Global warming is now slowing down the circulation of the oceans

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[–]horvybaby 1515 points 11 hours ago*x3

Okay, so let's get a few things correct: because perhaps Nature is behind a paywall for some people. Rahmstorf et. al. show a decrease in THC/MOC variability for the period 1970-1990, which we have then partially recovered from. The title of the Nature article is inflammatory, but the Washington Post article is significantly more so.

We do not know nearly enough about THC variability to make millenial scale arguments. We only recently actually made a measurement system that can calculate the overturning (the RAPID array).

Rahmstorf and others had some issues with THC shutdown in the 90's when previous studies, which at one point suggested a shutdown in THC or meridional overturning, turned out to be incorrect because of an aliasing from a sampling error: they just happened to be measuring at points in the seasonal cycle that were spaced in such a way so as to show a decrease when there was none. This led to our modern understanding of inter-annual variability in the THC, so it all worked out well.

The nature paper takes pains to note that the RAPID array is just 11 years old and so we can't say anything from the results. But this proxy data must be referenced to something, and the only reasonable measurement apparatus to use is RAPID. It isn't.

Using proxy data to infer something about the overturning, while reasonable, doesn't give great coherence towards present understanding of complicated, long-timescale events like the heating of the deep ocean. Furthermore, even at theirs strongest the conclusions absolutely do not support the WaPo headline. This is the sort of things that makes climate scientists like myself furious. The results end up overhyped, overblown, and for soundbites like press releases and Nature papers. This just misinforms people. Unless I hear from RAPID that the MOC/THC is reducing, I'm not trusting the authors. Just because climate change is a hot-button issue, and we want ways to convince people about its impacts, doesn't mean MOC/THC shutoffs can be pulled out of nowhere.

edit: Just want to mention: this doesn't say anything about the method of analysis. The method seems to be well done and scientific and careful, given the data at hand. The issue is rather the paper title and subsequent inflation in popular media, which is silly.

Some argue that the opposite is true: https://xkcd.com/164/

The truth doesn't matter, nor does what you believe. The only thing that actually matters is how you act. You could happily say that there's only a 0.0001% chance that humanity is affecting climate change, but if that's enough to get you to stop doing things that might harm the planet just in case then that's brilliant.

The most important thing to remember with climate change is that there's no downside to being less wasteful.

It makes me wonder two things: 1. What is the ROI without the subsidies? 2. How much lower would the price be if the subsidies didn't exist?

But first, let me say, that this may well be moot. I think solar energy is the way to go. I think the sooner human beings stop burning things they find in the ground for energy, the better. I'll happily give my vote or my money to an elegant solution to make this happen.

Next, my nutshell understanding of global warming:

Temperature and carbon-based greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are closely correlated. For as far back as we can measure (many millennia when using ice cores), atmospheric temperate has been stable along with CO2 concentrations (about 280ppm). Sometime in mid 18th century, CO2 concentrations started to uptick, which caused a rise in temperatures, which in turn caused a rise in CO2 concentrations, compounding continuously to present day levels (1.5 degree temperature increase, ~400 ppm CO2 concentrations). The best explanation for the shift in the balance of the carbon cycle is the additional gases that humans add by burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests, and making concrete.

My questions:

1. Every carbon-temperature hockey stick chart I've seen starts in 1750, when humans were a negligible atmospheric carbon source. Even today, human beings are a minor source of carbon-based gases in the fast carbon cycle. While I can certainly accept that it would only take a minor addition to throw the whole system out of balance, the timing seems strange to me. How do we know that humans are responsible for the initial rise in CO2 concentrations above 280ppm that started 250 years ago when emissions paled in comparison to what they are today?

2. I've seen lots of charts that correlate greenhouse gas concentrations with temperature, but the charts I've seen (like this one: http://bit.ly/18UFLMA) that correlate greenhouse gas concentrations and emissions don't seem to correlate as strongly until the blade of the hockey stick, and even then the correlation usually flips, with the proportion of human emissions surpassing the proportion of CO2 concentrations. If humans are directly responsible for present day greenhouse gas concentrations, shouldn't emissions and CO2 concentrations more closely correlate? It seems like greenhouse gas concentrations don't meaningfully rise until temperature meaningfully rises first as a result of increased greenhouse gas concentrations.

3. Water vapor is a much more abundant greenhouse gas than any gases emitted by human activity. While I understand that other greenhouse gases simply have a higher capacity for trapping heat, what I don't understand is how significantly humans could impact the greenhouse effect when they don't substantially alter the most quantitatively significant greenhouse gas.

