Global warming and the end

Interplanner said:

Report from Weather Bell:

And though this cold spell will last just a few days as warmer air comes behind, it likely will freeze over the Great Lakes and other bodies of water, meaning frigid temperatures will likely last the rest of winter, said Ryan Maue, a meteorologist for Weather Bell.

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Sometimes Global Warming can have weird side effects.

For instance, a warmer Arctic Circle means there is less ‘differential’, or less difference between the temperature there and the temperature across the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. Think of this difference in temperature as a cliff. The higher the cliff, the faster water runs down it and the tighter the direction of the river. But the lower the cliffs, the more the river meanders. Now, in this case the physicists are discussing the temperature differential. The higher the difference in temperatures, the more tightly the jet streams curve around our planet. But as the poles warm and the temperature evens out a little, even by a few degrees, the more loose and wobbly the jet streams become.

What happens then? Well, in a demonstrably warmer planet, local cold extremes can be felt. Wobbly jet streams dump Arctic weather further south than before. Northern Europeans and Northern American’s feel the cold later in Spring than usual. In this case a counter-intuitive LOCAL cold snap is actually a sign of a WARMING WORLD! To see the graphics of how this thing works, watch Catalyst."
Catalyst: Extreme Weather - ABC TV Science

So...why was HuffPo so agressive about NOT disclosing on any print or video report that the ship stuck in the Antarctic was studying global warming? Why don't they mention the net gain 2003-2012? Why was it suddenly a cruise to 'looking for historic sites in Antarctica'?

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1: you'll have to examine EVERY link to EVERY mention of this story in the Huffington Post to justify a conspiracy theory.
2: I've already told you I don't run off hearsay. I don't know which article you're talking about if you don't link to it.
3: Our Australian media has been ALL OVER the fact that this was a scientific voyage, with climatologists, and that it got stuck in ice. It's called weather. Ice at this time of year normally flows out, unless the weather blows it back. They've had unusual 100km hour winds constantly blowing it back, and so the ice accumulates in this one area. But overall satellite measurements show Antarctic ice to be declining.
Is Antarctica losing or gaining ice?

Interplanner said:

the lowest temp ever recorded on planet earth was Jul 31 2013. Polar vortex freezes much of U.S. - CNN.com Video (last graphic)

Shouldn't that be 1913?

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Well, in a demonstrably warmer planet, local cold extremes can be felt. Wobbly jet streams dump Arctic weather further south than before. Northern Europeans and Northern American’s feel the cold later in Spring than usual. In this case a counter-intuitive LOCAL cold snap is actually a sign of a WARMING WORLD! To see the graphics of how this thing works, watch Catalyst."
Catalyst: Extreme Weather - ABC TV Science

Biblewriter said:

...I'm sorry, but I couldn't resist!
From one end of the planet to the other, the earth is getting so warm that we will soon all freeze to death!

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Yes, you absolutely can't resist local weather stories that have nothing to do with the global climate. How about trying a dictionary?

(PS: Your post was actually really childish and irrelevant. I expect better).

And, because you seem incapable of reading, here's a pretty video.

Catalyst: Extreme Weather - ABC TV Science

Or, it you don't have time to watch that documentary, here's a quicker interactive picture display. Piccies!

"The polar vortex bringing brutally cold conditions to parts of the US is a product of meandering cold air across the Arctic - and a rather wobbly jet stream."
Polar vortex brings low temperatures across the US - interactive

Biblewriter said:

Do you have any idea how foolish you sound when you claim that unusual cold simultaneously observed at opposite ends of the globe are "local"?

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1. Last year was Australia's hottest year on record. Again. Temperatures across the whole YEAR that were hotter. Are we getting this yet?


2. Watch the Catalyst link that shows North American temperatures to be generally warming across most of the year, while still receiving some horrible cold weather due to global warming destroying the higher temperature differential between the Arctic and southern areas.

3. Antarctica is losing ice and warming, but the sea ice is growing slightly due to warmer oceans! Counter-intuitive I know, but once again, science surprises us.

While the interior of East Antarctica is gaining land ice, overall Antarctica has been losing land ice at an accelerating rate. Antarctic sea ice is growing despite a strongly warming Southern Ocean.

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Is Antarctica losing or gaining ice?
There are, again, complicated physics at work that demonstrate how Antarctica's land is losing ice due to warming, how a certain section of Antarctica is receiving extra snow that used to fall as rain over South Australia, and how the sea-ice is growing in some areas due to several factors.

