COP24 - Global catastrophe - climate change

billvon said:
For example, let's say you have a bunch of floods. They all fall on points along a Gaussian distribution. In other words, a year that sees peak floodwater volumes of 20,000 cfs might be average. You graph those volumes year after year - and the flow rate of the flood each year falls along a Gaussian distribution to a high degree of accuracy. Once you see that you don't need to have a "100 year flood" to calculate the odds of that happening - it is apparent from the distribution of the curve.
... .
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You graph those volumes year after year
and
from a small 100 yr sample, you extrapolate out to 500 years----- nice curve has a statistical aura of accuracy/authority------------and then---you have usgs data from almost 200 years ago which sits well outside your curve------but it's such a beautiful curve-----why spoil it with the facts?
or
you could add the new data into your graphs and come up with a different curve
but
why spoil a good curve

When the reality in front of you does not match your theories....................................................
do you change the theory or change the facts?
 
billvon said:
Not so easy.

If you just compare evaporation rates under the same conditions then it's pretty easy. For example, 1000 sq m of water at 20C, dry air at 20C blowing at .5m/s - going from 20C to 21C air temperature increases evaporation rate from 168 kg/hr to 203 kg/hr.

But the water is warmer from climate change. But the surface water is also cooler due to the heat energy of evaporation. Do they cancel out? Hard to tell since you have to measure temperatures with _very_ fine detail to figure that out.

And if the evaporated water causes winds to decrease, due to lower air density? Then it goes down. Does it cause cloud formation during the day? Then heating goes down and less water evaporates. Does it create a lot of storm activity? Then air speed goes up.
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So essentially, it is impossible to calculate with any real certainty the degree of change in the evaporation rates?
The fact that evaporation has a cooling effect, bugged me for a while... meaning that ocean temps could actually stay the same, or close to the same, yet evaporation rates could actually dramatically increase.

The evaporation maintaining ocean surface temps as relatively stable. Globally mitigating any overall atmospheric temp increase significantly.
In other words the situation could be far worse than we realize.

The increased energy retention due to GHG's being demonstrated only in the dynamics of the system leaving the temp. base lines relatively stable ( slowly gaining)?
 
sculptor said:
When the reality in front of you does not match your theories....................................................
do you change the theory or change the facts?
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The Republican Party found a better way - deny the the reality in front of them. Refuse to acknowledge the facts.
 
Quantum Quack said:
So essentially, it is impossible to calculate with any real certainty the degree of change in the evaporation rates?
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In narrow and well defined cases it's easy. In the real world it's a lot harder.
The fact that evaporation has a cooling effect, bugged me for a while... meaning that ocean temps could actually stay the same, or close to the same, yet evaporation rates could actually dramatically increase.
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Right.
 
sculptor said:
When the reality in front of you does not match your theories....................................................
do you change the theory or change the facts?
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You use the best data you have and come up with the best curve you can.

What you do NOT do is wait until the curve is complete, see that it doesn't match your political ideology, and then decide "the science isn't settled!" "there's no such thing as climate change" "you can't really tell anything from data because it doesn't go back 100,000 years" "there was a bigger flood once so it's impossible to know anything."
 
billvon said:
You use the best data you have and come up with the best curve you can.
...
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Which is why the flood curve needs to be adjusted to incorporate the available riparian tree ring data---which is a fairy accurate way of determining the discharge rates of previous floods. It would be informative if more funding could broaden that data to other rivers and streams.
It often seems that basic research that is not in service to a political agenda is short changed.
It was via dendrochronology that we were able to date the kivas of the 4 corners region. So, in archaeology anyway, this is an old tried and true scientific method.

Politics has nothing to do with it, this is just good science.
 
sculptor said:
It often seems that basic research that is not in service to a political agenda is short changed.
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By this Republican administration, especially - although the past decades of Republican Congressional and Executive powers did more shortchanging in total.
sculptor said:
Politics has nothing to do with it, this is just good science.
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Republican Party politics is significantly involved in all US climate related scientific research.
 
A context for the thread:
https://www.universetoday.com/14232...ithin-1-20th-of-a-degree-celsius/#more-142324

The current Republican administration is taking steps to curtail and defund NASA's climate research.
It is also considering - taking steps toward - privatizing the weather forecasting data and the forecasts themselves. The goal is to take the government out of the weather forecasting business, on the grounds that it is unfair competition (it provides the forecasts and data for free).
 
iceaura said:
It is also considering - taking steps toward - privatizing the weather forecasting data and the forecasts themselves.
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Whatever the rationale given, the result is disaster. Now Americans can all have custom-tailored fake weather reports.
 
Jeeves said:
Whatever the rationale given, the result is disaster. Now Americans can all have custom-tailored fake weather reports.
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I love it! Republicans could get weather reports that always show it is going to be cold. They can use that to say "see? There's no such thing as climate change!" And when it's hot out anyway, they can say "see? If weather forecasters can't even get it right, then climate scientists certainly can't!"
 
Reading the news today suggest strongly that a growing global food security issue is becoming more a crisis than a danger.
Especially with the most likely failure of USA Corn production for 2019 and 2020 as a strong indicator.
 
It's depressing....
We are quite a few days into winter here and so far the maximum temperature has been over 18 deg C for nearly 5 days now. The historic average is 14.1 maxC. The nights are balmy and the month of June will most likely be our 5th consecutive above average temp month. this year....

Above average by a considerable amount too I might add. (not trivial)
 
Quantum Quack said:
It's depressing....
We are quite a few days into winter here and so far the maximum temperature has been over 18 deg C for nearly 5 days now. The historic average is 14.1 maxC. The nights are balmy and the month of June will most likely be our 5th consecutive above average temp month. this year....

