Total nonsense in climate debate

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

3 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

To understand how powerful the forces of cold winds and sublimation of ice can be, I invite readers to ponder the photograph below of a rock sitting out on the frozen surface of Lake Baikal, in Siberia.  The wind has eroded the lake ice underneath the rock, leaving it suspended magically in air, on a pedestal:

The ice was sublimated away into water vapor, by the moving air.  Amazing stuff.

100% False.  The sun hit the rock, warming it, creating localized temperatures above dew point either in direct contact or via air warming, and area under it was sublimated as it was warmer than surrounding as the air could hold more water vapor.  Has not one single thing to do with the wind.  In fact, high winds help to protect the ice as it will create enough pressure to BUILD ice from the moisture in the air!  Low wind is a different matter.  Anyone who has ever been in the mountains(that get snow) knows this and never steps near rocks as it is ALWAYS a hole. 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

47 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

At the end of the day, all environmental, energy, hunger, pollution, etc...issues can be attributed to the population explosion since roughly the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

The global population in 1800 was approximately 1 billion. This year, 219 year later, it is estimated to exceed 7.7 billion.

Our natural resources have not kept pace (pun intended).

Each new person on the planet requires a certain amount of food, fresh water and energy to survive. They also contribute a certain amount of trash and pollution.

Keep in mind that it took recorded history up to 1800 to hit 1 billion, we have added an addition 6.7 billion in just over 200 years!

How do you handle this? I don't have a clue, but as with any problem, if you fail to identify or ignore, the root cause you can't begin to address the issue.

Well, this gets back to energy collection/distribution really.  Enough energy you turn 100% of your trash/sewage into product and with more energy you turn desert into greenhouses and desalinated water finishes the "problem".   Even more energy and you make floating greenhouses or aquaponics.  Eventually you run out of space, but honestly where is that?  100 Billion?  A trillion?  Ewwww in either case. 

Thorium and Fast breeder reactors are the answer for the next 100,000 years + solar.  After that?  Good question. 

PS: Desalination using the sun to heat the water to near boiling or post boiling solves almost 100% of the earths water shortage problem.  The only question is building the infrastructure to do it.  The Sahara could literally be covered with such heating plants with a greenhouse underneath growing food with reflected light and captured heat.  Would it take Billions of lifetimes of hard work to make this happen?  Yes.  How many millions of lifetimes did it take to build the Temples/Pyramids of Egypt, Mexico, pre Inca, Balbak, terraced whole mountains of the Philippines, China?  In fact, how many Millions died, let alone man hours, building the levy dykes using nothing but wood shovels on the Yellow River in China?  Hundreds of miles of dykes that continually had to increase in height every year as the Yellow river filled in the canal with silt and now the Yellow river flows nearly 10m above the Han plain in some places...   

We think of ourselves as "modern" and "advanced"; what a joke, almost nothing of our civilization would exist in 2000 years if a giant plague happened tomorrow other than some ceramics and stainless steel(assuming it was not scavenged and reused until it did not exist by the post plague barbarians; which is what probably happened to ancient civilizations like the pre Egyptians), yet the great pyramids would still be there in 2k Years.  Nothing but Hubris and arrogance floating around today.

PPS: More than likely the Great pyramids are actually giant hydraulic ram pumps used to disassociate blown in air with the internal shock wave to create Oxygen and hydrogen.  People think of pre civs as "barbarians"... No.  People forget it is easy to lose technology very easily.  People forget that after 5000 years the Nile is MUCH lower than it used to be and above the Great Pyramids is a giant basin which used to be a lake(now a giant depression and a tiny salt lake) fed by the nile and tunnels go from that lake TO the great pyramids.  You will note all round the old lake shore are old ruinns of roads etc which if you look at them today seem VERY odd out in the middle of the desert.... Well, it never used to be desert now did it?  It used to be a giant lake surrounded by Savannah more like Tanzania/Kenya. 

Edited May 30, 2019 by Wastral
spelling/punctuation

[Red + 252]

51 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

That debate has moved from science to religion. 

Only in forums like these.

Climate science has continued to advance.

58 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

The last period of glaciation was around the mid 1700's.

No such event occurred  at a global level.

1 hour ago, Douglas Buckland said:

How do you come up with this?

The Second International Conference on Global Warming and the Next Ice Age.

 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

Let me quote to you your OWN link.... for you never read or cannot be bothered to read for YOURSELF. 

**** NOTE **** This is just too good to be true....  I sent you the link with linked Scafetta and west etc in it... and .... now you are posting it back as Human caused global warming... This is  EPIC!!!!!!

