Helen's Global Warming thread

[helen]

Can you just clarify whether there is any particular difference between "man-made climate change" and "natural climate change" vis-a-vis the actual outcome when it finally takes hold and people start starving and drowning and so on?

I'd be more scared of the natural stuff. It's bigger and stronger, but I do believe we shouldn't do anything to make it worse.

As far as CO2 goes the simple argument is that as a radiatively active gas, if you stick some in a box and shine a light on it, it will warm up. Stick some more in, and it will warm up proportionately more.

Ice cores that go back 700,000 years show CO2 and temperature waxing and waning as the ice ages come and go, but at no point did the concentration change as quickly as it has since the industrial revolution.

Most climate models predict the predominant affect to be a shift in circulation patterns, rather than a direct warming as such. Changing the poleward temperature gradient has non-linear affects in this respect that aren't entirely predictable. GCMs are mostly dodgy, but they're the best and only tool to try and use the knowledge of physics to model a highly complex system. Most 'averaged' predictions you see in documents like the assessments by the IPCC use an average of 20 or so of the worlds best models, but look at them individually and where one shows a positive value another shows a negative, and the average results in an intuitive residual that's just about believable.

Saying that though, observation length required for statistical significance is just about getting there with some remote and in-situ methods, so I have much more faith in measured data now than say, 10 years ago.

[BlackenedBiker]

I'd be more scared of the natural stuff. It's bigger and stronger, but I do believe we shouldn't do anything to make it worse.

As far as CO2 goes the simple argument is that as a radiatively active gas, if you stick some in a box and shine a light on it, it will warm up. Stick some more in, and it will warm up proportionately more.

Ice cores that go back 700,000 years show CO2 and temperature waxing and waning as the ice ages come and go, but at no point did the concentration change as quickly as it has since the industrial revolution.

Most climate models predict the predominant affect to be a shift in circulation patterns, rather than a direct warming as such. Changing the poleward temperature gradient has non-linear affects in this respect that aren't entirely predictable. GCMs are mostly dodgy, but they're the best and only tool to try and use the knowledge of physics to model a highly complex system. Most 'averaged' predictions you see in documents like the assessments by the IPCC use an average of 20 or so of the worlds best models, but look at them individually and where one shows a positive value another shows a negative, and the average results in an intuitive residual that's just about believable.

Saying that though, observation length required for statistical significance is just about getting there with some remote and in-situ methods, so I have much more faith in measured data now than say, 10 years ago.

Are you plagerising this Helen, you do know that that is very naughty....


http://www.springerlink.com/content/vw8eu65t16ghu8k0/

[DimPrawn]

Yeah, that's what I thought.

[helen]

Okay, you're through to the second room, you have exits to your left and straight ahead

Question 2: What is the biggest single contributor to global warming in Western Culture

Clock's ticking which exit do you take...

This is an ill-posed question. Direct or indirect? Emission by a sector or by gas? Incorporating a positive feedback affect, involving or not secondary pollutants and aerosols as ccn's...??

Are you trying to catch me out by saying CO2 emissions, when molecule for molecule methane or water vapour are stronger absorbers/emitters in the infrared? That our love of rice and hamburgers forces the expansion of paddy fields and deforestation in the tropics?

Unless you ask a more specific question, I will be factitious say the biggest single contributor to global warming in western culture is what comes out of churchill's mouth and arrse.

[helen]

Are you plagerising this Helen, you do know that that is very naughty....


http://www.springerlink.com/content/vw8eu65t16ghu8k0/

I'd have put money on it that you're a biologist! It's your lot's uncertainty on biomass and detritus emissions that is one of the biggest uncertainties in sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon. Get a wiggle on...

Feel free to google me - you have my name from the post about menelaus/articles.

You force me to be an arrse:
I have a first class degree in physics and meterology from the university of Reading. I then spent 4 years at Oxford studying atmospheric physics. 2 years at the British Antarctic survey drilling ice cores, and now work with satellites looking at atmospheric composition at a government research lab. If you're still in science land perhaps you have access to WoS and can read some of my papers.

Stick it up your hoop.

[DimPrawn]

Unless you ask a more specific question, I will be factitious say the biggest single contributor to global warming in western culture is what comes out of churchill's mouth and arrse.

Come on, that's bullsh i t and you know it.

[BlackenedBiker]

This is an ill-posed question. Direct or indirect? Emission by a sector or by gas? Incorporating a positive feedback affect, involving or not secondary pollutants and aerosols as ccn's...??

Are you trying to catch me out by saying CO2 emissions, when molecule for molecule methane or water vapour are stronger absorbers/emitters in the infrared? That our love of rice and hamburgers forces the expansion of paddy fields and deforestation in the tropics?

Unless you ask a more specific question, I will be factitious say the biggest single contributor to global warming in western culture is what comes out of churchill's mouth and arrse.

You are close but you are fishing. However I will help you give me the Vector and the Sector.

And stop being nasty to Churchie or his Missus will turn you into gas (I have seen it happen)

[minestrone]

That honeymoon must have been fun

[BlackenedBiker]

I'd have put money on it that you're a biologist! It's your lot's uncertainty on biomass and detritus emissions that is one of the biggest uncertainties in sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon. Get a wiggle on...

Feel free to google me - you have my name from the post about menelaus/articles.

You force me to be an arrse:
I have a first class degree in physics and meterology from the university of Reading. I then spent 4 years at Oxford studying atmospheric physics. 2 years at the British Antarctic survey drilling ice cores, and now work with satellites looking at atmospheric composition at a government research lab. If you're still in science land perhaps you have access to WoS and can read some of my papers.

Stick it up your hoop.

Did you just google that. BTW which antartic locations were you at, be accurate now.

PS: Does Reading have a Uni??

[DimPrawn]

PS: Does Reading have a Uni??

Yes, my wife studied engineering there. It's a very good uni.