Climate Science

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mEfJO0-cTis This is the idea that there is a program of deliberately poluting the upper atmosphere with reflective stuff, sodium or aluminum or whatever, to cool the planet. It is indeed a dangerous thing to do as there is no danger from a slightly warming earth but there are massive problems with a cooling world. I don't believe it's happening. Who would do it? Who would pay for it? Why would they keep it secret? How would they do it without it being widely known by all the people involved in loading it into planes? At about 8 minutes in they say that there is a loss of about 20% of sunlight hitting the…

I have a greenhouse (41º of latitude, like 750m of height), and last year i had maximums of over 70ºC, (70º max 18ºCmin etc) and there was still all June left (the heath only depends on the height of the sun so the max is in the solstice), but i had to put blankets because some plants inside where beginning to die as it was a frost, and maximums dropped to 63-65ºC. At the rate max temperatures were increasing, i may have got 80ºC, but i do not know if my thermother is able to record this temperature. I can use the greenhouse as a sauna, from February to november. The point with the plants here is that: A):heath and big themperature changes make a lot of flowers fa…

-- When there is cold weather as in winter, does the atmospheric pressure 'shifts' to a higher range than in hot summer for the same clear sky ? It would make sense, as there is denser atmosphere when cold. -- When the weather reports say as example 'northwest wind' ... do they mean coming from northwest or heading towards northwest? Is there a standard meaning ?

I am not a professional in any field of science, let alone any related to climate science, but it seems to me we could be overlooking a huge piece of the puzzle in the blame for global warming. I do work in an engineering field, so the use of math and logic are not foreign to me. It seems as though Occam’s Razor has – as far as I can tell – yet to be observed in climate science related to global warming. Please consider the following: The average car in the world achieves 8L/100km of fuel consumption, according to the IEA (in 2005). The average passenger car travels 14,435 km in one year. (International Road Federation). The average thermodynamic efficienc…

I'm not a climate scientist. I'm a geneticist and I need guidance. Not sure if this is the right place to ask. I've only been browsing the literature and the climate databases for about 2 days, and I really don't want to "waste" time looking for a needle in a hay stack. I'm looking for continuous climate (or CO2 data if need be) estimates of air (or water) temperature dating back to at least 10 mya. 1. Do temperature estimates even exist that far back? 2. If so, is it all in one publication? citation? 3. Is there a direct translation of pCO2 to global temp? E.g. xpCO2 == yTemp? I found: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5958/1394.abstract …

Some people like to think that we sceptics simply ignore evidence, or perhaps for spurious reasons we discount it. When we've read the same thing over and over again and it never happens then funnily enough we view that a sane person does and should discount the stories. One of those stories is the whole "The ice caps are melting! We could all drown!" Well, yes we "could", we could also freeze in a sudden ice age or be killed off by a meteorite strike. Lots of things "could" happen. To argue against this point it would seem reasonable to point out that scientists in general are a cautious lot and so use the word "could". Followed shortly by an assertion that if th…

I'm doing a regression analysis on several European countries and I want one of my variables to represent average insolation (or solar radiation) per country. However, I cannot find these kind of data in any website: I can only find maps that give you the insolation for a given point. Does someone know a website that provides this kind of data? Or could someone propose me a way to calculate this insolation per country? Thank you in advance.

I've written an 85-page (don't worry - it's mostly illustrations) treatise I have heavily researched with one possible solution to our global warming conundrum. Only I don't know who to show this to for review and I doubt it is professional enough to submit to any scientific journal. Basically, I am hoping for some serious feedback from planet-loving folks like myself who are concerned about this situation and actually give a damn. Currently, my treatise surpasses my meager 4.88MB file upload limitation. Perhaps I can break this into pieces, convert these into .PDF format, and submit at a later time. If anyone is interesting in hearing more about this, feel fre…

Can you support your assertion that a magnetosphere is necessary for a greenhouse effect to take place? How about losing all the odd fonts and such, makes it difficult to read. The purpose of this thread is to find out if the greenhouse effect can be predicted by the atmosphere of a planet. It has nothing to do with global warming on the Earth or the validity of global warming on the earth.

Well the new special report is out today from the IPCC. The full report is available here but is a slow d/load and a 44 meg file. I'm still reading it so the thread title may finish up to be more accurate as "Not sure about increase". Roger Pielke covers the high points. The most quotable quotes are these; So, no increase in tropical or extra tropical storms or hurricanes. No increaseing trend in losses. No increase in rains and floods. This means that anybody who is advocating action wrt climate change on the basis of "extreme weather events" is now truly in "denial" about the facts.

I found this map of the world, which shows wind speed in January and July (source: NASA). It clearly shows that in winter, wind speeds are higher than in summer, both on the northern and southern hemispheres. To me, this seems counter intuitive. During summer, I would expect that there is more energy in the atmosphere, due to more energy from the sun. More energy -> higher wind speeds. Apparently, the opposite is true. Does anyone know why this is, or does anyone feel like taking a guess?