"Also, cosmic ray production was found to correlate with mid- plus high-level cloud amount over the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project record, while radiocarbon (14C) records were used to infer total solar irradiance (TSI) forcing of recent and paleoclimate temperature changes. These data suggest that up to 50% of the twentieth-century global warming could be explained by solar radiation variability (Scafetta and West 2007). Evidence of solar output varia-tion effects on the water cycle were also presented; however, the mechanisms are not well understood and sensitivity studies using climate models are needed to help examine this (Ferguson and Veizer 2007). It was also theorized that the effect of waves on sea surface emissivity can cause important climate"

So, you admit, YOU are wrong?

Try reading next time.  Or keep ignoring, and posting making us all get a GOOD long hard laugh at YOUR expense. 

Cheers mate!  Good one!  Keep it up!!!😂

***** You do realize I linked you to this paper earlier .... ***** ROFL!!#!!!!$#&R%$(&$(@$((#@()#@)#@

Edited May 30, 2019 by Wastral

[Okie + 83]

5 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

For years 'scientists' referred to 'global warming', until somebody pointed out that the globe, in it's entirety, was not warming up. Some places were getting warmer, some cooler. In an effort to be more accurate and appear more scientific, they then adopted the term 'climate change'. How could anyone argue with that? The climate has been changing for millennia! 

The change came from Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, not scientists.  Why are you lying about this?  This fact is well-known.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-political-rhetoric-around-climate-change-er-global-warming/

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

This guy "Wastral" has showed up to troll this thread.  Here is one of his comments:

100% False.  The sun hit the rock, warming it, creating localized temperatures above dew point either in direct contact or via air warming, and area under it was sublimated as it was warmer than surrounding as the air could hold more water vapor.  Has not one single thing to do with the wind. 

Ignore this guy.  He has no idea of physics.  For those of you interested in the wind sublimation problem, try this explanation made by a physicist in Ukraine  (a little hard to follow as his English is accented), but watch the slides and follow the math:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX9V5uu35RE

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

4 hours ago, Red said:

I read your reasoning, but in relation to Arctic ice melt, it is highly improbable.  You really only tapped into "flux" factors - via the hydrological cycle - which effectively cancel out change. 

That is all true, Red - but here is the kicker:  the "flux factors" as you describe them may well be quantitatively larger than the recovery, in which case heat is lost.

Just for example, which I invite you to ponder:   the warmer air mass wicks off water by evaporation into vapor.  That vapor rises with the moving air masses as it comes to land,  The rise is significant, to thousands of feet over the land surface, until it collides with mountains, then condenses out as rain.  What is happening to the included latent heat, taken out of the sea by the evaporation cycle?  I posit it is radiating out into space.  The argument that CO2 is a "greenhouse gas" and will lock that heat in fails when you consider that CO2 is heavier than air  (heavier than N2, the major component of air).  The CO2 will be in a band close to the earth surface, perhaps within the first few hundred feet, as the relative densities sort themselves out. I am setting aside the argument that, as a rare gas measured in parts per million, it has no statistical effect, as others disagree with that analysis.  So, let's assume it has an effect, where you find it.  The rain being way up there is not going to be "trapped" by any CO2 mantle as there is none at altitude.  Some of the heat stays with the water as warm rain, and comes back down to earth, yet if that water seeps back into the groundwater, it is taking its heat down inside the earth and below the frost line, so it dissipates into background heat from the earth core. The rest of the heat is on an unrestricted traverse off the planet into space. 

A rainy planet is thus likely to dissipate heat faster than a dry planet. And the consensus seems to be for more rain, and warmer rain, as "global warming" continues. I am not convinced that the end result is a mere cancellation. You are entirely likely to end up with either less heat, or less ocean water.  Either way, sea levels drop (albeit only slightly) and surface temperatures end up close to where they are.  Predicting a runaway oscillation is a bit of an outlier bet. 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

4 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

This guy "Wastral" has showed up to troll this thread.  Here is one of his comments:

100% False.  The sun hit the rock, warming it, creating localized temperatures above dew point either in direct contact or via air warming, and area under it was sublimated as it was warmer than surrounding as the air could hold more water vapor.  Has not one single thing to do with the wind. 