Antarctic Sea Ice is increasing

Antarctic sea ice has shown long term growth since satellites began measurements in 1979. This is an observation that has been often cited as proof against global warming. However, rarely is the question raised: why is Antarctic sea ice increasing? The implicit assumption is it must be cooling around Antarctica. This is decidedly not the case. In fact, the Southern Ocean has been warming faster than the rest of the world's oceans. Globally from 1955 to 1995, oceans have been warming at 0.1°C per decade. In contrast, the Southern Ocean has been warming at 0.17°C per decade. Not only is the Southern Ocean warming, it is warming faster than the global trend.

Figure 3: Surface air temperature over the ice-covered areas of the Southern Ocean (top). Sea ice extent, observed by satellite (bottom). (Zhang 2007)
If the Southern Ocean is warming, why is Antarctic sea ice increasing? There are several contributing factors. One is the drop in ozone levels over Antarctica. The hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole has caused cooling in the stratosphere (Gillet 2003). This strengthens the cyclonic winds that circle the Antarctic continent (Thompson 2002). The wind pushes sea ice around, creating areas of open water known as polynyas. More polynyas lead to increased sea ice production (Turner 2009).
Another contributor is changes in ocean circulation. The Southern Ocean consists of a layer of cold water near the surface and a layer of warmer water below. Water from the warmer layer rises up to the surface, melting sea ice. However, as air temperatures warm, the amount of rain and snowfall also increases. This freshens the surface waters, leading to a surface layer less dense than the saltier, warmer water below. The layers become more stratified and mix less. Less heat is transported upwards from the deeper, warmer layer. Hence less sea ice is melted (Zhang 2007). An increase in melting of Antarctic land ice will also contribute to the increased sea ice production (Bintanga et al. 2013).
In summary, Antarctic sea ice is a complex and unique phenomenon. The simplistic interpretation that it must be cooling around Antarctica is decidedly not the case. Warming is happening - how it affects specific regions is complicated.

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Interplanner said:

In the fine print about the snowy owls showing up all over the SE US recently was this line: they are unable to find the usual holes in the arctic ice where they wait for stabs at seafood, so they have had to leave the area. "the usual holes in arctic ice"?

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You really have a gift for posting links to peer-reviewed articles to back your assertions, don't you? Ever see a pot boil? The water moves about doesn't it? Now if you scale that up to a whole planet, and make the water air instead, much of the planet would be off the hot-plate in a cold Arctic zone. There are pockets of cold air that the warming 'pot' would sometimes move about. The Arctic is really cold. Extra energy in the atmosphere sometimes moves of that Arctic cold down towards Europe and America. How?


Dr Jennifer Francis explains that warmer air expands, and takes up more volume over warmer parts of North America (and Europe) than the colder air in the Arctic. This creates a ‘hill’ of air that wants to slide down toward the Arctic, and if the Earth were still, it would. But the Earth spins, and the Coriolis effect throws this fast moving body of air sideways. Instead of travelling straight down the ‘hill’ toward the Arctic, it shoots sideways and becomes the Jet Stream!

Graphics here in this short 5 minute youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nzwJg4Ebzo

But the Arctic temperatures are warming. The Arctic air is expanding. The ‘hill’ is ‘less steep’. And that means the Jet Stream is not locked in place, but ‘drunk’. It used to be locked in place, but instead is moving about all over the place.
Mother Jones says: “Go home, Arctic. "You're drunk!”
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/01/did-global-warming-get-arctic-drunk

The denial on this thread is so frustrating, because it is unnecessary. Coal kills about a million people a year - are Christians here happy with that? Coal will run out one day. Are Christians here just not caring about energy security? Oil forces Americans to send $600 billion a YEAR, or $6 TRILLION a decade, overseas. Are you all happy about that?

We can prevent coal deaths, increase national security, create local jobs and improve domestic economies by 3 emergency measures in energy policy. Oh, and solve Global Warming once and for all!

But what technologies exist in the 3 areas of Electricity, Transport, and Climate Control that we could turn to?

1. ELECTRICITY
Believe it or not, nuclear power is SAFE. Today’s nukes would EASILY have survived the cooling systems failure at Fukushima. The reactor cores cool themselves if they start to overheat. Banning nuclear power because of Fukushima is like banning aviation because of the Hindenburg!

