polar bear?
Mr Gates:
Is that another empty bag that I see in your hand? GK
I see that R. Gates has successfully hijacked another thread. By merely reciting a half-baked meme.
Just a thought: couldn’t these idiots’ actions give rise to a manmade Ice Age?