Ignore this guy.  He has no idea of physics.  For those of you interested in the wind sublimation problem, try this explanation made by a physicist in Ukraine  (a little hard to follow as his English is accented), but watch the slides and follow the math:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX9V5uu35RE

Ignores reflected light and heat of the rock.  Here is reality: Middle of the rock is freezing cold and the tiny bit of sun never heats up the middle of rock, but does to the sides and snow under it never melts as it is so cold out.  Due to sun refelction sides melt and center remains frozen.  Sides of the snow/ice melt via reflected radiation.  You see it all the time on a snow field and it happens within a couple days at most, not weeks.  Couple days.  You pass rocks on way up and by the time you come back down it is scalloped out the sides and they are sitting on a pedestal till too much is melted and they flop over.  Now can there be a small velocity component due to sublimation?  A tiny bit yes.  Sublimation is VERY small compared to the sun. 

Want a sublimination picture?  Sun cups. Eventually over months to years turn into Penitentes.  And no, you never see rocks on top of penitentes. 

This is called math geeks doing white papers forgetting basic ties to reality. 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Red,

I suggest that you look up 'The Little Ice Age', there is plenty of information on it available. 

I suggest you try the Environmental History Resources

www.eh-resources.org/little-ice-age/

But I have a nagging feeling that you'll say this is BS as well.

 

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

1 hour ago, Okie said:

The change came from Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, not scientists.  Why are you lying about this?  This fact is well-known.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-political-rhetoric-around-climate-change-er-global-warming/

I guess my professors at the University of Denver got it wrong. I bow to your superior knowledge on the subject...

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

11 hours ago, Wastral said:

PS: Desalination using the sun to heat the water to near boiling or post boiling solves almost 100% of the earths water shortage problem. 

Solar advocate

[David Jones + 84]

12 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

If every last scrap of surface ice melted and none went into rainwater, then I guess the sea water level would go up by somewhere between 80 and 300 feet.  It would be a massive relocation of the planet.  So we all have a vested interest in avoiding that development.  And that is another reason I advocate the rapid development and construction of Thorium nuclear plants.  Doing what we are doing now is just not going to work for us.  The energy demands are far too high to ever be met with solar panels and those windmills, that is folly. 

I also conclude that the rapid desertification that is happening, unfortunately in very poor areas such as the Sahel south of the Sahara, is going to be disastrous.  Building a diversion channel from the Congo River to run downhill into the Sahel would be the best bang for the buck.  I just don't see the UN or anybody else getting behind this, unfortunately. 

You can sequester a lot of fresh water into the desert that would otherwise flow into the sea (and cause sea level rise) just by digging some gravity channels.  Amazing there is no impetus for this. 

I just observed that you in fact did go into a lengthy discussion on the issue quite recently as is clearly visible here so apologies if I misjudged your intentions in the other forum, maybe I somehow missed all the people on here that actually do know something on the subject. I stand on my comment about bird species compared to fossil fuel consequences of extinction though unless the alternative wind turbine you mentioned is as effective as the ones usually used but my guess is if they aren't using the design then it likely doesn't produce as much energy or there are other issues. Would be interested in some technical info on the Dutch design if you have it, I couldn't find anything more specific.

However I think you are overly optimising on Thorium. Is there such a reactor available today that could be built at mass over the next 3 decades because if the idea is to research it for another 20 years then it's too little too late and we'd be better of with renewables since nuclear is nuclear any way you slice it, not likely to be easy to get people to adopt it.

As for solar and wind, if one looks at it from what seems to be the standard way of defining primary energy (seems to be done without excluding energy losses of fossil fuel technology), then yes it'll be very hard to work with solar/wind. I've looked at what it takes to replace our current setup in this multi apartment house for instance which is currently running a fossil fuel heating system (one that I have disabled for my residence) and the energy requirements with modern insulation and a heat pump are not at all comparable. This building uses about 150000kWh worth of fossil fuels per year currently, with modern external insulation this would likely be down by half and with a heat pump it would go down further by another 3x or more depending on the type so one ends up with about 15000-25000kWh instead of the 150000kWh. This can be further reduced through requiring low flow water filters and shower heads (I reduced my hot water energy use by half this way). Maybe we can't run current setups with renewables when the situation is observed through the lens of primary energy use of today but my guess is it'll work if effectively prepped and accompanied by extensive efficiency measures. If insulating older buildings was mandated, inefficient equipment was removed from the market over the next years and heat pumps were installed throughout the energy requirements would be nothing like today, at least in my area. My guess is primary energy can be reduced by 3-5x in many countries. I don't think the resultant energy requirements will be impossible to manage. Such an approach should also as a whole improve quality of life for people with lower financial means since they will not be paying anywhere near as much for their energy consumption.

Edited May 30, 2019 by David Jones

[Red + 252]

9 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

That is all true, Red - but here is the kicker:  the "flux factors" as you describe them may well be quantitatively larger than the recovery, in which case heat is lost.

