Science and Inquiry discussion

Here is a new topic for discussions about climate change. We started this discussion in the "Who are we? Introduce Yourself. #2" topic, message #86.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

It's a polarizing topic full of complexity scientifically, politically, & economically.

This is a somewhat edited version of my original post #90 in the previous topic. Hopefully it is a little less open to interpretation.

It's a super interesting subject, but I think we keep looking at it incorrectly. We polarize the issue: for/against, yes/no, fast/slow, fixable/not. It's too complicated & caught up with other issues for such simplification, IMO.

It's very political because any change involves a lot of money & changes to our standard of living. Scientists need funding & politics often plays a big part in deciding who gets how much & for what. There's plenty of political bias to go around.
- One of the show pieces when Gore got his Nobel Prize (Yes, others got it, but he was the big name.) was a study of the shrinking of Himalayan glaciers. When that was finally peer reviewed a couple of years later, it was found to be completely wrong. The glaciers were growing, but the scientist admitted to falsifying data so he'd get more funding.
- In another instance in another field, a grant was denied for an archeological dig to study a "fortification", but was later granted when that word was changed to "wall" or something equally innocuous that didn't make it seem like our ancestors were war-like. (I read about this in Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors)

Both of the above instances simply point out how funding has been influenced by politics. We hope it's kept to a minimum, but there is no doubt it happens.

Worse, people are prone to either-or scenarios & simplify complex problems ridiculously. The new florescent light bulbs are supposed to help the environment by using less electric. I'm not sure that they are better, though. Now that I have to use them I find they're hazardous waste & shouldn't be tossed in the trash, but I don't have any other place to dispose of them. Nor do they give the same amount of light, so where I used to use 1 of the 3 lights on the floor lamp next to my couch, I now use all 3. They take a lot more energy & resources to manufacture. For all that, they don't work in the cold as well. With all that considered, are they a net gain or loss for the environment? My gut says they're a loss all the way around & someone lined their pockets.

Those pushing for drastic changes to fix things also forget that any change to the status quo is going to affect someone else. The current trend in the US is to demonize coal power stations & push for alternative energy. Kentucky, the state I live in, has some of the cheapest electric available, but is a poor prospect for solar or wind alternatives. Hydro is pretty much tapped out, too. It's a very poor state already, so any Federal laws that hamper coal-fueled power will really hurt the economy. Of course, the politicians make this point often, so everyone's back is up before they even hear what proposed changes are.

While wind turbines are supposed to be clean energy, the cost in avian lives is truly awful. Cell phone & radio towers kill hundreds of birds as you can see by their remains at the bases. Turbines kill so many that special crews have to pick them up sometimes daily. Not that other forms of energy generation aren't hard on the environment. Even dams interfere with fish & other wildlife moving up & down rivers.

Both solar & wind only produce energy intermittently, so the energy needs to be stored. Where do batteries & their electronics come from? What is the environmental cost of making them? I don't know, but I'm not sure anyone else does either. We can point to coal mines here in the US & see how awful they are, but we don't know what goes on overseas in too many cases. Out of sight & mind? I'd guess that anything coming from China is probably part of an environmental disaster. They have a river that runs blue just from making jeans or something. I can't imagine they take much care when digging for minerals in the back country.

And it isn't just the environment that can get hurt, but people, too. My company (a small manufacturer) tries to be very careful about buying any conflict materials & it can be difficult. Most people know about blood diamonds, but a lot of different materials are also used to fuel very bad people & regimes. Unfortunately, many minerals used for electronics seem to come from conflict areas.

Anyway, I don't think it's as simple as "have we changed the environment or not". We are & have, no doubt about it. It won't go back to the way it was no matter what we do. For instance, there are more trees on the East Coast now than when the colonists got here, but we can't afford a first growth forest. We need the parking lots, houses, roads, & fields.

Desertification has been a growing problem for thousands of years & we're just now beginning to understand how & why our farming practices cause it. There's a really interesting TED Talk on that here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory...