4. The most convincing argument for anthropomorphic climate change, to me, is the lack of a viable alternative. Solar forcing seems to be the best alternative offered. Do the climate models used to support anthropomorphic climate change account for variability in solar output? Is there variability in solar output? How is this measured?

Not speaking specifically to this issue, but I've lost a lot of my trust in science after reading a great deal of literature in psychology and paying attention to how funding impacts results. To reference XKCD, if I really wanted to and had enough funds, I could produce findings that a given candy causes acne. And if the opposition side is too politically unpopular to have comparable funding (to say nothing of the funds to distribute the results to society in general) then they could do little to counter me.

Here's a simple question: for the ground based sensors used in a significant portion of land based temperature readings, what happens if you just simply forgot to mow the grass for a couple of weeks. Or, in general, just don't mow it short enough?

Answer: you'll get readings 2-5F too high, especially at night.

The biggest issue is that the land based sensor data we rely on is kind of junk and is constantly being tweaked and changed, and the satellite based data is only marginally better.

The smoking industry could not admit there might be the slightest possibility of a link, otherwise they would have a BPA-plastic situation on their hands; the public goes into hysteria over a possible link. The lie had to be maintained in order to preserve the company. The government lied with their statistics in their attribution of risk correlations, look at how serious second hand smoke is treated as a serious concern and that was used to move the public against the cigarette companies; citing that smokers heavily affect asthma sufferers. However, the number of asthma sufferers climbed as the number of smokers declined [1], suggesting, statistically, that smoking was good overall for society. Then the government turns around and uses the smokescreen, good one Agustus, to levy a tax on the cigarettes themselves, enabling a ridiculous tax on the poor to maintain their habit. Now as smokers transition away in numbers to the less taxed and insanely less-taxed e-cigarettes, there is a push to do the same horror statistics as cigarettes; witness the e-cigarette test that used a highly modified tube to show the possibility of formaldehyde developing [2].

This being said, I have no doubt that smoking increases lung cancer and other risks. The problem is the environment in which the sides of an argument push their agendas.

The politics are very real when a politician can easily overcome political hurdles to give out pork projects that would otherwise be tied up in regulatory hell. Solyndra gets built, politicians photo-op, donors get paid back, fails. Solar farms are fast-tracked through regulatory processes and impact the environment at magnitudes larger than oil [4]. Politicians recognize this, fund projects that create the article's headline and then use the issue to push an agenda which gets money to donors who in turn give it back to them next time they run a campaign.

BIGGEST EXAMPLE of the lengths politicians will go to [5]:

Senator Timothy Wirth: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it.

DEBORAH AMOS: Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?

Senator Timothy Wirth: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.

[1] http://icp.giss.nasa.gov/education/urbanmaap/projects/projec...

[2] http://www.clivebates.com/?p=2706

[3] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/us-solartrust-bank..., http://freebeacon.com/issues/billionaire-trying-to-force-cos...,

[4] http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/burned-birds-beco...

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXCfxxXRRdY

The face of climate change is jointly Al Gore and the IPCC, which was formed from the environmental portions of the UN.

If the face of climate change was a scientist, I'd be more apt to believe it, and so would millions of other people of a conservative political bent.

An Inconvenient Truth is the seminal work on climate change meant to inform the general population, and a substantial bit of the movie is spent on the 2000 presidential election controversy.

Why in the world would anyone think that Republicans and political conservatives would just readily accept the information put forth by liberal politicians, merited or not?

And if I'm actively looking for the truth, how can I find it? I can't spend my lifetime doing my own research, taking my own measurements, experimenting and publishing papers to find out on my own. It's hard to find any material for lay people that don't have some environmental activist telling me I'm an idiot for no believing all the science Al Gore has already presented me.

Honestly, if human beings end up going extinct because we destroyed our atmosphere with fossil fuels, it'll be as much the gross mismanagement of the politics by environmental liberals that's to blame as every American eating burgers and driving SUVs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt

If you want reference, look up global dimming, and look up the problems global dimming is causing. Also, take into account the different reactions that global warming is causing. You can see "healing" elements when you notice that the ocean takes in more CO2 as the planet gets warmer. Ice caps also take in CO2. if you look at weather exteremities like freezing and hot days, snow and rain and drought, and hurricanes, you notice that greenhouse gases do react to this. On hot days, infrared energy is sent back to space. On snow, rain, and freezing days, CO2 settles. The more you look, the more you see that the planet reacts to bring things back to normal. more plants, more bacteria, more life. These processes are also part of physics. But just because the planet heals does not mean we ignore climate change. The "healing" is just as detrimental.