alexjrgreen wrote:When humans were few, the effect on the world's thermal balance was small, although even that may have been enough to avert another ice age.
A very large assumption about facts not in evidence.
Shrug. They're making the same unfounded, ideology-driven assumption about CO2 driving climate. It's quite well-established that we have gone into ice ages at CO2 levels as much as ten times higher than today's.
This is like a primitive veterinarian discovering sick animals are all full of blood, and concluding blood must be the cause of illness.
alexjrgreen wrote:Now that our population is 7 billion and rising, the amount of waste heat we generate is becoming a significant effect.
Significant effects in urban settings only. Five miles outside urban zones, air temperatures drop precipitously and there are no indications that waste heat is having any permanent effects on the upper levels of our atmosphere. As far as anyone can tell, heat from the heat island effect is radiated away into space, just as the heat over deserts is radiated into space.
Heat doesn't all have to convect up to the upper atmosphere to be lost. The wavelengths to which the atmosphere is transparent (visible light, short infrared, microwave...) radiate away directly.
Billy Catringer wrote:Further, most of the heat island effect arises from solar heating of pavements and buildings. Also, most of the waste heat comes from the use of electricity, not the combustion of fuels in automobiles, even though we DO burn such fuels in a profligate manner.
Your argument here says that not even a device such as a Bussard Fusion Reactor would save us from our plight. There is no way for us to use energy without generating waste heat. This means that we need to curb our population. Are you willing to volunteer for that job?
We just need a way to restore a balance in an emergency. That might be the airborne sunshades you suggested, or a way of increasing the radiation of heat.
Billy Catringer wrote:Living is all about dealing with risk. Risk is ever present. It behooves us then, to do a good job of evaluating risks and acting on the most probable ones while ignoring politically motivated panic mongering.
Shrug. They're making the same unfounded, ideology-driven assumption about CO2 driving climate. It's quite well-established that we have gone into ice ages at CO2 levels as much as ten times higher than today's.
This is like a primitive veterinarian discovering sick animals are all full of blood, and concluding blood must be the cause of illness.
You need to look past the CO2 argument to the actual data underneath.
There is a small but significant statistical correlation between human activity and rising temperature. Whatever the cause (if indeed there is one) the possibility of another ice age seems to have been averted.
alexjrgreen wrote:Heat doesn't all have to convect up to the upper atmosphere to be lost. The wavelengths to which the atmosphere is transparent (visible light, short infrared, microwave...) radiate away directly.
The ovewhelming majority insolation is shed via convection rather than direct radiation. Refrigerants help that process along rather than hinder it.
alexjrgreen wrote:We just need a way to restore a balance in an emergency. That might be the airborne sunshades you suggested, or a way of increasing the radiation of heat.
Oh, I have no doubts about such a program working. In fact, I would fear that such a program would work entirely too well. We would need to be absolutely certain that such a program is necessary prior to implementing it. We are here talking about a very large system with a vast amount of momentum.
alexjrgreen wrote:Why? It's an example of human suffering caused by climate change.
Because you posted it as evidence of human action causing climate change and everyone over the age of four knows that drought is a bad thing that causes people to suffer. Why else would you post such a link in a discussion of this kind? We are here discussing the validity of claims about AGW. I expected you to supply evidence to support your claims.
alexjrgreen wrote:Why do you think this? On what evidence?
Because of your claim that there are so many people on the planet that they are ruining it. Population growth in the US is positive only because of immigration. Population growth in all other industrialized nations is zero or negative. Clearly, you would favor a drop in human population.
alexjrgreen wrote: There is a small but significant statistical correlation between human activity and rising temperature. Whatever the cause (if indeed there is one) the possibility of another ice age seems to have been averted.
Again, you assume facts not in evidence. Where is the evidence that we averted an ice age, let alone have averted the possibility of same? The data we have coming in at the moment suggests that we are now entering into a period of general cooling. What evidence do you have that says we are not now entering an era of prolonged cooling?
Statistical correlations are, at they're very best, merely clues. Can you show a causal link between human activity and global climate change? What is the link? If it is not increased concentrations in atmospheric refrigerants, then what is it?
Make no mistake about this, the claims made by AGW Adherents are extraordinary and therefore require extraordinary proof. Our single largest source of heat is from the sun, not the puny efforts we make.
There is a small but significant statistical correlation between human activity and rising temperature
There's also a significant correlation betwen human activity and the expansion of the universe (the universe having expanded considerably during the time humans have been active). I doubt we had much to do with it, though.
I can understand their ire with me. I see no need to refute them. All I ever do is demand that they make a good case because they have NOT made a case that holds water. Yet, they treat with their own as though they were heretics.
Let me 'splain it to ya this way, boys and girls. Credibility is something you EARN. Be advised, it is easier to earn skepticism and AGW Adherents have done a marvelous job of that.
It is very obvious that many of our politicians, of BOTH major parties, see Global Warming as an excuse to levy more taxes and, it must be added, Albert Gore, a prominent Democrat stands to gain huge monetary benefits from the proposed carbon cap and trade scheme supported by both Senatory John McCain and President Barak Obama.
Golly gee! Son-of-gun! Forgive my cynicism.
Last edited by Billy Catringer on Mon Mar 02, 2009 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
My point is a subtler one than this. Systems which are chaotic may nevertheless have invariants, and deterministic behaviour when time-averaged over a longer time than the chaotic timescales.
The temperature record indicates that climate is chaotic on all time scales.
Yet we are fed the line that they can predict the climate to unbelievable levels of accuracy. The climate scientists have dragged science into the gutter of politics to fulfill their "environmental" goals.
I note that nothing you have said or discovered on your quest has even come close to showing how GCM's have solved the atmospheric turbulence validation problem, and Navier-Stokes simulations require it. I know for a fact from own researches that they haven't, yet still they present models as bona-fide predictions, like those a civil engineer might need to defend in a court of law for a due diligence trial on a skyscraper tower collapse.
I eagerly anticipate the day that IPCC scientists are in a court of law, under penalty of perjury and subject to civil damages for wrecking whole economies, explaining how they have validated the atmospheric turbulence parts of their GCM models.
How about full speed ahead to make the transition from fossil fuels faster?
More flow.
Bravo too.
The sooner we get off this rock with it's chaotic gaseous layer and find another plausible bolt-hole the better humanity's chances of making it through are.
Survival of the species trumps survival of the individual, most environmentalists must just a bunch of greedy individualists or they would be advocating nuclear/fusion power and vast space programs. It's kind of like the hypocritical "population control" advocates, if they don't get castrated or top themselves you can tell they are not really committed to the cause.