Here we go
Copious amounts of data...graphs...formulas...models...scientists
predicting doom and humans are the cause. Where have I heard this before?
Oh yea, the Club of Rome. Their copious amounts of data, graphs, models
and formulas, predicted mass starvation and that economic growth would
grind to a halt in the late 20th century. This was right before the
largest peacetime expansion of the global economy in history! And wasn't
there a coming Ice Age being predicted back then?
It is quite anthrocentric to attribute things we cannot fully explain
to humans but if humans are "increasing the amount of C02 in the
atmosphere" and it is CO2 that is causing the increase in global warming
then there is a simple thing each and everyone of us can do that will
certainly make a "win" for the planet: stop breathing. Before anyone
suggests I go first I will confirm suspicions that while I do not doubt
that temperatures are rising I do doubt that human behavior can change it.
And while we're recommending books let me recommend the fantastic
"The Vision of The Annointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social
Policy" by Thomas Sowell, ISBN: 0-465-08994-1, Harper Collins.
Dan.
On Fri, October 12, 2007 10:55 pm, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
>
> On Oct 12, 2007, at 11:24 PM, Fred Baker wrote:
>
>> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> I asked James this privately, but if we're going to get into an off-
>> topic discussion of global warming, I'll ask it publicly to whoever
>> has a good answer.
>>
>>
>> We all agree that global warming is happening. If you go to the
>> terminal moraine, the farthest south that the ice went doing the
>> largest or perhaps the most recent ice age, and you don't see any
>> ice, the earth is provably warmer than it once was.
>>
>> That said, do we not see ice at the terminal moraine because people
>> drive SUVs, or because warming and cooling is something that has
>> been happening since God created the earth? In the latter case,
>> specifically what scientific evidence do we have that our current
>> global warming event (which started in the 16th century, which was
>> a mini-ice-age) is related to emissions? What scientific evidence
>> do we have that changing emissions behavior will change global
>> warming in any way?
>>
>
>
>
> Dear Fred;
>
> As a physicist who worked a little in climate change in the late
> 1980's, let me give a capsule answer and then shut up. I will look,
> in turn, at the Greenhouse effect, at the CO2 changes, and at
> possible effects of the ongoing human forcing of the climate.
>
> If the Earth's atmosphere did not trap heat, the mean surface
> temperature would be well below freezing. This math is not too
> difficult; you know the solar constant (input heating), mean albedo
> and rotation rate (the Earth warms during the day, cools at night by
> radiation) and you set up a spherically uniform model, which can be
> solved analytically. Instead, the Earth's mean surface is above
> freezing. (Supposedly, at this moment as I write the globally mean
> surface temp is 6.72 C, but the annual average is more like 14 C. The
> Northern hemisphere, having a good deal more land, dominates the
> annual cycle.) The difference between observed and no-atmosphere
> predicted mean temperatures for the Earth is about 40 C.
>
> This difference is caused by the so called "Greenhouse" effect, the
> blockage of IR radiation out from the Earth's surface. (Actual
> Greenhouses work mostly by stopping convection, not IR heat loss.)
> This blockage is mostly due to CO2, but Methane (from cows!) and
> other trace gases are also important, as is water vapor due to its
> prevalence. The simple uniform models do a reasonable job predicting
> the average lunar temperature; the lunar mean surface temperature is
> -50 C, which shows what an atmosphere can do for you.
>
> Thus, there is no doubt of the existence of the Greenhouse effect;
> not only does the physics work out approximately well not only for
> the Earth and Moon, but also for Mars (a little Greenhouse, but
> noticeable) and Venus. Venus is a very interesting case, being so
> similar to the Earth in size and composition. On the Earth, CO2 is
> mostly in certain rocks, like limestone, then dissolved in the
> Oceans, then in the Atmosphere, by a relative proportion of roughly
> >10,000:50:1. On Venus, a comparable amount of CO2 is all in the
> atmosphere, and, as a result, the surface is very hot (mean
> temperature ~ 460 C). This is _not_ primarily due it being closer to
> the Sun, if it had terrestrial oceans and a terrestrial atmosphere,
> it would be a temperate place. (By isotopic evidence Venus used to
> have oceans, but it lost them - note that the rocks that contain CO2
> here would mostly give it up at 400+ C - apparently, once Venus
> heated up all the CO2 went into the atmosphere and now it can never
> cool down.)
>
> So, we have 4 objects (Earth, Moon, Venus, Mars), 3 of which have
> G
