08-31-2017, 07:34 AM
I guess I ought to review climate again. Something came up in another area. By the time I felt like writing a response, I'd forgotten where. Few really bother to do the research. They find one trend that matches their political view and go all out for that one effect. To understand climate as a whole, you have to learn all the trends as observe how they fit in the temperature record.
The solar cycles are often mentioned, but are also the most often measured. How strong is the sun? How does it vary? There is a dozen year pattern where it returns to the expected coolest level of near zero sunspots. The warmest max sunspot level does change. The last peak was fairly low, contributing less to the warming than usual. We set warm records regardless. The solar cycles are predictable enough to be easy to see in the temperature curves with the naked eye. There is a gentle essential permanent ripple. This ripple is dwarfed by the larger, longer term trends.
I’ll throw El Nino, Lan Nina and volcanoes out together. The first two can cause a bump in temperature for a year or two. Volcanoes usually run cool and run longer, generally about three years. All three of these are much harder to predict and anticipate than many other factors, but they rough up the curve, make it harder to see what is happening.
They do stack. In 1998 a very hot El Nino stacked with the peak of a solar cycle and lack of cooling volcanoes. The result was a record hot year. At the hot moment, the alarmists blew their trumpets, often without bothering to say why it was a particularly hot year. After a few years, it was the denialist’s turn. Global warming had ended. It was getting cooler. Well, yes, the El Nino had ended and the solar cycle had turned. Again, those with political world views didn’t bother to say why it was for a time getting cooler, why it was very predictable, why it was so much hot (and then cold) air.
Next I’ll get to a big one, a real one. The Milankovitch Cycles show how ice ages come and go. If you have ever watched a child’s toy top spinning down, you should recall how the top wobbles just before it falls. It turns out that the wobbles are predictable. If you know the right equations, you can predict wobbles. The spinning Earth similarly wobbles, is subject to much the same equations. These do effect climate, as the planet gets closer and further from the sun, as the angle of poles changes, etc…
Few bother with the equations. It is altogether tedious. How many ice ages have we had in how long? The important thing to note is that we are in a cooling era. Other factors aside, we’re due for an ice age. If you look at the temperature records, you see a steady long term cooling following the general pattern of an interglacial ending. Many among the denialists latch on to this one. What could possibly compete with an ice age?
The answer is the second big one. Since about the end of the US Civil War, since humans switched from logs and whale oil to coal and oil, the temperature has been going the other way. Oh, the other factors are still real. The small ripple of the solar cycles is still there. You see small dips in the records with known El Ninos / La Ninas sand volcano bounces occur. The major long term trend, though, is that man made warming greenhouse release is overwhelming the cooling effect of Milankovitch.
An often ignored one is global dimming. This was discovered almost by accident when a scientist studying farming evaporation records noted less evaporation. Something was preventing sunlight from reaching the surface. I turned out to be aerosols, soot. If you’ve seen old pictures of Pittsburgh during its steel making peak, the city air was very very sooty. It was decided that the health drawbacks of all that soot wasn’t worth it, that putting scrubbers in the stacks was made beneficial by medical and quality of life considerations. The west, largely, put in the scrubbers.
India, China and many other Asian countries haven’t reached that point yet. No scrubbers. Lots of soot. Assuming you have done any reading, the truth of this is obvious.
Thing is, global dimming fights global warming. More light gets bounced into space. Scrubbers heat things up. If China, India and the rest of Asia reach the same conclusion as the West about medical and life quality trade offs, we get a big jump in global warming. It is not clear when they might shift, or even if. They calculate quality of life differently than the west, and the weight of human health against economic values is different.
Then there are tipping point effects. They need not happen. They shouldn’t happen. They look to happen. Historically, whenever one of the poles melt, the other follows. Historically, once the warmth hits a certain level, greenhouse gasses frozen (literally) out of the atmosphere are released. You can see the results when these things happen clearly in the historical records. It gets warmer. Lots warmer. Massive extinction warmer.
The next one we can ignore as it is happening too slowly. The continents are moving. The poles are currently both frozen. This can only happen when a continent is at one pole, such as current day Antarctica, or surrounded by continents, as with the current day Arctic. If ocean currents reach a pole, no freezing. No ice. No cooling. You get the warm sort of Earth common to her history. Eventually it’s going to get warmer, folks, too warm, no doubt about it. That’s not really a problem, though, for the conceivable future. Continents just move slowly.
The conservatives, for a while, were into the sun reaching a galactic arm. More stars. More radiation. More clouds as water clumps around the radiation. That one is slow enough to ignore as well. Compared to stars moving galactic distances, continents moving around planets are fast. That didn’t mean they couldn’t twist the science and put out their propaganda.
Anyway, that’s my perspective. The important competition is between Milankovitch and greenhouse. It takes little skill to see either in the temperature record, or to see which is the larger effect. There are lots of smaller stuff roughing up the curve, but the measurable solar cycles have neither the magnitude or duration to be the a player. The question is whether we want to cut the greenhouse short, before the historical tipping points are reached. These points haven’t been reached for a very long time, so those with strong political values can pretend they won’t happen again. In fact, we know where they are and what will happen when they are reached.
