Global Warming

[No Idea]

Hi Durulz

We were told that anyone who didnt understand global warming was thick/delusional. I believe your reply was a very eloquent response that I wish I had the skills to fashion.

In my opinion, your words were justified and I said so.

 

[Pandabean]

Ged, dont know if this is true of not,but im sure i heard it on a programme about climate change,dont volcano's naturaly cause global warming/and or cooling? or both,eg they release alot(way more than man) of gases? which would cause global warming? and a hell of alot of ash(way more than man) which means they would cause global cooling? point being from my point of view its a natural occurance?

It depends on the size of the volcanic eruption and the gases/ash that are emitted from the volcano. You may have a large eruption which has emitted large amounts of ash into the atmosphere but not a lot of sulphuric gases which may reduce the global temperature a little, however you can get an eruption that emits less ash but more sulphuric gases which would have a larger affect on the climate and reduces the gloabl temperature more.
The sulphur combines with water droplets in the atmosphere and forms suplhate particles which are capable of absorbing solar radiation and reflecting of it back to space thus having a greater effect on cooling. This was done with a comparrison of the Mt St Helen's eruption in 1980 and the following El Chichon eruption in 1982.


The amount of CO2 released on the other hand can enhance the warming of the planet, however from past eruptions there seems to be a cooling of the Earth's climate rather than a warming after each eruption, which may suggest that the other gases and ash have a greater affect on the climate than the amount of CO2 emitted.

In the past there have been alot of eruptions that have had an effect on the climate of the planet. The eruption of Krakatau in 1883 saw changes to weather patterns as well as brilliant sunsets for many months after the eruption. I remember there was something on TV a while ago and it showed you some small paintings of each night's sunset after the eruption, gradually getting redder and redder and then fading off. I have forgotten the artists name now.

 

[andybysea]

I also heard that global warming actualy leads to global cooling?(well nothern hemisphere cooling southern heating up?) as the ice caps melt they flood the sea with fresh water which sinks,this i here would have a detrimental effect on the gulf stream,which basically gives us the temperate climate we currently have, if it stops we would have much colder/harsher winters,and drier hotter summers?I admit i dont know much really but the above sounds reasonable to me, what i dont understand is that why if it aint money driven do we in Britian have to be seen to be the big immission cutter when we are actualy a very small immission producer in the global scale of things?

 

[Shambling Shaman]

ha! talking very tongue in cheek about myself obviously in a vain attempt to lighten the tone?

I noticed it, and I did smile as I consider my self in that light, that said I'm one of the "Think Globally, act Locally" types, Nature is buy its self "A force of nature" we may slow her down, but we cant stop her. I'm very shore the planet is heading for a big reset if I'm here to see it that another matter

 

[Adze]

Well one thing that's changed is that a weapon which can turn Greater London into a glass-lined hole in the ground in approximately 100 milliseconds can be carried by a skinny teenager in a 50 litre backpack.

Err... no it can't.

 

[No Idea]

How does a greenhouse get warm?

 

[ged]

Well one thing that's changed is that a weapon which can turn Greater London into a glass-lined hole in the ground in approximately 100 milliseconds can be carried by a skinny teenager in a 50 litre backpack.

Err... no it can't.

1945: Little boy. Weapon weight 4000kg. Weapon yield about 15 kilotons. Used to destroy Hiroshima, killed almost 150,000 people.
1990: W89. Weapon weight 147kg. Weapon yield about 200 kilotons. Never deployed, project abandoned.
2010: Classified.

The obsolete weapons referenced above are well behind the state of the art. A weapon consists of what weapon designers endearingly call the 'physics package' and quite a bit of surplus material to protect the weapon from the rigours of the journey to its final destination. At a push my skinny teenager could have carried the physics package of the W89 but he wouldn't get it in his rucksack. Six-inch nuclear shells (projectiles, fired from a gun) exist which will. These are deliberately low yield devices, so that they don't kill the people who fire them. The W54 for example weighed under 25kg and could produce a few hundred times the blast seen in the Oklahoman bombing. It would fit in my day sack. The yield is pretty much set on a dial, just before firing. The W54 was manufactured in the early 1960s and has been technologically obsolete for some decades.

 

[ged]

How does a greenhouse get warm?

