Climate

[regular.joe]

I thought there was a thread about this, but I can't find it. I remember posting somewhere that I wanted to do some research and figure out what the impact globally would be for the release of the amount of fossil fuels would be today. So, I've been thinking about this on my back burner for some time now. I came across a conservative web site that debunks "climate change", or at least mans impact on climate change. Basically the line on this is that the sun in the only source of energy on the earth, that there has been and will never be from day to day another source and that this source has been constant. Therefore no impact from man on climate change.

So, I have been thinking this over and I think that the idea is flawed. yes the sun is the source of energy for our planet. A fraction of this energy has been stored in the form of fossil fuels. If the energy stored in fossil fuels were never released, this idea would hold water, the energy would indeed be more or less constant and all climate effects would be the ebb and flow of the natural earth system. But, release this energy in large enough amounts and the system now has more energy active then would be and I can easily see that man would impact climate change. Very simple math if you ask me.

[classicman]

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=1...global+warming

[Lamplighter]

And then there were two...

NBC World News
7/26/12
'Grand Canyon' under Antarctica tied to ice loss, researchers report



NY Times
By KELLY SLIVKA
Published: July 24, 2012
Rare Burst of Melting Seen in Greenland’s Ice Sheet

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

So, I have been thinking this over and I think that the idea is flawed.

Extremely flawed.

yes the sun is the source of energy for our planet. A fraction of this energy has been stored in the form of fossil fuels. If the energy stored in fossil fuels were never released, this idea would hold water, the energy would indeed be more or less constant and all climate effects would be the ebb and flow of the natural earth system. But, release this energy in large enough amounts and the system now has more energy active then would be and I can easily see that man would impact climate change. Very simple math if you ask me.

There is also the question of how much energy stays on the planet at all. Changing the makeup of the atmosphere changes the amount and type of sunlight that makes it to the surface, and once warming starts, the melting of the icecaps and glaciers can reduce the amount of energy that is reflected from the surface back into space.

[Undertoad]

Not just "also the question" but that is the theory climate scientists present. I have never heard the hypothesis that global warming comes from the warmth generated by burning stuff.

[Undertoad]

LL, unfortunately the status of any one place on the planet is not interesting to the question of global warming. Climate changes will affect individual locations differently. Some places will in fact become cooler, even as the entire system warms, because it affects the jet stream and oceanic currents.

Also, some areas of Greenland were warmer in the year 1000 than they are today. This permitted the Norse migration across ice-free seas onto Greenland. At the time Greenland had lush green valleys and trees they could cut down to build things. It led to the discovery of North America via the northern route, a half century before Columbus. Those settlements went away during the "little ice age" which happened a few centuries later.

[Happy Monkey]

The book "The Greenlanders" is a very detailed, though difficult to read, novel about that time.

[Lamplighter]

Not just "also the question" but that (albedo) is one part of the theory climate scientists present.

I agree that in the narrow interpretation, the heat (calories) given off in burning
all fossil fuels would seem to be a very small part of the global warming sequences.

But in the larger sense of giving off CO2/methane/etc (green-house gases),
and the reduction in natural recycling of CO2 incurred by deforestation,
the mining and burning of coal and natural gas would be a significant contributor
to the several different processes leading to global warming.
.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Extremely flawed.There is also the question of how much energy stays on the planet at all. Changing the makeup of the atmosphere changes the amount and type of sunlight that makes it to the surface, and once warming starts, the melting of the icecaps and glaciers can reduce the amount of energy that is reflected from the surface back into space.

read up on the word "albedo".

Albedo (play /ælˈbiːdoʊ/), or reflection coefficient, derived from Latin albedo "whiteness" (or reflected sunlight), in turn from albus "white", is the diffuse reflectivity or reflecting power of a surface. It is defined as the ratio of reflected radiation from the surface to incident radiation upon it. Being a dimensionless fraction, it may also be expressed as a percentage, and is measured on a scale from zero for no reflecting power of a perfectly black surface, to 1 for perfect reflection of a white surface.

[regular.joe]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Not just "also the question" but that is the theory climate scientists present. I have never heard the hypothesis that global warming comes from the warmth generated by burning stuff.

I'm not hypothesizing that global warming comes from the warmth generated by burning stuff. I'm hypothesizing that total energy generated by the sun and hitting the earth plus the energy released from fossil fuels impacts the climate more so then just the energy released by the sun and hitting the earth. Ergo, mans burning of fossil fuel impacts the climate.

[ZenGum]

Short answer, yes, burning coal directly heats the earth as you say, but releasing CO2 into the atmosphere also causes global warming.

Long answer:
Climate is crazy complex. Just off the top of my head, factors that are involved include:

The amount of energy being emitted by the sun (which is not perfectly stable over long times)

The distance from the sun to the earth (also not fixed, either short to long term)

The amount of energy that gets through the atmosphere to the surface (variable, eg it dipped a bit 1950-1975 due to sulfur in the atmosphere from burning dirty coal, sulfur now reduced because of acid rain problems)

The amount of that energy absorbed by the surface rather than immediately reflected (see albedo; can vary rapidly)

The temperature this causes the earth to be, and so causes it to emit heat as infra-red light (depends on the temp of the earth from the feedback from all the other factors).

