Global Warming?

[frobert]

Dugan,

Yes, the world will be better for the next generation if creative people are allowed to invent new gadgets and sell them for their personal profit; business (large and small) allowed to use them, as they think they need, for their benefit and profit; and the rest of us to use them for our personal benefit and profit.

For a slightly different view by a main stream economist:

The Great Stagnation

The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better is a pamphlet by Tyler Cowen published in 2011. It argues that the American economy has reached a historical technological plateau and the factors which drove economic growth for most of America’s history are mostly spent. These figurative “low-hanging fruit” from the title include the cultivation of much free, previously unused land; the application and spread of technological breakthroughs, particularly during the period 1880–1940, including transport, refrigeration, electricity, mass communications, and sanitation; and the education of large numbers of smart people who previously received none.

Cowen, a professor of Economics at George Mason University, looks to these factors to explain the stagnation in the median, or middle, American wage since 1973. Analysis has set the “Great Stagnation” idea against the “Great Divergence”, a set of explanations which blame rising income inequality and globalization for the stall. Related debates have examined whether the internet’s effect has yet been fully realized in production, if its users enjoy a significant consumer surplus, and how it might be further integrated into the economy. The final set of questions concerns appropriate policy responses to the problem.

The pamphlet is 15,000 words long and was first published in January 2011 as an electronic book, priced at USD$4. A hardback version, which Cowen dubbed “the retrogression”, was published in June 2011. While not all reviewers agreed with Cowen’s thesis and arguments the book was largely welcomed as timely and skilled in framing the debate around the future of the American economy.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Apparently you have little faith in man’s adaptability to nature.

We have come a long way in 100 years. We have been to the moon. We have air conditioning and even memory chips…

Do you think things will really be worse or better in the next generation???

My faith is in the Lord more than it is in man. But it would not be nature we would be adapting to if we were to actively abuse the great gift that God has given us in this home of ours. And the Lord is not going to shield us from all the temporal consequences of our own actions, to which we will be held accountable.

 

[Ender]

I don’t understand the insufficiency. Perhaps you are expecting more uniformity from the natural world than I am?

I expect to see global uniformity over time. The US represents a very large portion of the Northern Hemisphere and I question how the global temperature record can be so different than the US record over the last 100 years.

I am looking really hard at those graphs to try to see what you see. Have you taken into account that the vertical divisions in the US chart are every 0.5 degrees while the vertical divisions in the global chart are every 0.2 degrees? That makes them look artificially different.

The difference is this: a year or two ago the US five year average temp dropped below the five year average temp of 70 years ago while the global difference between now and then is at least 0.6 deg C. The global chart shows unremitting warming; the US chart shows significant warming, then significant cooling, followed by significant warming. That is, it does not map well to the story that CO2, which has increased steadily over the decades, is driving the warming.

So here we have a scenario where 10 degree atmosphere allows the surface temperature to drop, while 5 degree atmosphere (including CO2) impedes some of that surface temperature drop. So if, over time, the atmosphere developed a higher concentration of CO2, it is possible that the surface temperature could warm over the same time interval where the average air temperature is cooling. This is true despite the fact that, as you pointed out, the CO2 is undergoing a temperature rise as it blocks IR.

On some other theoretical planet with a different atmosphere perhaps, but on our planet with our atmosphere, no. There are no assertions that other atmospheric components are changing in ways significant for global warming; right now it is all CO2. For the surface to warm above normal the additional energy has to come (according to the theory) from the atmosphere and for that to happen the atmosphere must warm first.

Ender

 

[Ender]

Real numbers: With Earth’s climate, it s currently believed that each dubling of CO2 causes a warming of about 3 degrees C.

This is not accurate. The estimate given by Houghton (co-chair of the IPCC scientific assessment working group) is 1.2 deg C.

Remember that temperature increases by 3 degrees per each DOUBLING of CO2.

The calculation of the temperature increase caused by doubling the CO2 (1.2, not 3) is based on the circular assumption that all of the observed warming has been caused by CO2 increases.

Think Permian-Triassic extinction, 8 degrees warming, 96% of life wiped out.