IMO, the main thing we need are alternatives so the political & economic fall out is minimized. That will allow us to make changes without arguing about whether or not the carbon models, oil production, or whatever are right or not. I don't think there will be any big changes without a catastrophe or a better alternative. No one can afford major changes financially or politically.

Very interesting collection of issues, Jim. As you wrote, it is a complicated issue. (Schools were closed in my county today. There was no snow. Just bitter cold.)

Jim wrote: "This is a somewhat edited version of my original post #90 in the previous topic. Hopefully it is a little less open to interpretation.

It's a super interesting subject, but I think we keep lookin..."


I have two questions, John. The first is about the global effects of ice melt and sea level rise. It seems to me that the result will be an overall increase in the amount of water available to circulate over the planet. In other words, overall, there will be more rainfall. Yet mass media seems to link warming with drought. I understand that there will be variations in local effects. I get 40 inches of rain here in northern Ohio, growing zone 5. Might I not be able to raise oranges or other sub-tropical crops with a 3 degree rise, and accompanying higher rainfall?

The second question is about the biosphere as a whole, not just effects on humans. Isn't CO2 a limiting factor for photosynthesis? With higher CO2 levels, won't we see lusher growth of both land plants and marine cyano-bacteria? Not, perhaps Carbonaceous lush, but perhaps re-greening of Sahara, expanding forests, a more productive marine fauna?

David wrote: "Very interesting collection of issues, Jim. As you wrote, it is a complicated issue. (Schools were closed in my county today. There was no snow. Just bitter cold.)"

We've got a mess here. Record low temps (it was -9 yesterday morning) & today we've warmed up (It's 31.8) to a wintery mix that could dump an inch of rain or a foot of snow, but they think we'll get about 6" of snow with some ice & sleet. Thankfully, I don't have to go to work, but I'm not looking forward to plowing the lane again. It took me 2 hours on the back of my open tractor Monday evening & I about froze my fingers off.

---------------

Desertification isn't mentioned much as a cause when talking about climate change, but just as a consequence. It's both. It interests me because we've been doing it for something like 5000 years & completely misread why & how it is caused. If you listen to the TED Talk below, the speaker is almost in tears when he speaks of killing 400+(?) elephants in an attempt to save land & now he knows better, but his solution is completely against common wisdom.

It makes me wonder how many other things about this problem that we KNOW that are wrong. Robbower's questions are 2 that never occurred to me. Could it actually be a good thing in some ways?

Thanks for the post Jim. I am both fascinated and frustrated by the issue, particularly how it is reported, in equal measure. A book you might enjoy is Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. It is not written by a skeptic, but he is honest about the challenges, particularly at a political/response level.
Regarding drought, I would expect increased temperature to decrease the moisture level of soil, making it more difficult for plants to get the moisture they need.
I'm regard to co2 as a nutrient, I asked a colleague in agriculture about this, and his understanding was that that weeds will be fit more than useful plants.

In the other topic, John wrote: "I think I could challenge every one of your arguments. Subconsciously you are already somehow making the argument that the lives of Americans are so much more valuable than that of Europeans or Asians. The US has 5% of the world population but uses 25% of the planet's resources. You can't go on doing that without attracting the ire of the rest of the world. A rebalancing of resources, and that encompasses fossil fuel use and climate impacts is long over due by your nation. You could start by electing a president who is not such a hippocrite when it comes to environmental issues."

There are some good points to look at in this, even if the interpretation of my remarks is wrong. This too makes the case for a lot of money & political power being involved, but it also makes a lot of assumptions that are ridiculous, IMO.

I'll start with the last. I didn't elect our current president, didn't vote for him, & detest the choices we have. The US is no longer a republic, but an oligarchy, with little difference between the parties save in rhetoric, IMO. Our 'representatives' (using the term loosely) are not representative of the people, but a class apart. They get salaries for life, their own health & other benefit packages. IMO, all politicians are hypocrites & appeasers. They're forced into it by the system they want to be part of. Most of us don't. The president is simply a sock puppet for the powers that put him into office.