The amount of this emitted infrared heat which is captured by the atmosphere which in turn is influenced by:
the circulation of gas in the atmosphere (influenced by the position of of oceans/continents and especially mountain ranges)
the composition of the atmosphere (this is where greenhouse gasses come in)

There are also endogenous (earth based) sources of heat. On one hand, the decay of radioactive elements in the earth releases energy (fun fact -this energy is in fact NOT from the sun, but is from a supernova sometime five to ten billion years ago, the debris of which forms our solar system) and as RegJoe rightly points out, the burning of fossil fuels which releases energy which has been in storage for millions of years.

Oh and also the way ocean currents move heat about the globe.

And other stuff, I expect.


Why worry about CO2? The atmosphere is important.

The average temperature of the moon is ...

... the average surface temperature of the Moon can be calculated for astrophysical purposes utilizing the relation TMoon = (RSun/r)^(1/2)*(1-A/4)^(1/4)*TSun Where 'r' is the average distance from the Moon to the sun, TSun is the average temperature of the sun, RSun is the solar radius, and A is the albedo. This ends up resulting in a value of around 274° K ~ 0° C = 32° F (The Freezing Point of Water)]

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_th...#ixzz21p6DSYty

ahh, about zero centigrade. Yet is is virtually the same distance from the sun as the earth, and the average surface temperature of the earth is about 15 degrees c.

This difference is mostly due to the greenhouse effect, the tendency of some gasses to allow high energy (eg visible) light through, but to trap and re-emit infrared light. This lets sunlight in, but doesn't let infra-red light (heat) out.

Most of the greenhouse effect is natural, and it's good thing too, otherwise most of earth would be a frozen wasteland.

There are many greenhouse gasses - water vapour, ozone, methane, even CFCs, and of course carbon dioxide.

Digging up fossilised carbon, combining it with oxygen and releasing it into the atmosphere, increases the strength of the greenhouse effect. This *will* warm the planet.

You might ask, how much?

This very good article in the rolling stone answers that with only mild hyperbole.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz21DFACIRu

Short version: 565 gigatons more CO2 into the atmosphere will produce about 2 degrees of warming. Probably.

How carbon much is that? Well, "proven" reserves, already located and with companies intending to extract them, are about five times that much.

And for extra fun, there may be some feedback loops or tipping points nearby. For example, as the planet warms, ice and snow cover decreases, and this lowers the albedo, leading to more heat absorbtion. Also, as permafrost melts, it breaks down and releases methane which is also a greenhouse gas, causing more warming.

Final fact, stolen from the rolling stone article:

That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10^99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.


I hope you're listening - this is going to be in the test.

[Lamplighter]

It is because I say so...

LA Times
Neela Banerjee
7/29/12

Koch-funded climate change skeptic reverses course

Former climate change skeptic Richard A. Muller, in a New York Times op-ed,
stepped back from his earlier dismissal of global warming. (Los Angeles Times / March 30, 2011)

WASHINGTON – The verdict is in: Global warming is occurring and
emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activity are the main cause.

This, according to Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at UC Berkeley,
MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.

Never mind that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
and hundreds of other climatologists around the world came to such conclusions years ago.
The difference now is the source: Muller is a long-standing, colorful critic
of prevailing climate science, and the Berkeley project was heavily funded
by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, which, along with its
libertarian petrochemical billionaire founder Charles G. Koch,
has a considerable history of backing groups that deny climate change.
<snip>

[BigV]

... Not because "I" says so...

Probably because the paychecks are coming from a different source. And if they weren't before, they soon will be.

[footfootfoot]

Please take a few minutes to listen to this very excellent podcast of Bill McKibben speaking on Tom Ashbrook's show, On Point.

He discusses climate change. I don't want to say more and color your opinions. Just give it a listen.

http://castroller.com/Podcasts/OnPoi...tart=undefined

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Short answer, yes, burning coal directly heats the earth as you say, but releasing CO2 into the atmosphere also causes global warming.

Not everyone agrees

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Don't humans add to global warming just by creating heat? When you add so much energy to the environment, it's bound to heat up. We also add heat by cutting down trees and paving our world. And then there's the farting. No just our own. Our appetite for meat has created a system where there are far more animals being farmed thann there would have been if left to nature. And they're all farting.

Originally Posted by Coign

This is false and untrue. Turning on your heater and the heat it creates, burning a campfire in the summer time and the heat it creates, exhaling and breathing your 98 degrees of body heat, and the heat it creates ... has absolutely ZERO effect on climate and/or weather.

Global warming on a global scale is number one effected by clouds and water vapor. They are the vast majority of what temperature the Earth is and that fact has never been argued against.

The argument is, does the small fraction of carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere have an effect on climate?