Just for example, which I invite you to ponder:   the warmer air mass wicks off water by evaporation into vapor.  That vapor rises with the moving air masses as it comes to land,  The rise is significant, to thousands of feet over the land surface, until it collides with mountains, then condenses out as rain.  What is happening to the included latent heat, taken out of the sea by the evaporation cycle?  I posit it is radiating out into space.  The argument that CO2 is a "greenhouse gas" and will lock that heat in fails when you consider that CO2 is heavier than air  (heavier than N2, the major component of air).  The CO2 will be in a band close to the earth surface, perhaps within the first few hundred feet, as the relative densities sort themselves out. I am setting aside the argument that, as a rare gas measured in parts per million, it has no statistical effect, as others disagree with that analysis.  So, let's assume it has an effect, where you find it.  The rain being way up there is not going to be "trapped" by any CO2 mantle as there is none at altitude.  Some of the heat stays with the water as warm rain, and comes back down to earth, yet if that water seeps back into the groundwater, it is taking its heat down inside the earth and below the frost line, so it dissipates into background heat from the earth core. The rest of the heat is on an unrestricted traverse off the planet into space. 

A rainy planet is thus likely to dissipate heat faster than a dry planet. And the consensus seems to be for more rain, and warmer rain, as "global warming" continues. I am not convinced that the end result is a mere cancellation. You are entirely likely to end up with either less heat, or less ocean water.  Either way, sea levels drop (albeit only slightly) and surface temperatures end up close to where they are.  Predicting a runaway oscillation is a bit of an outlier bet. 

None of your post properly deals with our planet's energy balance mechanisms.  You have described mostly weather events.

Understanding climate change simply involves determining what is responsible for the disequilibrium.  Right now we know that less energy escapes to outer space than is being received, and it is a very long term trend.  There are very few factors that are involved and your ideas were inconsequential.

 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

Just now, Red said:

Right now we know that less energy escapes to outer space than is being received

Actually, we do not know that.  It is a hypothesis at this point. 

1 minute ago, Red said:

your ideas were inconsequential

I always knew that I was both an idiot and a total fool.  I thank you for clearing that up for the readership. 

[Red + 252]

8 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Red,

I suggest that you look up 'The Little Ice Age', there is plenty of information on it available. 

I suggest you try the Environmental History Resources

www.eh-resources.org/little-ice-age/

But I have a nagging feeling that you'll say this is BS as well.  

 

Not sure what relevance this has to what you posted beforehand.  I think you have confused a period which got comparatively cold with an an actual "glaciation".  Just remember that even today there are a few places where alpine glaciers are growing despite global warming over the past century.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

10 hours ago, Okie said:

The change came from Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, not scientists.  Why are you lying about this?

Okie, don't get sucked into histrionics like this.  You are an educated man, you know better. 

Besides, it is not polite, and for a fellow from the MidWest, being courteous is a matter of prime importance.

[Red + 252]

5 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

Actually, we do not know that.  It is a hypothesis at this point. 

I always knew that I was both an idiot and a total fool.  I thank you for clearing that up for the readership. 

I am never bothered by what people choose to believe.  

This is a field of science I have followed since my studies in the 1970s, so I rely on what science is able to substantively conclude.

What you believe is simply not supported by science. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

1 minute ago, Red said:

What you believe is simply not supported by science.

My dear Red, the only belief I have is that I am an idiot and a total fool.  You graciously pointed that out.  If you find the declaration not supported by science, then so be it.  I shall put myself down as a lemming, going over the cliff edge with everybody else, does that satisfy you?  

[Red + 252]

3 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

My dear Red, the only belief I have is that I am an idiot and a total fool.  You graciously pointed that out.  If you find the declaration not supported by science, then so be it.  I shall put myself down as a lemming, going over the cliff edge with everybody else, does that satisfy you?  

People happily believe what they choose,  but then there is "reality."

Our federal Minister for Agriculture honestly believes that "praying for rain" is a sound policy, and that other agricultural policies are built around the idea that it will actually rain.  Well, there has not been a lot of rain and farmer suicides are at epidemic levels in drought affected regions.

Unlike your claim, what I pointed out was that you described weather events rather than the physics of what happens with energy transfer mechanisms.  We can and will have exceptionally cold (extreme) weather events throughout periods of global warming, because the energy driving such events is increasing.  These events are inconsequential to the gross  transfer of energy to and from the planet.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

11 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

  For those of you interested in the wind sublimation problem, try this explanation made by a physicist in Ukraine  (a little hard to follow as his English is accented), but watch the slides and follow the math:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX9V5uu35RE

Computational models fitting well with observation. Fancy that.