Our politics are a mess that we don't understand & agree with most of the time. Bills are touted as being about a single subject, but always have diverse additions tacked on just to get them passed. Those unmentioned items often haunt us. The world has grown so complex that even the simple seeming laws are a mess when they hit our legal system & actually come into play (e.g., the DCMA which wound up outlawing almost every computer). If you live in another country & have an opinion of our politics, I think you're fooling yourself. We don't understand them, so I'm quite sure no outsider relying on the popular media has a clue.

The US is unique among countries in size, economic power, & diversity so comparisons to other countries are oversimplifications at best, but more likely gross misrepresentations. We're quite divided amongst ourselves on many issues & some are not reported properly. The news tends to concentrate on the cities. I don't know the exact figures, but I think they have 1/3 to 1/2 the population, but only about 10% of the land. I am one of the rural population & disagree vehemently with the city slickers on a lot of issues, but we don't make good news, so the rest of the world rarely hears from us.

I've lived on the East Coast, West Coast, & high in the Rockies. I currently live in the middle of eastern half of the US, so I can say with good authority that the diversity of needs & attitudes across our nation are incredible. Don't even get me started on the weird lifestyles we have due to religious freedom. Some are mind boggling & one in particular is very harmful to the environment, but there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.

Demonizing the US & talking about "rebalancing of resources" just naturally gets our backs up. The basis of our country is capitalism & freedom, a dog-eat-dog evolution of business & society. Any sort of rebalancing will immediately be tagged as communism, a system we fought for most of a century & detest with unreasoning vehemence. Right or wrong don't matter, it's a point that needs to be kept in mind or there is no conversation, just blind rejection & full defense. IOW, rebalancing can't be the topic of any conversation, but must be an unspoken result or the topic won't even get discussed.

And that brings me to the first point last. I am not making the argument that the lives of Americans are so much more valuable than that of Europeans or Asians. I'm also not going to argue that they're not. I don't think it can be part of the conversation. It's a given that we're all more important to ourselves than others. It's how we're wired: self/family, extended family, tribe, nation... Accept that & deal with it gracefully, not confrontationally or there is no discussion, just argument & resistance.

Most of all, do me the courtesy of reading what I write, not what you think I write. I haven't put forth any solutions, just pointed out problems. They're real, complex, & I know I'm not smart or powerful enough to fix them. I simply want to learn more about them.

Angus wrote: "Thanks for the post Jim. I am both fascinated and frustrated by the issue, particularly how it is reported, in equal measure. A book you might enjoy is..."

Thank you! Sounds interesting, but none of my libraries has it. I'll keep it in mind, though. I haven't read any books directly related to climate change because I detest the bias in them. For instance, I have This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein on my do-not-read shelf due to this article: http://www.wired.com/2014/12/geeks-gu...

James Howard Kunstler was too far out, so I never finished his The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, supposedly nonfiction, but did enjoy his post-apocalyptic fiction take on this World Made by Hand

I read The World Without Us by Alan Weisman & while I didn't think much of it overall, he does bring up many examples of how we've changed the world & not just through climate change, but in ways that could contribute to it. It's food for thought. My 2 star review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Has anyone read The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery. My library has it as an audio book.

I have Jim, but I didn't enjoy it - I think it is outside Flannery's area of expertise (anthropology) and far less interesting than 'the Future Eaters' which is highly recommended (but not really about climate change).

I have Jim, but I didn't enjoy it - I think it is outside Flannery's area of expertise (anthropology) and far less interesting than 'the Future Eaters' which is highly recommended (but not really about climate change).

Thanks, Angus. My library doesn't have The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People. I've never read much about that area, either.

People,
I've been a bit offline for a while so I've come back in the middle of this discussion.

I'm not going to comment on the politics except to say that scientists are human and are influenced in part by money etc. Most scientists, though are employed by universities and get their money whatever happens in their predictions. Another large group are employed by governments who genuinely want to know answers to questions. A null result (no climate change) is as important as a climate change prediction and would be equally rewarded in terms of promotion etc. That is why the reports by IPCC are valuable. Political bias is removed, and the science is peer reviewed. However, very few people are prepared to read the full details of reports and so the climate change denialists have a field day exaggerating every single error and misinterpreting results either because they don't have the scientific background to understand things properly or they are wilfully dishonest. As scientists, we are not perfect: mistakes do happen but the scientific method in the long run gets rid of them. for the record, the Himalayan glaciers have been melting, just not at the rate first reported. The IPCC reports have not made any errors regarding them important indices such as global temperature.