Glass is transparent to light, and to the shorter wavelength infra-red radiation. It reflects longer wavelengths.

When light and short wavelength infra-red pass through the glass they heat the things inside the greenhouse.

So far. nothing has changed from when you stand oustide in the sun and feel its warmth.

Now the interesting bit.

When you and the things in the greenhouse warm up, you start to lose heat because you're warmer than the surroundings. But the heat that you lose is lost in two ways.

1. Convection. You warm up the air because you're in contact with it. That warm air is lost if you stand outside, but it is not lost in the greenhouse. You also sweat and lose water vapour, and you feel pleasantly cooled by the loss. The warm water vapour is not lost in the greenhouse.

2. Radiation. You, and the things in the greenhouse, emit radiation. But the radiation is at much longer wavelengths than the radiation from the sun and it is reflected by the glass.

Gas can do the same things as the glass. It's all there on the Web if you take the time to search for it.

 

[Graham_S]

I think people need to calm down a little.
A few of the members in this thread seem to be getting a little overexcited.
Dial it back a bit, or I'll be forced to lock the thread and take action against the perpetrators.

 

[silvergirl]

I really should have learnt to stay away from these discussions by now as they are generally fruitless as people do not tend to change their opinions based on what one apparently biased person on a forum thinks. But here goes

CO2 goes up, temperature goes up (the chemical structure of CO2 absorbs solar radiation stopping it escaping straight back into space).
There is nothing ‘unnatural’ in this process. CO2 is formed as a by product of life among other things. We breathe oxygen in and breathe CO2 out. As does much of the life on the planet (including the trees), CO2 is a heat holding gas (one of many) and just as well it is or the earth would have spent most of its history as a snowball. Methane and oxygen have also been crucial in this process, if it weren’t for them we’d look like Mars by now.

To say that humans have had no impact however is a little odd. CO2 levels before the industrial revolution were 280ppm3 compared with 379ppm3 (parts per million) 4 years ago. It could, of course, be down to a natural increase. But in that time humans have burnt vast amounts of ‘fossil fuels’ in the way of coal and oil etc. Hydrocarbons that when they burn produce CO2 and other compounds.
For instance the equation for burning diesel is -
4 C12 H23 + 71 O2 = 48 CO2 + 46 H2O
So using fuel produces CO2, unless you want to deny the laws of physics and chemistry, (which you are entitled to do as a scientist just came up with them)

There are so many variables in climate change (anthropogenic or biogeographical) that no-one can claim to know exactly what is happening or not. Changes in Albedo, ocean circulation, carbonification rates, rock weathering, biological pump mechanism, tectonic plate movements, vegetation density, sun activity, manufactured chemical compounds, ozone thickness, concentrations of gases in the atmosphere all contribute to the temperature and climate patterns of the earth. They all interact with each other and in some current theories change rates dependent upon the other factors, and thus form a kind of equilibrium.
But no-one can know in great detail about all these things as there are too many variables and unknowns. Yes there are still scientists who think the meridian overturning circulation will shut off and we will be plunged into another Ice age. It could happen, there are suggestions that its strength has decreased by up to 20% in the last couple of years.
There are others who think that the raised CO2 levels are beyond the point where the Ocean can absorb it and the Ocean is becoming acidic affecting the biological pump (a process that absorbs CO2 in the form of billions of tiny skeletons of plankton and others).
Others suspect that once the arctic reaches a certain temperature huge quantities of methane will be released causing a corresponding jump in temperatures. And of course there are those who are confused by why the sun is having a quiet spell and not putting out as much radiation as ‘should’ happen for the cycle (Its only just woken up again this year after a period of a decade of very little sunspot activity).

How all this stuff interacts is the bit we don’t know, but humans have had an effect.
Whether that is directly through CO2 emissions or through de-forestation, or bio-diversity loss or through the 100 new chemicals we invent every year and pump into the atmosphere.

But it is not surprising that people get confussed, or cant be bothered with the whole thing, especailly as nothing seems to happen but endles talk, and talk of taxes (the ultimate cynical short term manouvere). I'll be surprised if anyone actually got this far through my, too long post without giving up the will to live.

As Red has pointed out very well, it makes not one blind bit of difference believing (and human consciousness is based on belief not fact) in climate change and its causes unless worldwide society is prepared to do something about it, and I don’t think we are at that stage. Yet!

(took so long to write this I missed the last few posts and now it seems even more irrelevant)

 

[ged]

I also heard that global warming actualy leads to global cooling?(well nothern hemisphere cooling southern heating up?) as the ice caps melt they flood the sea with fresh water which sinks,this i here would have a detrimental effect on the gulf stream,which basically gives us the temperate climate we currently have, if it stops we would have much colder/harsher winters,and drier hotter summers?

It's a popular notion that the Gulf Stream might change in some drastic way, and that indeed would make a big difference to the climate in the UK, but I don't think it's a real risk and in any case it's only moving the heat around. Yes there is a suggestion that weather might become more extreme. People are working hard on figuring that stuff out right now but we really don't know all the answers.

what i dont understand is that why if it aint money driven do we in Britian have to be seen to be the big immission cutter when we are actualy a very small immission producer in the global scale of things?

We aren't such a small polluter when you figure out what pollution is caused by manufacture of things that we import. You can't blame people in poorer countries for producing things that we will pay hard cash for, and you can't really blame them for the pollution that they cause by doing what they do in ways which we would consider hundreds of years out of date. That's why we need to help them, it's in our own interests in the long run, and that's why I for one have trouble with the "them not us" attitude which I see all around me.

 

[British Red]

Oh my that was eloquent Silvergirl. All the things I was trying to express wordsmithed into a neat package.

Thank you

 

[ged]

Firstly may I apologize, I have not read all the posts so this my have been asked, Has there been any research in to whether the huge amount of volcanic ash that was thrown in to the air from Iceland has coursed any weather pattern shifts? As I understand it large volumes of volcanic ash have been responsible for climatic weather shifts in the past.

Ged, dont know if this is true of not,but im sure i heard it on a programme about climate change,dont volcano's naturaly cause global warming/and or cooling? or both,eg they release alot(way more than man) of gases? which would cause global warming? and a hell of alot of ash(way more than man) which means they would cause global cooling? point being from my point of view its a natural occurance?

As Pandabean has said, it's swings and roundabouts. Not just with volcanoes, but with just about everything involved in what we eventually see as the climate. Yes, volcanic activity probably produces a net cooling effect because of dust and aerosols. Yes, it's known to affect the weather. but the dust has a relatively short lifetime in our atmosphere (months), the sulphur and other things which get into aerosols last a bit longer but for the most part not the decades which would start to make us worry about it in the long term.

The climate models that people talk about have to take into account lots of things of this sort, some heat, some cool, some do both. Water is a good example. If it hangs around in clouds, it tends to keep the surface underneath it warmer at night because it acts as an insulating blanket. By day it tends to keep the surface underneath cooler because clouds reflect sunlight. If it freezes and falls on the ground it does the same thing because snow is white (it reflects sunlight) and it's a relatively poor conductor of heat (it keeps the ground warmer). Of course it doesn't stay in one place or in one phase so you're aiming at a moving target all the time.

You begin to understand how difficult it is to model this mathematically when you just count the number of things that are all going on at once, let alone try to put figures on each effect then add them all up to get some sort of a stab at the net effect. But people are doing these things, and I don't think telling them that they're wasting their time is, er, calculated to encourage them. They really do need our encouragement because we're all in the same boat on this one, and it's the only boat we have. Even if I were ninety-nine percent convinced that the whole idea that we might be dangerously affecting the climate was complete hogwash, that nagging doubt would make me want the best talent on the planet to look at the issue very carefully, and I'd want to know what we should be doing about it now if later turns out we are. It's just far too big a risk.

Graham_S: When it comes to being passionate about this subject, I know I'm one of the worst offenders. I won't be offended if you single me out for just criticism (like Gary has already). I really do try not to be emotional, but this is our only planet and I'm very fond of it.

 

[No Idea]

Thank you Ged

Thank you Silvergirl

I have looked this sort of thing up, but just couldnt understand the answers I got.

You have both done something the experts couldnt - wrote in language I can understand!

Im going to think about that for a bit !

In the meantime, could you tell me, does CO2 hold radiation more than water vapour, clouds?

