Thought experiment on catastrophic climate change

[YADA]

What if the earth experienced a cataclysmic event that drastically after the earth’s temperature - climate - in a matter of minutes over huge stretches of the earth surface?

What if tropical lush green areas instantaneously were frozen and remained frozen for 1000’s of years becoming covered by ever deepening ice sheets called glaciers?

What if entire species were instantaneously brought to extinction during this cataclysmic event - never to be found on the earth again?

What if this event was unstoppable by any means the greatest minds could devise?

Has this scenario ever played out in the history of the earth?

 

[Micosil]

The problem with that approach is that it’s based on what people ‘experience’ or feel. That is not the scientific way to measure climate change.

What those skeptical of the climate alarmists shenanigans are asking for is a proper analysis using actual temperature, ice cap size measurements and other objective data. Just show data that are not from doctored “reports” that predict the results that don’t conform to what actual measurements show to be true. Just something and that be verified using good science and actual climatic results.

For example, if you go back to the alarmist articles in the NYT or Time Magazine from the 1970’s, they predicted that by now the polar ice caps would have melted and our major coastal cities would all be under water.

The way good science would do this is use the models to give the global warming trend and polar ice shrinkage for the next 5 years, then use actual measurements to see if the predictions are accurate.

Oh, I am aware of this, it’s just that Ridgerunner suggested that “Nobody actually experiences “climate change”.”, and I pointed out why that could be and can’t be used as a gauge.

 

[Ridgerunner]

And if those skeptics got what they were asking for - that is, if they got a proper analysis using actual temperatures, ice cap size measurements, etc., and if those actual measurements showed that climate change was definite and serious, are there any conceivable circumstances under which you think those skeptics would accept climate change as a fact? After all that’s what this thread is about - not so much about the actual evidence, but about the mindset of those who do and do not accept MMGW. The claim implied by the OP was that the mindset of Al Gore (and by extension, other “alarmists”) is ideological and would never be swayed by facts contrary to their view. So my question is, what about skeptics? Is their mindset also ideological, not to be converted to the MMGW view no matter what the evidence said?

People who are skeptical of MMGW probably wouldn’t accept some highly documented argument for MMGW. Some because of ideology. Some because it touches experience nowhere. But many would because there would almost certainly be competing, well documented arguments to the contrary.

And I would never accuse Al Gore of promoting MMGW for ideological reasons. If it was ideology, he wouldn’t have the King Kong sized carbon footprint that he has. He does it for money.

 

[GEddie]

Possibly the reverse is true; that the people most likely to be skeptical of it are those who know it does not touch experience.

I have said this before, but I’ll say it again. When I was a kid, decades ago, you could not grow a successful Bermuda hay crop very far north of Springfield, Missouri. South of it, you could. The reason is that Bermuda is a “warm season” grass that is exacting in its ground temperature requirement and, therefore, growing season.

Today, you still can’t. The “Bermuda line” hasn’t moved in all those years.

South of Springfield, there are roadrunners. North of it there aren’t. Why? Because they’re cold-sensitive, and are limited in their range by it. That’s the same as it was when I was a kid.

So I’m supposed to deny my own experience in favor of what some guy says his computer model tells him I am experiencing?

I do not doubt your statements in any way, however, the problem with personal observations of this type is that due to our pitifully short duration as human beings, this amounts to a “snapshot” of earth conditions.

What is necessary is the study of the physical traces over centuries, and those are deucedly hard to interpret. Nuance and politics rule the roost.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Ignatius]

And if those skeptics got what they were asking for - that is, if they got a proper analysis using actual temperatures, ice cap size measurements, etc… . .

Let’s try it and see, exactly what is your objection to pursuing this using good science?

Oh, and consistency. From the climate alarmists we get First one thing, then the opposite. Clearly, they don’t know what they are talking about.

 

[triumphguy]

Let’s try it and see, exactly what is your objection to pursuing this using good science?

Oh, and consistency. From the climate alarmists we get First one thing, then the opposite. Clearly, they don’t know what they are talking about.

Time is a news story purveyor, not necessarily a truth purveyor.

 

[truetofaith]

Stop with the “wiseguy” schtick.

It doesn’t enhance your argument.

It’s exactly the same argument. Some claim that there are medical benefits to marijuana and want it legalized on those grounds.

You can use gasoline to act like an idiot too - ever see the youtube videos of crazy drivers?

Just because there is oil IN the ground doesn’t mean we have to dig it OUT.

O.K. Triumph guy…I suspect you drive a Triumph

If all oil drilling is ended, you can no longer use your car & and the airports will be closing, also.

If these industries are more closely regulated, we can still live safely in the 21st century!

 

[GEddie]

The fact is, for making things move, human science has **nothing **as good as fossil fuel.

And without making things move (and, to a far lesser extent, human beings), there is no alternative to resuming hand-to-mouth, down to nature subsistence.

If you want people to make enormous sacrifices, you have to make it relevant to their wellbeing. Concerns about birds, flowers etc just don’t cut it.

ICXC NIKA

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The fact is, for making things move, human science has **nothing **as good as fossil fuel.

You are not allowing for human ingenuity. Applied science is always progressing.