They are also cheaper, because instead of one-of-a-kind projects, nukes are going up on the assembly line!
“By the 2030s, China will likely have built out hundreds of nuclear reactors. They will also have factory mass produced one piece reactors like their 200 MWe HTR-PM (High temperature pebble bed reactor). Those reactors could be built in Chinese factories and shipped for installation overseas. This would enable the China price for nuclear power which is currently about $1.5 to 2 billion per GWe. This is 2-3 times cheaper than current prices in the US and Europe. Each nuclear reactor module would likely be buildable in 2 years or so by that the 2030s.”
All electric cars could mean 20-50% more US electric power generation

Even today’s AP1000’s are being modularised and put on the production line to slash costs. AP1000 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Even America is getting in on the act, with it being the first Gen3.5 reactor being approved.
First new nuclear reactors OK'd in over 30 years - Feb. 9, 2012

Tomorrow’s IFR’s (like GE’s S-PRISM) will be mass produced, bringing the capital cost of nuclear *way* down AND solving the nuclear waste problem permanently. Remember, as all good permaculture people say, waste = food. This could not be more true than with nuclear ‘waste’, which we should start calling ‘once through fuel’. This new *resource* is not a problem to be stored for 100,000 years, which would be as mad as refining your best sweet crude into jet fuel just to try and bury it forever! Instead, in a few decades all our ‘waste’ will into highly secured nuclear energy parks where today’s waste alone will be converted into 500 years worth of energy for the whole planet. After going through the breeding cycle dozens of times, the final waste is stored in a concrete bunker for 300 years and then is safe enough to let your children play with it. One golf ball of uranium would power a whole human life, cradle to grave, including all transport and agricultural fuel costs as well. One golf ball weighs 1kg. With today’s technologies we can extract 1kg of uranium from seawater for $300. That’s a lifetime of FUEL (not the capital costs behind all this infrastructure) for just $300.

2. TRANSPORT
(a) I fully support new city plans that don’t require as much driving in the first place, with walkability built into the town core and the primary emphasis being on trains, trams, and trolley buses.
See Rezone | Eclipse Now

(b) But for those people and industries that *do* require cars, a command economy could legislate for all electric vehicles for domestic driving, and / or rechargeable boron or hydrogen for larger vehicles like trucking, construction, mining, farming, etc. Boron can even be used for car-hire clubs for various fuel dependent 4WD holidays or long road trips where an EV just will not cut it. See the book James Hansen’s Science Council recommends for more on boron.
Prescription for the Planet
Just as we have a mix of gas, petroleum, and diesel in today’s garages, tomorrow could see a mix of electric vehicle quick-charge with boron and hydrogen pumps as well.

3. CLIMATE CONTROL
If the Sulphur Shield does indeed prove to be too risky, then there’s always massive biochar schemes, and growing our food in seawater greenhouses in a desert which has already proved financially viable.
Green Deserts | Eclipse Now
Then there’s the Olivine solution, which would cost $200 billion annually to negate ALL our CO2 emissions.

But, obviously, that money would be better spent on prevention, rather than this last-minute ‘cure’. As Engineer Poet says:
“Investing €200 billion per year in nuclear powerplants would produce 100 GW of new plants per year, which would cut emissions by about 790 million tons/yr each year. Ten years into a construction program at this pace, the net CO2 emissions from coal combustion would be cut by about 7.9 billion tons per year, roughly 1/3 of the total human emissions of 26.4 GT/yr.”
Olivine | Eclipse Now

Maybe we’ll leave weaning off fossil fuels so late that we have to use Olivine AND a command economy deployment of all energy solutions? The global economy has a $70 trillion budget. Allocating $400 billion to fast deploy both nukes and olivine would only use 0.57% of the world economy. So let’s double it, and completely mop up this energy and climate crisis in a few decades, while cleaning up our cities with New Urbanism, trains, trams, and intercity fast rail, and also using the latest in robot-cars to gradually wean the population off having to own their individual family car.

The denial on this thread is so frustrating, because it is unnecessary. Coal kills about a million people a year - are Christians here happy with that? Coal will run out one day. Are Christians here just not caring about energy security? Oil forces Americans to send $600 billion a YEAR, or $6 TRILLION a decade, overseas. Are you all happy about that?

We can prevent coal deaths, increase national security, create local jobs and improve domestic economies by 3 emergency measures in energy policy. Oh, and solve Global Warming once and for all!

IN AN EMERGENCY:
If the situation gets really bad, some have suggested our governments might be forced to take a Command Economy approach to energy and climate matters. But what technologies exist in the 3 areas of Electricity, Transport, and Climate Control that they could turn to?