You keep bringing this up as if all that was required to cause mass extinction was a gradual buildup of CO2. There seems to have been more going on.* A massive plume eruption took place exactly at the PT boundary. A new plume burned through the crust in what is now western Siberia to form the “Siberian Traps,” gigantic flood basalts that cover 2.5 million sq km in area and are perhaps 3 million cu km in volume. The eruptions coincided exactly with the PT boundary, at 253 Ma, and** lasted at full intensity for only about a million years (the largest known, most intense eruptions in the history of the Earth)**. They lie across the PT boundary and were formed in what was obviously a major event in Earth history.

mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL107/PTriassic.html

Uranium is also a natural resource. Is man doing nothing wrong by mining uranium, assembling it into weapons, and using these weapons to safeguard his property of land?

Is it God’s will that man wipes out most life on Earth and himself, so cockroaches can claim dominion of land?

Would you support a drastic increase in nuclear reactors? After all, they produce no CO2 at all and would surely keep the cockroaches from winning.

Ender

 

[Ender]

If there is no CO2, an IR photon emitted from the ground escapes into space.

If this photon hits a CO2 molecule, it will get re-radiated in a random direction. So there’s 50% chance that it will get radiated back down, and 50% chance that it will get radiated out into space.

So effectively, you have a mirror which reflects half of IR photons back (at least at the wavelengths corresponding to CO2 absorption spectrum).

No, “effectively” you do not have a mirror. There are specific physical processes occurring in all of this and the assumptions, predictions, and calculations are based on those particular processes … and the assumptions about CO2 and warming are not based on its acting like a mirror, any more than the effects of increased cloud cover (which does act like a mirror) are thought to be “effectively” absorption and re-radiation.

Ender

 

[frobert]

My faith is in the Lord more than it is in man. But it would not be nature we would be adapting to if we were to actively abuse the great gift that God has given us in this home of ours. And the Lord is not going to shield us from all the temporal consequences of our own actions, to which we will be held accountable.

Yet to be fair to JB, I don’t think he is saying that God will shield us, but that man will innovate our way to a better future. I believe at this point it is the only hope we have left but all I can say to JB is good luck with that.

Edit: I re-read your post. On my first reading I didn’t recognize we are saying the same thing.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The difference is this: a year or two ago the US five year average temp dropped below the five year average temp of 70 years ago while the global difference between now and then is at least 0.6 deg C.

Yes, I see those two points on red graph separated by 70 years. But notice that the point from several years ago is itself a local minimum for the past 10 years, and the point from 70 years ago is a local maximum that is not typical of the years surrounding it. Therefore it should not be so surprising that a local maximum from one span of time is higher than a local minimum from another span of time. If you are going to question that, perhaps you should also question the degree of variability of the 5-year averages themselves. Since the best-fit line for the entire data set is only increasing at 1 degree per century, it doesn’t take much superimposed randomness to cause occasional reversals like the one you are pointing to. It does not look like a red flag to me. All you have to do is switch from 5-year averaging to 10-year averaging and your 70 year reversal completely disappears. By the way, I see from the web site you linked to that the raw data behind the two graphs in question are available in downloadable numerical form too. So anyone who wants to experiment with such alternate forms of graphical presentation with Excel and the like can do so.

The global chart shows unremitting warming; the US chart shows significant warming, then significant cooling, followed by significant warming. That is, it does not map well to the story that CO2, which has increased steadily over the decades, is driving the warming.

The US is only 6.6% of the world’s land mass. Why should every wiggle in the US data be representative of some wiggle in the global data as well? There are many random effects of weather that do not change the global average, but just push the air around differently. All it takes is a 30-year change in the jet stream to plunge the US into a 30-year deep freeze. But such a change in the jet stream need not change the global average at all. The US gets colder while somewhere else gets warmer.

On some other theoretical planet with a different atmosphere perhaps, but on our planet with our atmosphere, no.

Quite true. The scenario I described was totally hypothetical and theoretical. But it was in response to the implied theoretical argument that if we ever observe surface warming without comparable atmospheric warming, that would disprove the theory of global warming through CO2. I don’t know that any such defense of the theory is ever going to be needed, since it is hard to imagine the surface getting warmer and the air near the surface staying the same and getting colder, but in case that was your point, I just wanted to address it. As to which came first, it will be hard to ever measure that one way or the other because both quantities (surface temperature and atmospheric temperature) are going to be changing so slowly and with so much random noise added that long averaging times will be needed for any significant analysis, and those long averaging times will make it impossible to tell which rose first. But for sake of argument, let’s say that atmospheric temperature rises first, but only slightly ahead of surface temperature rise.