 

[Micosil]

The fact is, for making things move, human science has **nothing **as good as fossil fuel.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car

 

[Ignatius]

Ignatius;13040440:

Let’s try it and see, exactly what is your objection to pursuing this using good science?

Oh, and consistency. From the climate alarmists we get First one thing, then the opposite. Clearly, they don’t know what they are talking about.

Time is a news story purveyor, not necessarily a truth purveyor.

The **story is **from the climate alarmists. The Climate Alarmists say First one thing, then the opposite. Clearly, they don’t know what they are talking about.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The **story is **from the climate alarmists. The Climate Alarmists say First one thing, then the opposite. Clearly, they don’t know what they are talking about.

These are not from the same people. Despite making it onto the cover of Time, there never was a serious and widespread scientific prediction of a coming ice age. Instead of perusing the popular press, see how many academic articles you can find about the “coming ice age” vs the immense body of scientific literature on global warming. Time magazine just goes for the sensationalism. It cannot be trusted to accurately represent scientific thinking.

 

[weller2]

Swings of temperature that in the 1950s scientists had believed would take tens of thousands of years, in the 1970s thousands of years, and in the 1980s hundreds of years, were now found to take only decades. Ice core analysis by Dansgaard’s group, confirmed by the Americans’ parallel hole, showed rapid oscillations of temperature repeatedly at irregular intervals throughout the last glacial period. Greenland had sometimes warmed a shocking 7°C within a span of less than 50 years. For one group of American scientists on the ice in Greenland, the "moment of truth” struck on a single day in midsummer 1992 as they analyzed a cylinder of ice, recently emerged from the drill hole, that came from the last years of the Younger Dryas. They saw an obvious change in the ice, visible within three snow layers, that is, scarcely three years! The team analyzing the ice was first excited, then sobered — their view of how climate could change had shifted irrevocably. The European team reported seeing a similar step within at most five years (later studies found a big temperature jump within a single year). “The general circulation [of the atmosphere] in the Northern Hemisphere must have shifted dramatically,” Dansgaard’s group eventually concluded.(56*)
Might the change have been restricted to parts of the world near Greenland? The first hints of the answer came from oceanographers, who had been hunting out seabed zones where bioturbation by burrowing worms did not smear any record of rapid change. In some places the sediments accumulated very rapidly, while in others, the sea water lacked enough oxygen to sustain life. The first results, from the Norwegian Sea in 1992, confirmed that the abrupt changes seen in Greenland ice cores were not confined to Greenland alone. Later work on seabed cores from the California coast to the Arabian Sea, and on chemical changes recorded in cave stalagmites from Switzerland to China, confirmed that the oscillations found in the Greenland ice had been felt throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Changes in dustiness were meanwhile noted in the ice itself, indicating at least continental scope for the change; later, a hemisphere-wide Younger Dryas temperature step in less than a decade was confirmed by a step change in the methane gas in the ice.(57)

aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm

 

[truetofaith]

You are not allowing for human ingenuity. Applied science is always progressing.

Yes, but science has not yet found a practical way to fly a plane or power a car other than fossil fuels. There are many more environmental controls than ever before.

When wind, electric( which needs fossil fuels to produce) or atomic power can run our transport…great!

Until then…use what God gave us…cleanly & safely!

 

[Ignatius]

aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm

quote]
Swings of temperature that in the 1950s scientists had believed would take tens of thousands of years, in the 1970s thousands of years, and in the 1980s hundreds of years, were now found to take only decades. Ice core analysis by Dansgaard’s group, confirmed by the Americans’ parallel hole, showed rapid oscillations of temperature repeatedly at irregular intervals throughout the last glacial period. Greenland had sometimes warmed a shocking 7°C within a span of less than 50 years. For one group of American scientists on the ice in Greenland, the "moment of truth” struck on a single day in midsummer 1992 as they analyzed a cylinder of ice, recently emerged from the drill hole, that came from the last years of the Younger Dryas. They saw an obvious change in the ice, visible within three snow layers, that is, scarcely three years! The team analyzing the ice was first excited, then sobered — their view of how climate could change had shifted irrevocably. The European team reported seeing a similar step within at most five years (later studies found a big temperature jump within a single year). “The general circulation [of the atmosphere] in the Northern Hemisphere must have shifted dramatically,” Dansgaard’s group eventually concluded.(56*)
Might the change have been restricted to parts of the world near Greenland? The first hints of the answer came from oceanographers, who had been hunting out seabed zones where bioturbation by burrowing worms did not smear any record of rapid change. In some places the sediments accumulated very rapidly, while in others, the sea water lacked enough oxygen to sustain life. The first results, from the Norwegian Sea in 1992, confirmed that the abrupt changes seen in Greenland ice cores were not confined to Greenland alone. Later work on seabed cores from the California coast to the Arabian Sea, and on chemical changes recorded in cave stalagmites from Switzerland to China, confirmed that the oscillations found in the Greenland ice had been felt throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Changes in dustiness were meanwhile noted in the ice itself, indicating at least continental scope for the change; later, a hemisphere-wide Younger Dryas temperature step in less than a decade was confirmed by a step change in the methane gas in the ice.(57)
/quote]

Yes, actual data, and measurements. That’s how real science works. The next step in the research gather statistically significant samples and to quantify the minima, maxima, variance, coefficients of correlation and periodicity. From this short term and long term temperature, ice depth and other significant parametric value predictions can be made. The final step is to track actual measurements against the predictions. If the accuracy of the predicted values is within a statistically significant range (normally 1 - (3 sigma) or 3%), then the predictions would be considered reliable. Otherwise, the source of the deviation would have to be found and the cycle repeated until the actual values are within the 3%. At that point, they can be used a a reliable basis for predictions, not before. That’s how real science works.