1. ELECTRICITY
Believe it or not, nuclear power is SAFE. Today’s nukes would EASILY have survived the cooling systems failure at Fukushima. The reactor cores cool themselves if they start to overheat. Banning nuclear power because of Fukushima is like banning aviation because of the Hindenburg!
They are also cheaper, because instead of one-of-a-kind projects, nukes are going up on the assembly line!
“By the 2030s, China will likely have built out hundreds of nuclear reactors. They will also have factory mass produced one piece reactors like their 200 MWe HTR-PM (High temperature pebble bed reactor). Those reactors could be built in Chinese factories and shipped for installation overseas. This would enable the China price for nuclear power which is currently about $1.5 to 2 billion per GWe. This is 2-3 times cheaper than current prices in the US and Europe. Each nuclear reactor module would likely be buildable in 2 years or so by that the 2030s.”
http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/12/all-electric-cars-would-mean-doubling.html#more
Even today’s AP1000’s are being modularised and put on the production line to slash costs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000 Even America is getting in on the act, with it being the first Gen3.5 reactor being approved.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/09/news/economy/nuclear_reactors/
Tomorrow’s Integral Fast Reactors (like GE’s S-PRISM)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(reactor)
will be mass produced, bringing the capital cost of nuclear *way* down AND solving the nuclear waste problem permanently. Remember, as all good permaculture people say, waste = food. This could not be more true than with nuclear ‘waste’, which we should start calling ‘once through fuel’. This new *resource* is not a problem to be stored for 100,000 years, which would be as mad as refining your best sweet crude into jet fuel just to try and bury it forever! Instead, in a few decades all our ‘waste’ will into highly secured nuclear energy parks where today’s waste alone will be converted into 500 years worth of energy for the whole planet. After going through the breeding cycle dozens of times, the final waste is stored in a concrete bunker for 300 years and then is safe enough to let your children play with it. One golf ball of uranium would power a whole human life, cradle to grave, including all transport and agricultural fuel costs as well. One golf ball weighs 1kg. With today’s technologies we can extract 1kg of uranium from seawater for $300. That’s a lifetime of FUEL (not the capital costs behind all this infrastructure) for just $300.

2. TRANSPORT
(a) I fully support new city plans that don’t require as much driving in the first place, with walkability built into the town core and the primary emphasis being on trains, trams, and trolley buses.
See http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/rezone/
(b) But for those people and industries that *do* require cars, a command economy could legislate for all electric vehicles for domestic driving, and / or rechargeable boron or hydrogen for larger vehicles like trucking, construction, mining, farming, etc. Boron can even be used for car-hire clubs for various fuel dependent 4WD holidays or long road trips where an EV just will not cut it. James Hansen’s “Science Council for Global Initiatives” recommends boron in the FREE book, “Prescription for the planet”. Download as PDF here. (It’s awesome!)
http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/prescription-for-the-planet.html
Just as we have a mix of gas, petroleum, and diesel in today’s garages, tomorrow could see a mix of electric vehicle quick-charge with boron and hydrogen pumps as well.

3. CLIMATE CONTROL
If the Sulphur Shield does indeed prove to be too risky, then there’s always massive biochar schemes, and growing our food in seawater greenhouses in the desert which has already proved financially viable. This would soak up some carbon emissions.
http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/green-deserts/
Then there’s the Olivine solution, which would cost $200 billion annually to negate ALL our CO2 emissions, pretty much without side-effects.
But, obviously, that money would be better spent on prevention, rather than this last-minute ‘cure’. As Engineer Poet says:
“Investing €200 billion per year in nuclear powerplants would produce 100 GW of new plants per year, which would cut emissions by about 790 million tons/yr each year. Ten years into a construction program at this pace, the net CO2 emissions from coal combustion would be cut by about 7.9 billion tons per year, roughly 1/3 of the total human emissions of 26.4 GT/yr.”
http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/olivine/
Maybe we’ll leave weaning off fossil fuels so late that we have to use Olivine AND a command economy deployment of all energy solutions? The global economy has a $70 trillion budget. Allocating $800 billion to fast deploy both nukes and olivine would use just over 1% of the world economy. We could completely mop up this energy and climate crisis in a few decades, while cleaning up our cities, creating trendy New Urban areas to live in that focus on moving people, not cars. We could use electric robot-cars to gradually wean some of the population off having to *own* their individual family car because a robot-taxi cab would be the cheap option either end of a fast train trip. We can do this. It's time to get started!

Hey, where did they go? One minute they're all jumping up and down yelling "It's cooling, it's cooling" as if they've proved something, and then I put up some science and they just run away. No counter theory? Sick of saying sciencey things like "No it ain't!" to overwhelming data?

We'll, here's some more. Data. You know, the stuff science was made of before Republican Denialist's decided subjective opinion was science.

Look at this graph and weep. Where's your precious cooling now?




US cold wave implies nothing about global warming

Biblewriter said:

More fraudlent disinformation from NOAA.

I have already posted proof that this alleged historical information contradicts information the United Stated Government had already posted only a few years earlier.

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You have not done so, Biblewriter.
Your proofs are assertions, lighter and lighter.
There is no weight, my flighty friend.
Your words are fluff,
this is the end.

Well, all you Denialists will have to work really hard on debunking this TV miniseries that's coming. They're interviewing real life victims of today's climate change, let alone the stuff that could be coming *IF* we continue to live so selfishly.
James Cameron, Arnold, Matt Damon, etc.
Years of Living Dangerously Trailer - YouTube