 

[Ridgerunner]

For a slightly different view by a main stream economist:

The Great Stagnation

The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better is a pamphlet by Tyler Cowen published in 2011. It argues that the American economy has reached a historical technological plateau and the factors which drove economic growth for most of America’s history are mostly spent. These figurative “low-hanging fruit” from the title include the cultivation of much free, previously unused land; the application and spread of technological breakthroughs, particularly during the period 1880–1940, including transport, refrigeration, electricity, mass communications, and sanitation; and the education of large numbers of smart people who previously received none.

Cowen, a professor of Economics at George Mason University, looks to these factors to explain the stagnation in the median, or middle, American wage since 1973. Analysis has set the “Great Stagnation” idea against the “Great Divergence”, a set of explanations which blame rising income inequality and globalization for the stall. Related debates have examined whether the internet’s effect has yet been fully realized in production, if its users enjoy a significant consumer surplus, and how it might be further integrated into the economy. The final set of questions concerns appropriate policy responses to the problem.

The pamphlet is 15,000 words long and was first published in January 2011 as an electronic book, priced at USD$4. A hardback version, which Cowen dubbed “the retrogression”, was published in June 2011. While not all reviewers agreed with Cowen’s thesis and arguments the book was largely welcomed as timely and skilled in framing the debate around the future of the American economy.

Probably interesting.

It has occurred to me that, while cars for example, have changed a lot since the early 20th century, the technology isn’t fundamentally different. We’re still using gasoline explosions driving pistons like we did 100 years ago. I recall reading about all the technology on the Titanic, and the remarkable thing was not how different it was from what we have now, but how similar it was.

But on the other hand, the “computer revolution” really was (is?) a quantum jump. One can read an old surgery textbook from the 1930s (which I have) and it’s astounding both as to how many things have not changed as to how many have.

Being unaware of the premises of this pamphlet, I can’t comment further. However, I am just a bit skeptical of all pronouncements that things won’t/can’t change significantly. Undoubtedly there were those who thought, during the Depression, that it represented some new, permanent paradigm. Indeed, that belief caused many to turn to Marxism or variants thereof, thinking that only some kind of revolutionary change could aleviate things. But it didn’t pan out. Free societies recovered and Marxism tanked.

I am probably more conservative than many in some ways, but I know a lot of business people, bankers, workers, etc. The current economy reminds me of nothing so much as a machine that’s clogged with its own detritus. When times seem good, those who want to pride themselves on their altruism assume more and more and more power and make more and more and more transfers and limitations, and ultimately just clog productivity by discouraging initiative. That can seem permanent, as it surely did in the old Soviet Union, but it can also change, despite expectations.

 

[weller2]

We have come a long way in 100 years. We have been to the moon. We have air conditioning and even memory chips…

Do you think things will really be worse or better in the next generation???

We haven’t been to the Moon since 1972, because we cannot afford it. Coincidentally, 1972 is when human civilization appears to have peaked:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[weller2]

This is not accurate. The estimate given by Houghton (co-chair of the IPCC scientific assessment working group) is 1.2 deg C.

That’s possible. The actual value of climate sensitivity is hotly debated.

mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL107/PTriassic.html

From your link:

In this scenario, the carbon dioxide build-up results from the global geography that included the gigantic ocean Panthalassa. Knoll and colleagues speculated that the abnormal ocean circulation in Panthalassa did not include enough downward transport of oxygenated surface water to keep the deep water oxygenated. With normal respiration and decay of dead organisms, the deep water evolved into an anoxic mass loaded with dissolved carbon dioxide, methane, and hydrogen sulfide. Carbon continued to fall to the sea floor from normal surface productivity, but it was deposited and buried because there was no dissolved oxygen to oxidize it. As carbon dioxide levels fell in the atmosphere, the earth and the ocean surface cooled. Finally, the surface waters became dense enough to sink, triggering a catastrophe as the CO2-saturated deep waters were brought up to the surface, degassing violently. The event would trigger a greenhouse heating and a major climatic warming.

In 1998 Samuel Bowring and colleagues reported that the carbon isotope change at the P-T boundary in South China was probably very short-lived: a “spike” only perhaps 165,000 years long. This suggests a major (catastrophic?) addition of non-organic carbon to the ocean, rather than just a failure in the supply of organic carbon. They suggested three possible scenarios. Two of them are variants of the Siberian Traps scenario above, except that in addition the climatic changes could have set off an overturn of Panthalassa and a carbon dioxide crisis. Their third suggestion is an asteroid impact, but there is not much evidence for that.

Most recently, Greg Retallack and colleagues have found evidence in Australia that suggests a prolonged greenhouse warming set in right at the P-T boundary. Several paleoclimatic indicators suggest the same story, which implies that the role of carbon dioxide was the vital link between any environmental disasters and the extinctions. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could have been increased by volcanic eruptions, by oceanic turnover, and it would have been accentuated and prolonged if plants were killed off globally. (World floras and oceanic plankton would have to recover before the carbon dioxide could be drawn down out of the atmosphere.) We may be getting close to the answer here!

Would you support a drastic increase in nuclear reactors? After all, they produce no CO2 at all and would surely keep the cockroaches from winning.

Yes, in particular traveling wave reactors (which produce very little waste) and thorium fuel cycle (which cannot be weaponized as opposed to uranium cycle).

 

[JB_Dugan]

Dugan,

I like you! You make sense–and in this blog there is a serious lack of that particular commodity.

Yes, the world will be better for the next generation if creative people are allowed to invent new gadgets and sell them for their personal profit; business (large and small) allowed to use them, as they think they need, for their benefit and profit; and the rest of us to use them for our personal benefit and profit.

Unfortunately, it often seems, to me anyway, that the insane–or, at least, blockheads-- are in control, and that’s scary. But, like St. Paul says: “…we have hope…” In the end, I think, the majority of us (Americans) will vote for sanity and progress, and drag the rest of the world along with us into the future.

Thank you.

 

[JB_Dugan]

There are many engineers, economists, geologists, ecologists and many others from a variety of fields who believe that progress in the next 20 years will not be anything like that of the past 20 years. If you want to read about what some of the brightest people in their respective fields are saying and why (you don’t have to agree) check out www.peakprosperity.com/‎

I have seen those points of view…and they could be right. But really, 20 years or a few generations are nothing.

Based on the history of the Earth, man has only been here for a blink of an eye (in Earth years)

Some say that we have reached a “technological plateau” and there will be a slowdown in advancements. Maybe so. Maybe man needs a little “vacation”…a little time to reflect…a little rest before the next Renaissance or Industrial, technological, medical revolution.

My point is that the Earth has been changing for eons. Life forms have evolved and if they don’t adapt…they become extinct. Some life forms have been around for millions of years before man showed up…and are still thriving. Others died off. All of this is natural.
Man has progressed pretty well in the short time he has been here. We have survived ice ages and heat spells, droughts and floods and I suspect we will be around for quite awhile.

 

[frobert]

I have seen those points of view…and they could be right. But really, 20 years or a few generations are nothing.

yes

Based on the history of the Earth, man has only been here for a blink of an eye (in Earth years)

yes

Some say that we have reached a “technological plateau” and there will be a slowdown in advancements. Maybe so. Maybe man needs a little “vacation”…a little time to reflect…a little rest before the next Renaissance or Industrial, technological, medical revolution.

yes

My point is that the Earth has been changing for eons. Life forms have evolved and if they don’t adapt…they become extinct. Some life forms have been around for millions of years before man showed up…and are still thriving. Others died off. All of this is natural. Man has progressed pretty well in the short time he has been here. We have survived ice ages and heat spells, droughts and floods and I suspect we will be around for quite awhile.

yes

100% agreement

 

[JB_Dugan]

We haven’t been to the Moon since 1972, because we cannot afford it. Coincidentally, 1972 is when human civilization appears to have peaked:

http://i1176.photobucket.com/albums/x330/chefurka/GrowthRates_zpsc54b5743.png

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/World_Energy_New_Mtce.png

Good graphs, Weller.

I notice that everything peaked around 1970 and it’s been downhill since.

Remember what happened in 1970?..The Environmental Protection Agency was established by President Richard Nixon in December of 1970.

Coincidence ???

 

[frobert]

Good graphs, Weller.

I notice that everything peaked around 1970 and it’s been downhill since.

Excellent observation! I mean it, I didn’t realize that till I read about it from another source. It was John Michael Green at thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ in a post where he dated the beginning of the “collapse of the US Empire” to the early 70s which coincided with the Rust Belt.

Remember what happened in 1970?..The Environmental Protection Agency was established by President Richard Nixon in December of 1970.

Coincidence ???

I remember 1970 I was unemployed for the the first part of the year. I remember quite a few other things about 1970 too.

 

[Ridgerunner]

All of this is natural.
Man has progressed pretty well in the short time he has been here. We have survived ice ages and heat spells, droughts and floods and I suspect we will be around for quite awhile.

Maybe wandering off topic a bit here, but this put me to mind of an observation A. Solzhenitsyn made. He spent years in the Gulag where people were sent out to work in 40 degree below zero weather wearing sacks and subsisting on 10 oz of adulterated bread and “tea” made of boiled pine boughs to ward off scurvy, and while many died, many didn’t. Mongolian ponies brought in to haul “ore” dug out by the prisoners with crowbars from the frozen earth didn’t even survive a single winter though they were better sheltered and fed than were the people.

He maintained that, of all the earth’s creatures, man was far and away the toughest and most resilient; being found on all continents, in all environments, including on the waters, ice and deserts of the earth, subsisting and thriving on the most varied food imaginable. No other creature, he observed, came even close to that. And, of course, he was right.

We usually don’t think of ourselves that way, but it’s true.

 

[weller2]

Remember what happened in 1970?

No. I wasn’t around yet

The Environmental Protection Agency was established by President Richard Nixon in December of 1970.

Nixon has also cancelled Saturn and NERVA programs, effectively preventing any serious space exporation for the next few decades, and destroying capabilities which haven’t been restored to this day. The funniest part is that killing Saturn (i.e. the Moon rocket) saved… wait for it… $18 million.

Nixon was literally given keys to the Solar System, and he said that he was not interested.

And thus, the decline began.

 

[Ender]

But heat is being exchanged between land, ocean and air all the time.

If you have a heat exchanger and you increase temperature in the primary loop, then temperature in the secondary loop will increase immediately.

Nothing in the climate system changes immediately. Is it your position that greenhouse warming can occur without the temperature of the atmosphere rising before the temperature of the surface?

Ender

 

[Ender]

there are other factors that go into the relative temperature of the atmosphere.

Yes, there are many things that affect atmospheric temperature but the idea behind greenhouse warming is fairly simple: CO2 absorbs IR energy and re-radiates it back out, some of which returns to the Earth, providing increased warming to the surface. The physics are also basic: if the atmosphere does not warm, the energy available for it to radiate cannot increase. I’m sure there are any number of other physical activities occurring that affect atmospheric temperature but the basic restriction is this: if the atmosphere does not acquire additional energy (which therefore increases its temperature) it will have no additional energy to radiate back to the Earth and global warming (based on the greenhouse effect) cannot occur.

However, ocean temperatures have shown to be steadily increasing (though, the rate of this increase is disputed and varies). And apart from the actual measurement of these changes, we can see the consequences, such as polar ice melting and coral bleaching. I mean, how else would you explain such things?

Yes, we can see ocean temperatures rising and that could be the result of greenhouse warming … but only if the atmospheric temperature has risen as well, otherwise where is the energy coming from to warm the oceans?

I know this debate has a strong moral component too and some who deny climate change do so for justifiable moral reasons (such as abominable human population controls, etc.).

There is no moral component to the question of whether the theory of AGW is valid. It is a scientific question only.

Ender

 

[frobert]

Nixon was literally given keys to the Solar System, and he said that he was not interested.

And thus, the decline began.

We must see our space effort, then, not only as an adventure of today but also as an investment in tomorrow. We did not go to the moon merely for the sport of it. To be sure, those undertakings have provided an exciting adventure for all mankind and we are proud that it was our Nation that met this challenge. But the most important thing about man’s first footsteps on the moon is what they promise for the future.

We must realize that space activities will be a part of our lives for the rest of time. We must think of them as part of a continuing process–one which will go on day in and day out, year in and year out-and not as a series of separate leaps, each requiring a massive concentration of energy and will and accomplished on a crash timetable. Our space program should not be planned in a rigid manner, decade by decade, but on a continuing flexible basis, one which takes into account our changing needs and our expanding knowledge.

Source: Richard Nixon: “Statement About the Future of the United States Space Program,” March 7, 1970.