Robbower raised two scientific issues. One regarding sea level rise and the other regarding the biological impact of increasing CO2.

Sea level rise is surprisingly complicated. With rising global temperatures the oceans undergo thermal expansion which itself pushes up sea levels. A second component comes from melting ice on land. Sea Ice melting does not contribute to sea level rise by Archimedes principle. There is a third, less well-known component which is the "land rebound". Land which is covered in ice has a greater force on it and tends to sink, increasing sea levels. As the ice melts, the land bounces up and the sea level at the coast actually goes down relative to the land. Now the big problem is that land ice is melting in Antarcica which is changing the shape of the land in the northern hemisphere. So as the land comes up in the south it goes down in the north. For cities scattered along the coast (e.g. USA) sea level will likely rise a lot more than expected according to the first order ice melting idea. Of course ocean models take account of all these effects as well as the proper three-dimensional shape of the land to arrive at sea level rise as a function of location.

Regarding the biosphere, we can expect in the first instance increases in CO2 to be converted to plant mass but this turns around as the temperature increases beyond about 35 C I believe. In other words if the temperature is too high the biosphere can't respond to the higher CO2. This is an important feedback in the climate system because much of the tropics where major forest still exists, lies above 35 C. Of course the biggest problem with the biosphere at the moment is the felling of trees. Unfortunately, despite national regulations in the amazon and other places, given a choice between feeding their family (or making themselves rich) and saving the environment for the next generation most people choose the former. In that respect we are no more sophisticated than animals.

One of the most important aspects of climate change is the probable increase in variability. This is less clear cut than other processes, such as global temperature rise. In other words, if you read the IPCC reports it assigns confidence levels to different physical characteristics and global temperature increase thought to be "mostly caused by humans" or similar phreaseology. Variability is less certain. However it is likely that the weather variability that we see in the USA and other locations e.g. increased winter storms bringing COLD weather and (probably) increased hurricane frequency is the flip site of climate change. Summer droughts are are also part of that variability.

Jim, I'm sorry if I over-interpreted your remarks. I have been burnt so many times by people who have no interest in learning the truth about climate change.

I accept that you didn't vote for Obama, but the republicans in the USA are even worse. They are not hypocritical in the same way, perhaps. What they do is simply declare (without any expertise) that the science is wrong (or uncertain). All science is uncertain, even Einstein's theory of general relativity, so that gives them the lee way to allow US business to continue polluting our environment with CO2. When I was working for a US lab a few years ago, we found that our lab reports to NOAA were being doctored by republican politicians. For the record, the current UK government are no better. They supposedly were going to be the "greenest" government ever. They started by putting taxes on energy to fund renewable energy but when the pressure was on they removed them. They also agreed to allow fracking to take place, which is an environmental problem being caused especially by the USA at the moment.

The problem is that the science is well understood, technology exists to reduce the problems, but business pressure undermines progress.

Thanks, John. I've never heard that about the sea level rising before. That's very strange & counter-intuitive. It's amazing, but so much change is.

I should not have spouted off so much about our politics, although I think it's rude for foreigners to pretend to understand ours. It's the same as getting in between a married couple or siblings in an argument. If it isn't obvious, I don't care for either political party. The conservative element in the Republican party is just scary, though. They keep trying to invalidate the Scopes trial, believe it or not.

What about algae blooms in the oceans & their effect on CO2? I seem to recall (possibly incorrectly) that one camp thinks an increase in algae can soak up far more CO2 than the entire Amazonian rain forest in relatively short order & will due to warming of the oceans that will thicken the layer in which the algae lives. Others seemed to disagree & then there was something about red algae blooms which will thrive & kill off 'good' blue-green algae. I've never actually read an entire article on the subject, just seen it mentioned years apart, so I'm terribly ignorant on the subject.