 

[ged]

...But it is not surprising that people get confussed, or cant be bothered with the whole thing, especailly as nothing seems to happen ... I'll be surprised if anyone actually got this far through my, too long post without giving up the will to live.

All good so far except that last bit. I still have the will to live.

As Red has pointed out very well, it makes not one blind bit of difference believing (and human consciousness is based on belief not fact) in climate change and its causes unless worldwide society is prepared to do something about it...

I don't believe that. I've made my personal contribution by significantly cutting down my consumption and, much more importantly, by having no children.

(took so long to write this I missed the last few posts and now it seems even more irrelevant)

It's relevant. The real nub of the problem is "why should I?".

 

[ged]

Thank you Ged

Thank you Silvergirl

I have looked this sort of thing up, but just couldnt understand the answers I got.

You have both done something the experts couldnt - wrote in language I can understand!

You're welcome, and I'm flattered.

In the meantime, could you tell me, does CO2 hold radiation more than water vapour, clouds?

Water vapour is several times more important than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

 

[silvergirl]

I've made my personal contribution by significantly cutting down my consumption and, much more importantly, by having no children.

Well, I'm gulity of my contribution, because I do have children, two of them. Ones that know that everything we own comes from somewhere, and does not disappear just because we have finished with it.

And my point about not making a difference was not supposed to sound as fatalistic as it did. I don't just shrug my shoulders and say there is nothing we can do, but there are global structures and assumptions that need to be changed before we can make any real difference to climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution and inequality in general. I will still do my bit and buy locally, reduce my consumption, travel etc.

 

[Adze]

1945: Little boy. Weapon weight 4000kg. Weapon yield about 15 kilotons. Used to destroy Hiroshima, killed almost 150,000 people.
1990: W89. Weapon weight 147kg. Weapon yield about 200 kilotons. Never deployed, project abandoned.
2010: Classified.

The obsolete weapons referenced above are well behind the state of the art. A weapon consists of what weapon designers endearingly call the 'physics package' and quite a bit of surplus material to protect the weapon from the rigours of the journey to its final destination. At a push my skinny teenager could have carried the physics package of the W89 but he wouldn't get it in his rucksack. Six-inch nuclear shells (projectiles, fired from a gun) exist which will. These are deliberately low yield devices, so that they don't kill the people who fire them. The W54 for example weighed under 25kg and could produce a few hundred times the blast seen in the Oklahoman bombing. It would fit in my day sack. The yield is pretty much set on a dial, just before firing. The W54 was manufactured in the early 1960s and has been technologically obsolete for some decades.

Physics package + warhead + rucksack, even if we take the rather underweight W54 at approx 60Kgs is going to be the equivalent of your skinny teenager in his own rucksack. He might manage that, although he probably wouldn't carry it far, 147Kg is going to be beyond him unless he's not actually a skinny teenager. Here's what I mean...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8BRaqxAmOM

...see? Really quite big fella, lifting it once. Lots of effort and I doubt even he'd want to carry it far... or in a rucksack.

W54 has a peak yield of approx 1Kt of TNT... now that's a big bang for sure, but it's certainly not a glass lined hole the size of Greater London. In fact the MSD for W54 is a little over a mile... Greater London spans an area of 607sq miles so a 200Kt yield isn't going to turn it into that glass lined hole either.

You see this illustrates the points made about climate scaremongering quite well. Your argument re a satchel bomb capable of blowing a 607sq. mile hole in the South of England is ridiculously easy to refute, you offer no proof, no references both of which you have required of other people to support their arguments.

Would it not have been better to stick to the absolute facts instead of wildly exaggerating effects to try and make, what would otherwise have been, a valid point?

 

[locum76]

Silvergirl - if folks like you and I don't have kids and leave it to the *ahem* sheeple - who of the next generation will be able to go around sorting stuff out?

 

[andybysea]

Silvergirl,who measured co2 limits pre industrial revolution? not having a dig, but wouldnt have thought it was given much though back then? personnely speaking i dont think man is going to give up using fossil fuels,well not till they are all gone anyway, they make to much money from them,it would cost (could'nt even think of a number) way to much for every person in the world to have a vehicle and house that didnt really on it, not even taking into account business's and industrial use,especially in poor of developing nations.