Me, I don’t think it ought to be about political values. It should be about whether the temperature curve did indeed change just after fossil fuels came into heavy use. That is obvious in the record, unless you have strong political values.
The solar cycles are often mentioned, but are also the most often measured. How strong is the sun? How does it vary? There is a dozen year pattern where it returns to the expected coolest level of near zero sunspots. The warmest max sunspot level does change. The last peak was fairly low, contributing less to the warming than usual. We set warm records regardless. The solar cycles are predictable enough to be easy to see in the temperature curves with the naked eye. There is a gentle essential permanent ripple. This ripple is dwarfed by the larger, longer term trends.
I’ll throw El Nino, Lan Nina and volcanoes out together. The first two can cause a bump in temperature for a year or two. Volcanoes usually run cool and run longer, generally about three years. All three of these are much harder to predict and anticipate than many other factors, but they rough up the curve, make it harder to see what is happening.
They do stack. In 1998 a very hot El Nino stacked with the peak of a solar cycle and lack of cooling volcanoes. The result was a record hot year. At the hot moment, the alarmists blew their trumpets, often without bothering to say why it was a particularly hot year. After a few years, it was the denialist’s turn. Global warming had ended. It was getting cooler. Well, yes, the El Nino had ended and the solar cycle had turned. Again, those with political world views didn’t bother to say why it was for a time getting cooler, why it was very predictable, why it was so much hot (and then cold) air.
Next I’ll get to a big one, a real one. The Milankovitch Cycles show how ice ages come and go. If you have ever watched a child’s toy top spinning down, you should recall how the top wobbles just before it falls. It turns out that the wobbles are predictable. If you know the right equations, you can predict wobbles. The spinning Earth similarly wobbles, is subject to much the same equations. These do effect climate, as the planet gets closer and further from the sun, as the angle of poles changes, etc…
Few bother with the equations. It is altogether tedious. How many ice ages have we had in how long? The important thing to note is that we are in a cooling era. Other factors aside, we’re due for an ice age. If you look at the temperature records, you see a steady long term cooling following the general pattern of an interglacial ending. Many among the denialists latch on to this one. What could possibly compete with an ice age?
The answer is the second big one. Since about the end of the US Civil War, since humans switched from logs and whale oil to coal and oil, the temperature has been going the other way. Oh, the other factors are still real. The small ripple of the solar cycles is still there. You see small dips in the records with known El Ninos / La Ninas sand volcano bounces occur. The major long term trend, though, is that man made warming greenhouse release is overwhelming the cooling effect of Milankovitch.
An often ignored one is global dimming. This was discovered almost by accident when a scientist studying farming evaporation records noted less evaporation. Something was preventing sunlight from reaching the surface. I turned out to be aerosols, soot. If you’ve seen old pictures of Pittsburgh during its steel making peak, the city air was very very sooty. It was decided that the health drawbacks of all that soot wasn’t worth it, that putting scrubbers in the stacks was made beneficial by medical and quality of life considerations. The west, largely, put in the scrubbers.
India, China and many other Asian countries haven’t reached that point yet. No scrubbers. Lots of soot. Assuming you have done any reading, the truth of this is obvious.
Thing is, global dimming fights global warming. More light gets bounced into space. Scrubbers heat things up. If China, India and the rest of Asia reach the same conclusion as the West about medical and life quality trade offs, we get a big jump in global warming. It is not clear when they might shift, or even if. They calculate quality of life differently than the west, and the weight of human health against economic values is different.
Then there are tipping point effects. They need not happen. They shouldn’t happen. They look to happen. Historically, whenever one of the poles melt, the other follows. Historically, once the warmth hits a certain level, greenhouse gasses frozen (literally) out of the atmosphere are released. You can see the results when these things happen clearly in the historical records. It gets warmer. Lots warmer. Massive extinction warmer.
The next one we can ignore as it is happening too slowly. The continents are moving. The poles are currently both frozen. This can only happen when a continent is at one pole, such as current day Antarctica, or surrounded by continents, as with the current day Arctic. If ocean currents reach a pole, no freezing. No ice. No cooling. You get the warm sort of Earth common to her history. Eventually it’s going to get warmer, folks, too warm, no doubt about it. That’s not really a problem, though, for the conceivable future. Continents just move slowly.
The conservatives, for a while, were into the sun reaching a galactic arm. More stars. More radiation. More clouds as water clumps around the radiation. That one is slow enough to ignore as well. Compared to stars moving galactic distances, continents moving around planets are fast. That didn’t mean they couldn’t twist the science and put out their propaganda.
Anyway, that’s my perspective. The important competition is between Milankovitch and greenhouse. It takes little skill to see either in the temperature record, or to see which is the larger effect. There are lots of smaller stuff roughing up the curve, but the measurable solar cycles have neither the magnitude or duration to be the a player. The question is whether we want to cut the greenhouse short, before the historical tipping points are reached. These points haven’t been reached for a very long time, so those with strong political values can pretend they won’t happen again. In fact, we know where they are and what will happen when they are reached.
Me, I don’t think it ought to be about political values. It should be about whether the temperature curve did indeed change just after fossil fuels came into heavy use. That is obvious in the record, unless you have strong political values.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.