I don't really find algae blooms interesting reading, although a Sunday Supplement level explanation of how the oceans play a role in climate change would be interesting. Do we really understand the ocean well enough to have any good hypotheses? As much as I support space exploration, it seems to me that's an unknown frontier, too.

If it isn't obvious, I'm not a scientist. I work with computers for a living, but own a small farm & like to work with wood. The closest I come to science is tagging my trees with their Latin & common names as I attempt to reclaim my small woods from the many invasive species choking it. (I'm doing better than expected according to the local forester & Extension agent, although I just lost all my ash trees to the Emerald Ash Borer.) Anyway, I'm more about practical solutions than scientific inquiry.

I find the idea that switching to electric can alleviate climate change suspect & have many questions about it that haven't been answered. It's easy to think a Prius is better than a diesel truck spouting clouds of smoke, but I'm not sure it is.

I really don't understand why no one has made more of a push to reinvigorate our train system.

Jim, I agree with you about the trains. I live in the Northwest U.S. and we have fairly decent train connections, but they have a lot of problems. The trains here often run right on the coast and in the rainy seasons they are often shut down by landslides. So you just can't count on a quick or pleasant trip. And the solutions are neither cheap nor easy.

And, keep in mind, the trains are very much embroiled with the fossil fuel industry. Not only are the engines powered by diesel fuel, but they also are one of the major transport methods for oil, gas, and coal.

Betsy, I don't think being powered by diesel is an argument against. I saw an article about the cost in fuel to transport freight from one side of the country to the other via railroad & truck. Most goes by truck now, but it was far, far more efficient to send it via train. I forget the number, but a gallon of diesel went far further. I want to say it was 100 to 1.

I read an article in the John Deere magazine about how farmers can't get trains to pick up freight containers going back to China even though they go right by & there is a station there. They want to ship grain & livestock, too.

We have a lot of trains in KY, relatively anyway, but I could find no way to get my daughter back & forth to college without her driving 4 hours each way. No passenger trains even between the major cities here, yet there are plenty of freight trains.

There was one bus, but it required each of us to make an hour drive each way at each end. On top of that the bus took 9 hours to cover what a car would in 3. It costs far more to take a train than to fly in a plane & we can't get one from Louisville or Lexington to Baltimore or York.

Trains aren't without their issues. We have idiots who don't pay attention to crossing warnings &/or try to beat them, then try to blame the railroads for their own stupidity. The tracks take a lot of maintenance & they can't go everywhere, but I still think they'd be a very good way to cut down on our use of fuel.

Also, I think they'd be a great investment in the future. New, alternative technologies might have a better chance of working on the larger platform in a more controlled environment rather than fitting into a passenger car. Tons of equipment & multiple cars could be used, if needed. Even if they weren't efficient at first, the live tests would be invaluable.

Yes, we've had a problem here with farmers and other producers not being able to ship their products by rail as they used to. Not because there are no trains, but because they're all full with oil and coal, which pays more to the trains.

That's a problem. Wasn't it a problem way back in the time of the Robber Barons, too? I vaguely recall something about fair trade & monopoly laws that featured Standard Oil & some train company.

When I was a kid, I'd usually take the train to go to New York from Maryland, but it's cheaper for my son to fly. Government subsidies?

Jim,

Of course we have a good understanding of how the oceans evolve. The atmosphere-ocean system has to be treated as one. that is because increases in atmospheric temperature drive the oceans and then the oceans react back on the atmosphere. If you want to simulate out to 2100 as the IPCC reports relate to, you need a "coupled ocean" in your climate model, coupled means that it reacts both ways. The ocean model would include both the deep and shallow layers.

The salinity is important as combined with temperature enables the density to be determined. In turn this allows the sinking rate of the water to be calculated. so the model would calculate the flow of water downwards from the polar regions along the deep layers into the tropics then rise throughout a major global circulation. The oceans are almost as complicated as the atmosphere itself and are quite well documented.