 

[Ignatius]

We can now go download the actual global temperature measurements ourselves directly from the RSS feeds and from University databases. You can do it yourself if you want.

1: Here’s the actual data taken directly from the RSS feeds from two satellite-based datasets (the other is the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). It is one of the five standard global temperature datasets, which include the two satellite datasets and the three terrestrial datasets – Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS); the Hadley Centre/CRU dataset, version 4 (HadCRUT4); and the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). This is the latest data from 2014.

2: The satellite datasets are based on measurements made by the most accurate thermometers available – platinum resistance thermometers, which not only measure temperature at various altitudes above the Earth’s surface via microwave sounding units but also constantly calibrate themselves by measuring the known temperature of the cosmic background radiation.



3: The graph is news. Not only is it very recent: it is also something that the mainstream news media do not reveal.

All this in spite of continued increases in CO2 and other “greenhouse gasses”. Clearly this shows that there is no causal correlation with CO2 whatsoever.

 

[sallybutler]

Whether one believes that climate change is caused by human activity or not, surely we can agree that human activity can mitigate and/or exacerbate some of the effects that weather can have.

For example, the Dust Bowl. How much of it was caused by drought conditions, and how much by over-farming?

Another example, severe smog conditions (London in the 1800’s, LA in the mid 1900’s, China now). How much of it is caused by inversions and how much by man burning things (coal, oil, gasoline, etc)?

Just because one does not believe in man made global climate change does not mean that people can’t still be responsible for catastrophic micro climate changes.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

2: The satellite datasets are based on measurements made by the most accurate thermometers available – platinum resistance thermometers, which not only measure temperature at various altitudes above the Earth’s surface via microwave sounding units but also constantly calibrate themselves by measuring the known temperature of the cosmic background radiation.

I don’t think you understand the role of the platinum resistance thermometers in the satellites. Those platinum thermometers do not make the temperature measurements that get reported. The actual temperature measurements that are reported are made by a radiometer that measures the temperature-dependent microwave radiation from below. The sole purpose of the platinum thermometer is this:

A black body within the satellite is electrically heated to a controlled temperature. The platinum resistance thermometer just measures the temperature of that black body in the satellite so that the heating circuit knows when to turn down the heat to keep the black body at exactly the desired temperature. That is all. The platinum resistance thermometer’s job is over.

The reason they want to maintain this black body at a precise temperature is that every once in a while the same radiometer that is looking at radiation from below turns its attention to the black body to see how much microwave radiation it is producing. It uses that information to compare against the radiation from below as a calibration standard. The other calibration standard is when the radiometer looks away into deep space for a low-temperature calibration point. The satellite then extrapolates between these two calibration points to determine the temperature of the air below.

You could say that the ultimate measurements are based on a calibration provided with the help of the platinum temperature sensor, but the core technology for sensing temperature from below is essentially a very long-wavelength thermal camera - not a platinum sensor.

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

Or, as an alternative thought experiment, what would happen if, tomorrow morning, we had definitive proof that catastrophic climate change was certain and immediate?

Would the Heartland Institute and WattsUpWithThat and all those who are so vigorously contesting global warming say “Wow, I guess we were wrong! We will have to seriously cut back on burning fossil fuels.”

I will be the first to admit I was wrong.

But my skepticism grows with the latest fraud by NOAA.

In a purely political move NOAA has re-adjusted global temperatures to support the UN agenda in Paris.

NOAA now claims the global warming hiatus that began in the late 1990s never actually happened. This is in direct contrast to the IPCC. To increase the rate in warming, NOAA scientists put more weight on certain ocean buoy arrays, adjusted ship-based temperature readings upward, and slightly raised land-based temperatures as well. It’s also worth noting that satellite measurements contradict NOAA’s claim and actually put the global warming hiatus now at 18 years six months.

Do these people have no shame?

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

Whether one believes that climate change is caused by human activity or not, surely we can agree that human activity can mitigate and/or exacerbate some of the effects that weather can have.

For example, the Dust Bowl. How much of it was caused by drought conditions, and how much by over-farming?

Another example, severe smog conditions (London in the 1800’s, LA in the mid 1900’s, China now). How much of it is caused by inversions and how much by man burning things (coal, oil, gasoline, etc)?

Just because one does not believe in man made global climate change does not mean that people can’t still be responsible for catastrophic micro climate changes.

Well, Sally, if what you say is correct…then some smart climate scientists should be able to adjust the climate/weather to ideal conditions and temperature just by telling us how to live our lives.