Edited May 30, 2019 by Enthalpic

[Okie + 83]

11 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

I guess my professors at the University of Denver got it wrong. I bow to your superior knowledge on the subject... 

I think you meant to be condescendingly sarcastic with this retort.  However, it appears there is some truth in what you said, but you possibly still misinterpreted what your professors said:

https://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming.htm

According to this website, we were both right, to a point.  Climate change originally meant something related, but different in the way I think you are using it (from the link above):

Global Warming vs. Climate Change

Both of the terms in question are used frequently in the scientific literature, because they refer to two different physical phenomena.  As the name suggests, 'global warming' refers to the long-term trend of a rising average global temperature, which you can see here:

'Climate change', again as the name suggests, refers to the changes in the global climate which result from the increasing average global temperature.  For example, changes in precipitation patterns, increased prevalence of droughts, heat waves, and other extreme weather, etc.  These projections of future global precipitation changes from the 2007 IPCC report are an example of climate change:

Thus while the physical phenomena are causally related, they are not the same thing.  Human greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming, which in turn is causing climate change.  However, because the terms are causally related, they are often used interchangeably in normal daily communications.

But I was right about the link to Frank Luntz, according to the same site:

The second premise is also wrong, as demonstrated by perhaps the only individual to actually advocate changing the term from 'global warming' to 'climate change', Republican political strategist Frank Luntz in a controversial memo advising conservative politicians on communicating about the environment:

It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming and “conservation” instead of preservation.

“Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming”. (emphasis in the original) As one focus group participant noted, climate change “sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.” While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.

[Okie + 83]

2 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

Okie, don't get sucked into histrionics like this.  You are an educated man, you know better.  

Besides, it is not polite, and for a fellow from the MidWest, being courteous is a matter of prime importance.

I cannot respond while I am at work; and I work long hours.  Based on Douglas' many posts, I didn't think he was being intellectually honest.  But with my most recent response, I am giving him the benefit of the doubt.  I was always under the impression that "climate change" was not a term until Frank Luntz pushed it.  Therefore, when he said he got it from his college professors (presumably before the early 2000s, I had to make sure that I was certain of its origin. As a practical matter, I still think the term is used rhetorically as a way to blunt the alarm of (to paraphrase James Howard Kunstler) the "Long Emergency."  Global warming is real.  I am flabbergasted that even with the thousands of data points available, people deny that it is happening.  I have been to many glaciers (Exit, Aialik, Marjerie and Athabasca to name a few).  All of them are receding; and two of them (Exit and Athabasca) are being marked year-by-year.  The glaciers in Glacier National Park in Montana are expected to completely disappear by 2030, if not sooner.  You can see the changes, if you care to look.  The other two glaciers are tidewater glaciers, but you can clearly see they are receding.  These changes will require us to adapt, as we will have to plant different crops and fight pests that we have not had to deal with before.

I was completely astonished when I came back through Springfield, Missouri, this weekend.  I met the owner of a cave (Missouri is also known as the Cave State), who told me he believed the earth is cooling.  That is just crazy and irrational.  But people convince themselves that there is no danger.  It is understandable why people on this discussion board would want to believe in something irrational.  As Upton Sinclair famously said: "It is hard to get a man to understand something, if his salary depends on not understanding it."  But to the cave owner?  That was influenced by his conservative politics, not any economic reason.  It probably won't affect his cave that drastically.  The interior of a cave is the average temperature of the outside air year-round.  So all of the caves here in Missouri are around 56 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  That won't change that much.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

2 hours ago, Okie said:

“Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming”.

"Freedom gas" sounds more fun than "fossil fuel" too.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

1 hour ago, Enthalpic said:

"Freedom gas" sounds more fun than "fossil fuel" too.

Watch out, or they will be calling it "maudit gaz" soon enough! 😒

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

3 hours ago, Okie said:

I met the owner of a cave (Missouri is also known as the Cave State), who told me he believed the earth is cooling.  That is just crazy and irrational. 

You do realize, of course, that that cave man is right.  

The earth has an interior core of molten magma.  That material is unaffected by what happens on the crust surface, and that core is continuously giving up heat, a tiny sliver at a time, to the cold crust. The core comprises the vast majority of the earth's mass. So: is the earth cooling?  Yup, it is.  [Not enough too make any difference to the crust creatures, but hey, we are splitting hairs here, so might as well go all-out!)