Above average by a considerable amount too I might add. (not trivial)
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sounds like the current big tricky question is what level of exponential warming is the sea water doing to the under side of the ice shelf's

i was recently confused about plankton frozen in the ice releasing carbon and how that played out in the balance of thins.
i think it may be hundreds of tons of algae frozen which will become unfrozen and will never be frozen again.
i didnt look too far into it.
 
Quantum Quack said:
It's depressing....
We are quite a few days into winter here and so far the maximum temperature has been over 18 deg C for nearly 5 days now. The historic average is 14.1 maxC. The nights are balmy and the month of June will most likely be our 5th consecutive above average temp month. this year....
Above average by a considerable amount too I might add. (not trivial)
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Curiously
We had a much colder(many record low temperatures) and longer than normal winter here.
It seems to have effected the peach trees----doubt we'll get any this year.
And today, the local meteorologist says that we may set a record low of 40 degrees f (4.444C) tonight.
Damned unusual---on average, June has a high of 82 and a low of 60 degrees f(that's 28 and 16 for you C guys)
..............................................
Some think that the northern and southern hemispheres may take turns with warmth and cold.
Adding the 2 then dividing to come up with an average seems inadequate.
These oscillations seem to make extrapolation to the strength of climate change a tad more challenging.
 
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RainbowSingularity said:
sounds like the current big tricky question is what level of exponential warming is the sea water doing to the under side of the ice shelf's

i was recently confused about plankton frozen in the ice releasing carbon and how that played out in the balance of thins.
i think it may be hundreds of tons of algae frozen which will become unfrozen and will never be frozen again.
i didnt look too far into it.
Click to expand...
One of the biggest problems confronting the world is that, due to fear, it is easy to conflate the issues we are facing.
I am just as guilty as any one and constantly need to check and recheck the facts being bandied about by others and even my self.
For example, I just posted about our local monthly averages, forgetting that they were actually averages and it is early in the month of June. Average figures are achieved by adding up all the variables and dividing by the number of variables. this means that there are many variables that are deviations from the average conclusion.
To be overly concerned about early "deviations" is more about "paranoia" or hysteria than it is about dealing with the actual reality.
Sure high early month max. temps bodes negatively but there is no reason to dwell excessively until more data ( for the entire month) comes in.
I am just saying this because it is easy to get caught up in all the speculation and fail to realize that it is just that speculation usually premised on fear.

There are many alarm bells ringing in so many fields. From insect population decline, bee population devastation, mass animal die offs, oceanic dead spots, ice cap melting, extreme weather events etc. so one could easily conclude that ... something is happening at least. Many of the issues are not related to climate directly, like plastic pollution and micro plastic consumption killing many animals and polluting our food chain.
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What we don't know may save us....
Regards the ice shelf bacteria issue, what is it to suggest that there may be unknown bacteria types that have been trapped since the last ice age that were actually responsible for that ice age by consuming CO2 and got trapped as part of the planets balancing act when confronted with global warming? That after they are released by global warming they solve the problem forcing the world into a pseudo ice age instead.
We simply do not know what is strapped in the ice... We can only guess as to the bulk of it...

I have often suggested that it is not what we know that will save us as what we know tells us we are in for it, but it is what we don't know that may...
 
Quantum Quack said:
One of the biggest problems
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i wonder about the prehistoric earth concept
swampy methane and volcanic eruptions...
the earths mix of extremes with life moving through it.
that has been a normal long term part of the earths life cycle
humans are not even a fast blink on the vision of the earths life span.



sculptor said:
These oscillations seem to make extrapolation to the strength of climate change a tad more challenging.
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wave height increase makes short term incline measurement more difficult.
 
sculptor said:
Curiously
We had a much colder(many record low temperatures) and longer than normal winter here.
It seems to have effected the peach trees----doubt we'll get any this year.
And today, the local meteorologist says that we may set a record low tonight.
..............................................
Some think that the northern and southern hemispheres may take turns with warmth and cold.
Adding the 2 to come up with an average seems inadequate.
These oscillations seem to make extrapolation to the strength of climate change a tad more challenging.
Click to expand...
yes...
The global average temperature only gains slowly but the dynamics of the system increase dramatically, is my current understanding.

System Overload...beep!
For example any artificially induced rise in ocean temperature is minimized by the cooling effect of evaporation. This means that any temperature increase can have incredibly dramatic results to weather dynamics. This is because the evaporation present is inadequate in maintaining a steady ocean temperature. If we have 0.1 degree C of ocean heating with a continuation of heating, the system is terribly over loaded so to speak. This state of being over loaded will continue until the oceans stop getting hotter and the evaporation rates catch up....
In other words:
If the oceans maintain a steady temperature the dynamics of the system remain steady. ( even if catastrophic)
If the oceans temperatures continue to rise so to does the dynamics of the system.

So it is absolutely imperative that we as a race prevent the oceans from continuing to gain heat...we simply have to stop the oceans from getting hotter than they already are, hence the need to reduce GHG's.

I would suggest that it is when the low extremes cease happening and being recorded that the global average will increase significantly....
So far we are fortunate that those low extremes are still occurring because with out them we are cooking....

One of the biggest concerns here is that soil temperature appear to be too high ( plants are behaving out of season). Our Winter normally cools the land. if this does not occur then we go into summer with hot soil instead of cool soil. This bodes very badly as to the extent of heat wave damage in the coming Summer.
 
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Just curious,
We have heard from many sources that the Earth has had previous ice ages, but is there any evidence of previous HOT ages where by there is no Liquid water on this planet and only water vapor?

I do know that the ice caps may have all melted in the past but has it gone further than that?
 
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