Part of the simulation exercise includes sea ice which needs to be calculated dynamically. In other words ice breaks up and is transported by surface currents. Ice is of course more reflective than sea water. So once the ice melts (e.g. over the Arctic) it can allow even more warming of the ocean than would have been expected. This is known as a positive feedback effect.

It turns out that the polar regions are warming faster than predicted by the models. This is thought to be due to the treatment of the movement of floating ice. In other words, the effect of climate change may well be bigger than currently predicted because of this uncertainty. You've probably heard that the Arctic is expected to be ice free in the summer by about 2050, but with these climate model problems, an ice free summer may occur a decade or two earlier. This will have a global effect.

Algae are a serious issue environmentally, but not especially for climate change. I don't believe that the growth of algae can counteract issues of deforestation, particularly as the algae are only at the surface and the temperature is low (15C?) whereas I expect many forests are a lot warmer (25C?) and when you chop a tree down you bring the whole canopy down with it.

Algae have been growing in zones certainly around the USA but I expect in other countries as well. What happens is that agriculture has to overload the land with fertiliser (as the land is being pushed too hard) to grow crops intensively. When it rains, the nitrogen from the fertiliser is washed into the oceans where it stimulates algal growth. It is serious environmentally because algae prevent oxygen uptake of the water which drowns the fish. So there are now regions around US coasts known as dead regions where the fisheries are being wiped out, leaving just algae.

So, to summarise, increases in atmospheric CO2 and other gases are increasing temperatures, causing droughts and excess runoff of the top soil. The top soil is being washed away, so excess fertiliser is added. The fertiliser is destroying the fisheries.
the rain forests are being decimated for arable land. Without the forest, the land quickly becomes infertile and more forest needs to be felled.

Scientifically, this could be thought of as an experiment in which the feedback processes destroy human ability to make food, which will ultimately destroy the species responsible, or at least cause mass starvation in said species. It may take 100 years, but we have seen what happens in other island nations e.g. Easter Island where human disregard for the environment leads to extinction. This is only evolution at work. We can stop the process, but few nations have yet made enough effort.

Interesting, John. Thanks.

Don't mess with geophysics! I actually find it funny how certain politicians just say it's an uncertain or false science without a single real argument.

I saw an interesting article on NA East Coast sea level rise this morning.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mo...

Jim,
I have problems seeing that article, presumably only available to subscribers. Journalists hunt like packs of dogs, so I expect it is the same as reported by the BBC (which is a free site):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-env...
Apparently for a two year period, 2009-2010, the sea level rose by 12.8 cm on the NE coast of N. America. It was explained as due to changes in storminess which can alter the local equal gravity surface. With climate change storms may become more frequent which could locally affect the sea level but this presumably doesn't affect the regional or global mean sea level.

It looks pretty much the same. I don't subscribe to the Washington Post, but had no trouble bringing it up. It's not worth it for this article, but you might try using a proxy server here in the US if you run into issues like this frequently. I occasionally use one for the UK & Australia when sites are picky about my country of origin.

Any major changes in sea levels is of huge economic impact. There's a lot of money tied up in facilities & real estate.

Jim,
Thanks for the suggestion about how to access US material in future.

As you say, sea level changes are very important, as major cities tend to be built right on the coast.

The NOAA have just officially declared El Niño conditions: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products...

"During February 2015, El Niño conditions were observed as the above-average sea surface temperatures (SST) across the western and central equatorial Pacific (Fig. 1) became weakly coupled to the tropical atmosphere..."

They're fairly cautious about it, saying it is a weak one so far, but with all-time hottest recorded years now being observed even in the absence of El Niño (à la 2014: http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/januar...), these conditions could lead to an even hotter year in 2015.

http://www.theguardian.com/environmen...

http://www.whoi.edu/news-release/trig...

Will the US withdraw from the Paris agreement?

https://www.theguardian.com/environme...

Haaze wrote: "Will the US withdraw from the Paris agreement?

https://www.theguardian.com/environme..."

Quite likely since the new President thinks Global Warming was a conspiracy invented by the Chinese to steal jobs from America.