Since I am always getting into discussions (arguments really) regarding various science related topics, I decided I would join a real science forum for discussion. Its seems that many people have a very difficult time understanding what science is, how it works, what it does and does not do, ect. So I thought that the new paper from the Berkeley Earth Project was very interesting. http://berkeleyearth...aper-july-8.pdf It is interesting not only because of the results, but because of who funded the project. The project was funded by the Koch Brothers, who as most know, have lobbied against evidence for manmade climate change. I recently got into a…

Water is a greenhouse gas, but it also frequently forms clouds. Clouds have very high albedos, and consequently cool the Earth. I once heard an environmentalist claim that for every amount CO2 increases global warming, the effect that this increase has on evaporation leads to it doubling. Is this true? How good an idea do we have of which effect predominates; clouds or water vapor's greenhouse effect?

Does anyone know of a clear articulation of the verification or validation procedures undertaken in weather or climate simulations? I know V+V is heavily relied upon in the engineering sciences, and less so in the "theoretical" sciences, but I was wondering if there was a lucid explication of the way in which weather/climate models get their credentials given the difficulty of obtaining good experimental data in such a complex system. Any information (especially references to journal articles) would be helpful.

Off the back of the wind farm thread comes the dino farts warming hypothesis! At least this one might be amusing. The argument is that as livestock produced methane is a major contributor to greenhouse gases today, so one can speculate that sauropods would have contributed significantly to atmospheric methane back in the Mesozoic - which was known to have been warmer than today. A recent Current Biology paper gives some back of the envelope calculations and finds out that if sauropod farts may well have been a significant greenhouse gas source: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%2812%2900329-6 "Mesozoic sauropods, like many modern herb…

http://www.npr.org/templates/text/s.php?sId=9082151&m=1 Reported here by NPR and watching the debate unfold was no less compelling. "In this debate, the proposition was: "Global Warming Is Not a Crisis." In a vote before the debate, about 30 percent of the audience agreed with the motion, while 57 percent were against and 13 percent undecided. The debate seemed to affect a number of people: Afterward, about 46 percent agreed with the motion, roughly 42 percent were opposed and about 12 percent were undecided. "~from the link above... http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=2938762 Also seconded here by ABC, who reminds us of fashionable alarmist rhetoric of …

The climate change is not caused by CO2 over production. It was caused by an act of government. I can prove that lack of atmospheric circulation is the single cause of the climate change. what i don't understand is why no Americans want to hear good news. NO ONE in this country seems to be able to tolerate even the mere hint of scientific discussion. Can any one advise me on how to present this data?

This isn't about AGW, but is about how we describe climate. When discussing the difference between climate and weather we usually look at the longer term trends, typically 30 years. I've been considering this and wondering if this is really such a good idea. I'm lousy with graphs so I hope I can paint a good enough word picture to illustrate my thoughts. Imagine a world where the climate (Global Average Temperature) changed in a monotonic fashion, but still cycled. For 30 years it goes up by .01 degrees per year and for the next 30 it went down by .01 degrees per year. Same amount, no deviation, year in and year out. This would give a distinct sawtooth pattern…

I wasn't aware there was global ecological crisis. It's like Dennis Miller said on his HBO special. It could be 75 degrees in New York in december and someone would surely be out playing golf. It just goes to show you that one man's global warming is another man's " Hey, it's a nice f***in day".

Hello, maybe a strange question, but at the moment it's storming over here. I've learned in school that wind is caused by pressure differences in different areas. Pretty much like letting the air out of the balloon (high pressure) and into the open (low pressure). It's logical why letting the air out of the balloon creates something like a gust of wind, but this is because there is a relatively small opening in the balloon through which a lot of air escapes. I can't wrap my head around this principle working on a global scale. Unlike the balloon the air on top of the earth has no small gaps or openings, so the cause of storms and hurricanes must be a huge air pr…

Hi All, I recently received the following e-mail(Via a friend) from a professor at a local university. I am looking for a broader sense of feedback from the community who are involved in the field. The paper is 44 pages long according to the PDF and has a lot of formulae etc. that I do not understand. " The Green House Effect You will recall that Ireferred you to a paper by Joseph Postma that challenges current theory abouthow the GHE is supposed to work. Download from www.tech-know.eu/uploads/The_Model_Atmosphere.pdf This has triggered a furiousdebate among the climate change community which is quite remarkable in itsintensity, reinforcing the notion …

So yeah, the thing is, Im going to keep using you guys to help me with my future research [i really am that eager to my reports weeks in advance, quite strange for a uni student I know!] Well I've read a few books [i.e glaciers & glaciation by benn & evans etc] And they all summarise, that the world is a "closed system". Going on the principles, it is subjected to change, and infrequent patterns in ocean & atmospheric currents show that this "system" is changing. To minimise it, or not, I haven't a clue. Yet. Also, the relative matter gained and loss is negligable, so it points towards the "closed system" idea... However, matter is still lost, and i…

Hi, I'm a first year student doing climatology. I've been given a bit of research to do. Does anyone know of a link to a site that shows the infrared absorption of CO2 and H2O etc? I've looked and can't seem to find a decent site [And the internet at uni doesn't seem to help -.-] But all I find is just pointless pages on CO2 which I've read like 80 times before... Thank you if you can help, but its not majorly important, it'll just help me with my report I'll be starting in a few weeks Rob

I am doing a psychology test on global warming for school. I just need people's honest answers.

Possibly the best attempt I've ever seen at this sort of thing: