Doogles31731

exchemist, you certainly seem to be happy that the science is settled on climate change and I can live with that. That’s your belief. But I’m not happy with the inconsistencies that still remain in climate science and believe that some of the basics still need re-working. And I’d still like to see a re-working of Tyndall’s experiments (plus much more) with modern equipment and knowledge. You seem to be having trouble allowing me to retain that belief.

Judging from the support you have from other members, I think I can safely say that that will never happen. So you can rest easy.

I didn’t get an answer from any members about why Tyndall got small (or feeble) deflections of his galvanometer needle with mixtures of hydrogen and nitrogen, and then of oxygen and nitrogen in his apparatus. I’m curious by nature. Maybe the metal in the “tube” acted as a catalyst and converted some of the gases to NH3 or N2O. Maybe there was some contamination with H2O in spite of his attempts to dehydrate his gases?

Once again SwansonT, I thank you. I found that reference to the research on the speed of light quite interesting. It was new to me. Certainly the time factor was longer than the 160 years so far on Climate Change since Tyndall.

Don’t take this the wrong way because I will be accused of tunnel vision and of seeing only what I want to see to suit my own ideas. But I did notice that men with inquiring minds were getting nowhere whilst trying to determine the speed of light from studies of the solar system, and only achieved some plausible results when they got down to nuts and bolts science at ground level. I suppose the question I ask myself is whether Einstein used any of the data obtained from Fizeau and Foucault, or Michelson to make his calculations.

TheVat, I looked through the link you sent on Radiative Forcing. If the radiative forcing from a doubling of CO2 went up to 3.5 Wm-2 or so from 1.7 or so, would it be possible to work out a Climate Sensitivity figure. These crude maths may be totally invalid, and I’ll probably be labelled as ‘ignorant’ again. But my understanding is that our temperature readings are taken from Stevenson Screens about 4 feet from the surface of our planet. It is also my understanding that our global surface temperatures would be -18 degrees C without an atmosphere, and that the atmosphere enables us to have a global mean average temperature of 15 degrees C. So that the atmosphere allows us to stay 33 degrees warmer. As far as I can ascertain, the average daily solar energy that reaches the surface is 156 Wm-2. Does this mean that 1 degree C in the shade equates to 4.7 Wm-2 of solar energy at the surface of our planet?

Nah! It can’t be right because that would mean that the 3.5 Wm-2 radiative forcing would account for less than 1 degree C of our temperature.

Oops! Thanks, SwansonT, for pointing out the error of my ways.

I bow my head in shame. My figure of 25-fold in the range of climate sensitivity was wrong and I freely admit to error. In a brain lapse, I interpreted the lowest ranges to be 0.15 instead of 1.5. This of course means that the range of figures for climate sensitivity is approximately 4-fold.

Now it is still too big a range in my opinion and indicates that the basic science is still not good enough after 160 years of studies and after “19 million results from a Google Scholar search”. if people are happy with that, so be it. I personally don’t believe it is good enough.

I appreciate those responses from Studiot and again from exchemist who once again took time and effort in attempts to clarify matters for me.

I guess it comes down to personal opinions in the end. Obviously, most people seem to be happy with the current state of science performed on the atmosphere as a whole. My opinion is that there are far too many variables in the dynamics of that atmosphere to understand the basics.

My preference would still be to use a decent sized glass or perspex tube in a laboratory as I described in an earlier post, do repetitive measures of each gas until basic consistency can be obtained with  a single gas, and then repeat such tests with as many computations and combinations of atmospheric variables as one can imagine.

I have a copy of Tyndall’s work exchemist, and I would like to cite a part of his observations on the effect of mixtures of gases -- “ ... Thus we see that hydrogen and nitrogen, which, when mixed together, produce a small effect, when chemically united to form ammonia, produce an enormous effect. Thus oxygen and hydrogen, which, when mixed in their electrolytic proportions, show a scarcely sensible action, when chemically combined to form aqueous vapour, exert a powerful action. So also with oxygen and nitrogen, which, when mixed, as in our atmosphere, both absorb and radiate feebly, when united to form oscillating systems, as in nitrous oxide, have their powers vastly augmented. ... “

So, for example, an oxygen and nitrogen mixture had a ‘feeble effect’. Together, they constitute 99% of the atmosphere, whereas carbon dioxide accounts for approximately 400 parts per million volume dry air. Is it possible that the huge difference in concentration (2400 x volume) could make this a more significant effect? I'm quite curious about that.

As an academic question, Is it possible to quantitatively check this ‘feeble’ response to heat by oxygen and nitrogen from IR studies on the atmosphere? Maybe I should ask if you know of any studies on this ‘feeble’ response by a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. I’m talking about studies that are based on experimentation and not hypotheses or assumptions. Once again, I’m curious as to whether it can be done.

But I would still like to have seen more basic experimental laboratory studies where ALL of the variables could be controlled, and I believe it’s the only way they can be controlled. Other forum members are obviously happy with the inconsistent results being obtained with the current status quo and don't see it the same way I do.

We may just all have to agree to disagree .

The OP of this thread contained a reference to a 1960s paper by Manabe who subsequently received a Nobel Prize. One of the points made in the OP on Manabe’s work was “To test the model, Manabe decided to change levels of various greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, to see what impact this had on the Earth’s temperature.” My question to Skydelph was if he knew what basic data on CO2 and temperature was used by Manabe to create his models. And then I extended that invitation to anyone in  the forum.

I could be wrong, but I believe that there has to be some basic quantitative data on the effects of increasing CO2 concentrations, for models and calculations to be meaningful.

The OP gave me the opportunity to see if any of the forum scientists knew of any such work since Tyndall’s crude experiments.

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I have good company in my queries about basic experiments. This site contains an open letter to the NASA Administrator from 49 members of the team producing much of the data used by the IPCC. All of the signatories are listed under the letter shown on this site. It’s a formidable-looking list - http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/10/hansen-and-schmidt-of-nasa-giss-under-fire-engineers-scientists-astronauts-ask-nasa-administration-to-look-at-emprical-evidence-rather-than-climate-models/

March 28, 2012

The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr.
NASA Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001

Dear Charlie,

We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.

The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.

As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.

For additional information regarding the science behind our concern, we recommend that you contact Harrison Schmitt or Walter Cunningham, or others they can recommend to you.

Thank you for considering this request.

Sincerely,

(Attached signatures)

CC: Mr. John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for Science

CC: Ass Mr. Chris Scolese, Director, Goddard Space Flight Center

Ref: Letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, dated 3-26-12, regarding a request for NASA to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims that human produced CO2 is having a catastrophic impact on climate change.

You can see the list of signatories on the site above.

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Now my posts in this thread were simply to satisfy my own curiosity about the lack of repetition of Tyndall’s work with modern equipment under laboratory conditions where the variables can be controlled -- and nothing more than that. As I said in my last post I still have a couple of very old refs that I might check.

Can I ask if any members of this forum are happy with the basic science of a discipline that produces a 25-fold difference in estimates of ‘climate sensitivity’ in the first two decades of the 21st century. And that’s after 140 years of work in the area. I have not received a single comment on that fact.

I’m on the side of the NASA scientists. I would like to see more nuts and bolts-basic, controlled, quantitative laboratory experiments.

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John Cuthber, I notice that the Wikipedia article gives a list of 6 conditions under which the Beer-Lambert Law does not apply. The atmosphere, as a heterogeneous mixture of variables, some of which (such as CO2 and water vapour) are synergistic and not independent, seems to be one of them, yet the next paragraph gives a formula for calculating attenuation of solar or stellar light by the atmosphere. As I said, it’s largely beyond my comprehension. Are there basic experiments on which the Law is based?

John, could you explain how this Law could give an acceptable figure for ‘climate sensitivity’ and would such a finding be consistent under a variety of atmospheric variables?

Apologies, I meant to include an opening paragraph to directly answer exchemist's question -- 

Apparently I don’t express my thoughts very well. exchemist. You asked “What further experimental work were you expecting to find, or do you consider there should be? Because It is not obvious to me that any more experiments would be needed, as the challenge is in the modelling, rather than in the well known properties of the gases involved.”

I suppose the short answer is that the quantitative properties of the gases are not well known, in my opinion, because they have not been studied under controlled laboratory conditions. I don’t believe any calculations or modelling are good enough unless they are based on good quantitative basic data. I gave the example of variations in ‘climate sensitivity’ as a case of gross  inconsistency in modelling and calculations.

I’ll try rephrasing (above)

Thank you once again to those who sent me responses and links to research.

I assure you that I read every link that comes up with an original research article and I carefully go through the reference lists for what I am looking for. I do not follow up references to books or second hand popular journal interpretations.

I uploaded a graph of publications on climate sensitivity in my last post. It demonstrated the various figures calculated by many reearch groups over the last 20 years for predicted near-surface temperatures if the CO2 concentration was doubled in the atmosphere. This is labelled ‘Climate Sensitivity’. There is a 25-fold difference (not 25%; 25-fold) between their calculations of what the near-surface average global temperature rise would be.

Because there is such a wide variation in these predictions, I began to suspect that there is something wrong with the basic science on climate change. 

There are other reasons as well of course, but that one example is enough in its own right for me to become curious about the basics. I apologize to anybody if such a search makes them feel uncomfortable about their own belief systems in what they choose to accept. I’m personally curious as to why, after 160-odd years, we have not yet achieved anywhere near conformity in agreement as to what our near-surface temperature would be if we doubled carbon dioxide concentrations. A one-fold difference may be acceptable, but a 25-fold range from top to bottom??? I assume the results were from peer-reviewed journals.

So getting on with Callendar (1938), thanks to exchemist, it’s a good paper, and I can understand why it was listed by the Wikipedia researcher as one of the significant papers in the history of Climate Change science. Callendar has produced a graph of temperature anomalies associated with varying concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. His graph indicates that a change from 300 to 400 ppm (dry air) would result in an increase of 1 degree C or so, which is about what happened over the last 100 years.

But his results once again were mostly calculations, based, as he said, on the work of Rubens and Aschkinass (1898), Rubens and Hettner (1918) and Fowle (1918).

I will try to follow them up, but I’m pessimistic that such old papers will be available.

I’m getting the impression now that the science of Climate Change has developed piecemeal, with a sort of trial and error nature based on hypotheses and counter-hypotheses coupled with countless papers on atmospheric measurements of all kinds over a long period.

Following my search so far, my expectation now is that I’ll find that the only basic laboratory-controlled experiment in the field was that of Tyndall’s in the 1860s.  He used a can of hot water, a tube and a galvanometer to quantitatively assess the absorption (and radiation) of ‘heat’ by a variety of gases. It doesn’t look at this stage as if anybody has repeated his work using infrared lamps and spectrophotometers with a glass or perspex tube designed to hold a variety of pure or mixed gases at various temperatures and simulated atmospheric conditions, along with inserted thermometers and gas gauges. The design and manufacture of such a tube would probably be the biggest technical problem in a machine designed like an Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer.

Special thanks to you exchemist. I realize that you had to go out of your way to obtain that Callender (1938) reference for me.

exchemist, I really appreciate your positive assistance. It is early basic experimental work I’m looking for. I rationalize that if someone is going to do modelling or calculations that involve the effects of CO2 concentrations on atmospheric warming, then they need some basic experimental laboratory quality controlled data to start with.

So far, the best lead I’ve come across is the Plass’ reference of ‘CLOUD, W. H., 1952: The 15 micron  band  of CO, broadened by nitrogen and helium. ONR Progress Report.’ He described it as “recent accurate laboratory measurements of the absorption in the CO2 band by CLOUD (1952).” But as I said, the link does not work.

That abstract by Callendar sounds a possibility, thank you. I will get a full text, so I may be quiet for a day or two. I see where Callendar’s work gets a mention as a seminal paper in the second link you provided.

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Yes, TheVat, we’ve been through all of this before. I guess you and I have different personal attitudes to science. You appear to be a consensus supporter, but I constantly question the validity of many scientific ideas. I fully understand the theoretical relationship expounded in the article you provided about how increasing CO2 concentrations lead to more water vapour and therefore more heat retention, but it doesn’t help in my search for the most basic experiment on the infrared absorption properties of varying concentrations of CO2. There is nothing in the reference list of that article suggesting a basic experiment.

If the basic science is so good, why do we have so many variations in predictions of ‘climate sensitivity’ by climate scientists? As you can see from the graph, the estimates have varied maybe 25-fold since 2000.

All of the calculations and models on the subject, by people such as Plass and Manabe, have to be based on some basic experimental data associating variations in absorption with varying concentrations of CO2. That’s what I’m looking for.

I felt as if I was getting close with the reference to Cloud (1952)

My problem is that I do not get any hits in Google Scholar or PubMed when I type the reference listed by Plass into the search boxes. Can you help with that problem?

Thanks again exchemist. That reference to Guy Stewart Callendar (1938) looked promising but unfortunately it's part of a book and not available as a reference.

I was able to find a couple of more early references.  Plass GN (1955: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1956.tb01206.x) in The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change. This paper looked promising, but it turned out to be a calculation based on the data from what he called the accurate laboratory experiments of Cloud (1952). Unfortunately, a copy and paste of that reference into Google Scholar and PubMed did not produce the reference.

The Introduction to Plass’ paper indicated that the science available at that time was anything but generally accepted and consensual.  He cited “In 1861,TYNDALL wrote that “if, as the above experiments indicated, the chief influence be exercised by the aqueous vapour, every variation of this constituent must produce a change of climate. Similar remarks would apply to the carbonic acid diffused through   the air. ... “

Plass went on to state that the feeling at the time he published the above paper, was that water vapour may be the main driver of climate change. It absorbs wavelengths from 4 to 80 micron, but with a strong effect in the wavelengths absorbed by CO2. See  http://www.ces.fau.edu/nasa/module-2/how-greenhouse-effect-works.php.

As I said, Plass cited the following reference as his basic source of facts about CO2 and temperatures for his calculations -- CLOUD, W. H., 1952: The 15 micron  band  of CO, broadened by nitrogen and helium. ONR Progress Report. Unfortunately The reference did not come up in Google Scholar or PubMed.

Any ideas?

Firstly exchemist -- Once again thanks for the help. I had seen that recent paper about variations of CO2 absorption across the troposphere, but what I'm looking for is the very first study (after Tyndall) that anybody made to incriminate CO2 changes into Climate Change Theory.

CharonY, thanks again for the leads. The first website is a full text and contains a 1955 reference that I'll have a look at over the weekend. I'm off to the gym now. As you can see, the reference dates are becoming earlier, and that is my hope and expectation. It seems a good lead. I had seen the second reference yesterday when I checked your list of refs yesterday. The last sentence of the Abstract intrigued me -- "The effect of an increase in CO₂ from 300 to 330 ppm can be compensated for completely by a change in the water vapor content of 3 per cent or by a change in the cloudiness of 1 per cent of its value without the occurrence of temperature changes at all. Thus the theory that climatic variations are effected by variations in the CO₂ content becomes very questionable."

CharonY - Thank you for those references. I couldn't find a reference list associated with the link in the OP, but I did screed through your suggestions. I copied and pasted them as you listed them into Google Scholar. Some of the results that appeared, seemed  to have no relevance to what I'd typed in. In one case (Plass 1957), Google Scholar brought up a full article by Manabe and Wetherall.  It had a reference list that contained a possible couple of leads, so I'll work back from them over the next few days. Although I haven't found a really basic experimental project yet, I'm optimistic. Thank you.

exchemist, thank you for your response. Yes, the IR spectrum of CO2 is well characterised. But what I'm looking for is the basic controllable laboratory experiment that measures the absorption of infrared radiation by varying concentrations of CO2 gas. I would love to see a graph showing changes in degree of absorption with changes of concentration.

There seems to be an assumption that it is linear, but there is another school of thought suggesting that the degree of absorption decreases with increasing concentrations of CO2. I would like to see the man basic work on which current models are based, but to date I haven't succeeded. 

My question above applies to anybody else in this forum.

The reference cited by skydelph simply states in part "To test the model, Manabe decided to change levels of various greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, to see what impact this had on the Earth’s temperature. The results were remarkable. Taking out all of the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere reduced the planet’s temperature by 30C. Conversely, raising levels of greenhouse gases dramatically increased temperatures."

There had to be some basic research associating concentrations of carbon dioxide gases with temperatures, for variations of greenhouse gases to become meaningful in Manabe's models. Tyndall's work did not go that far.

I have asked that question in another forum that has since folded, but NOBODY has been able to provide me with such a reference. I received plenty of references to variations in wavelengths at which carbon dioxide could be detected, but these were irrelevant. The basic work that Manabe relied upon would have to be dated pre-1960s. 

skydelph, thank you for that reference to Manabe's 1960s work on climate.

I've personally searched the literature for early BASIC studies on the measurable absorption and radiation properties of infrared radiation by carbon dioxide gas and so far, have only found the work by Tyndall in the 1860s. Tyndall of course only used a can of hot water and a galvanometer, and recorded the degree of deflection of the galvanometer needle for a variety of gases. He did not measure the effect of carbon dioxide on its own; he used air that had been passed through solutions to remove moisture and carbon dioxide, and then he measured the deflection caused by his untreated laboratory air. He attributed the difference to what he believed was a combination of water vapour and carbon dioxide and labelled this deflection as being due to "carbonic acid". At least, that's the way I interpreted his experiments.

My question to you is whether you have come across a reference from Manabe's era that involved a BASIC study of the absorption and radiation properties of heat (or infrared) by carbon dioxide alone, for use in modelling. I have been unsuccessful in my search.  

Thanks for that info StringyJunky.

Most vitamin B Complexes contain Folic Acid (B9), which, as far as I can glean, requires a gene labelled something like MTHFR to convert it into folinic acid, which again in turn, requires a degree of further methylation to be become active and to cross the blood-brain barrier. So B-Complex could be useful.

Obviously B-Complex is a start, but in my own case, I thought I would cover all bases by supplementing with the biological product next along from folic acid (folinic acid), just in case the enzyme produced by the MTHFR gene was not functioning properly.

I'm lucky in that my vitamin D is high without supplementation (70s), but I also believe that everybody should take steps to ensure that their vitamin D status is adequate, because of it's necessity for overall health status. I can elaborate if anyone is interested, but it's a bit off topic. 

Thanks for the sympathy Michael McMahon. Fortunately depression is now past history for me personally, but I sympathize with anyone suffering from 'The Black Dog'.

My main purpose in writing was to establish my credentials for saying anything about the subject, and more particularly to suggest a supplement that may act as a specific preventative of depression as a reason for suicide.

Folinic acid is available over the counter, relatively safe to take, cheap, and the results of the review I provided in my last post (2022 and up-to-date) suggest that "The most consistent finding association of oral levomefolic acid or 5-methylfolate with improvement in clinical outcomes in mental health conditions as mentioned above, especially in major depressive disorder (including postpartum and post-menopausal depression), schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and bipolar affective disorder. Folate supplements were well tolerated." 

A search of Google Scholar under Folinic Acid Side Effects, produced papers dealing with its ability to counteract side effects of other drugs. 

I can speak from personal experience on this matter because I was suicidaly depressed in my early 20s during my final year of my BVSc degree. I would say that I had not been coping socially over a period of years, and had been covering up my feelings of inadequacy with great difficulty.

Life was simply not making any sense to me. It wasn’t that I was a failure. I was dux of my Primary Shool and Central School, and passed my secondary education with Honours in every subject. I had earned School Swimming Colours for winning a couple of races at Melbourne Inter-High School Championships, and subsequently was awarded a sydney University ‘Blue’ for Australian Rules Football.

But one day when I was home on my own. I’d had enough and went to get my .22 rifle and actually took the first few steps to retrieve it and shoot myself. But then the mental picture of my mother coming home from work and finding my dead body, deterred me. I had empathy for the situation I would be forcing on her.

I couldn’t go to a doctor, because the procedure in the early 1950s was to put you in a mental asylum, and I could not think of a single person, including my parents, that I respected enough to share my problem.

I vaguely decided that I must had had a brain overload of some kind and decided to just lie on my bed as often as I could and consciously attempt to think of nothing. I did not read newspapers or books or listen to the radio or participate in discussions on anything. It seemed to help, but like Stringy-Junky, I had periods of depression on and off for decades.

I felt that I must have been lacking in some essential brain metabolite or something. My mother knew nothing about nutrition, and while I was away from home doing the Veterinary degree, the main food I could afford was fish and chips. Some years ago, I saw some references to folic acid and folinic acid and commenced taking 800 micrograms of the latter most days.

Bouts of depression have virtually disappeared to the point where at times I get the impression that I’m a pain-in-the-arse to some people.

I realize that there are many forms of depression and that mine was but one form, but if you are interested in folinic acid and depression, this 2022 review is up-to-date -- Lam et al (2022; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0753332221013287) in The potential use of folate and its derivatives in treating psychiatric disorders: A systematic review

The LD50 was an old yardstick used by Therapeutic Goods Agencies as a broad guidelines to the safety of medications. At one stage, it was compulsory in Australia for Drug Companies to present an LD50 with any new pharmaceuiticals. It represented the dose rate that would kill 50% of a batch of mice or rats. It has been discontinued for animal welfare reasons. It had nothing to do with bacterial counts.

As far as the dropping of a beverage cap on a floor is concerned, if it occurs in an average household, just pick it up, wipe any dirt off with your finger, a tissue or handkerchief and shove it back on the bottle. Average household floors possibly have more soil or bitumen or cement dust contamination than benches, but the chances of the floor alone containing pathogenic organisms in sufficient quantity to cause any probems are remote. Soil bacteria are mostly saprophytes.

If you were compelled to disinfect it, you could place it in a cup or glass of bleach solution at the recommended strength for a few minutes. If you did not wish to have any of the residual bleach contact your mouth, you would have to use sterilized forceps to hold the cap for a rinse under cold, but previously-boiled water. And no matter where you put it after that, it will contact other micro-organisms. So any such procedure would be a waste of time.

The floors in hospital-type buildings are a different matter, and there is an article on the importance of considering floor disinfection in  this article -- https://infectioncontrol.tips/2021/06/09/floor-hygiene-and-the-under-studied-risk-of-pathogen-dissemination/ . This article also discusses the unlikelihood of picking up pathogenic micro-organisms from floors.

Does this suggest that we should repeat those experiments involving mixtures of H20, CO2, NH3 in flasks with bursts of electricity, but this time adding a range of metallic elements such as iron (catalase), selenium (glutathione peroxidase), manganese and zinc (superoxide dismutases?

That reference you cited, Ken Fabian, is the one that I cited a few posts back. It was the NASA Report about Zwally et al's research in which NASA incorrectly claimed that it contradicted the IPCC 2013 Report. It had in fact confirmed Section 13..4.4.1 of the 2013 IPCC Report. 

My apologies. I thought TheVat was questioning the authenticity of the NASA statement that Zally et al's paper was contradicting the IPCC 2013 Report on the Antarctic. He was in fact questioning mistermack's statement that "Although the overall trend might still be downwards (sea ice in the Arctic), it's not in line with the doomsday forecasts that I've been reading for the last forty years."  I believe TheVat was correct in implying that no scientific journal appeared to have made any predictions for an early disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic. Popular science stories may have been different, but they are difficult to check.

While doing a scientific literature check, I did find a 2000 article in Science Progress that was titled Arctic sea ice and climate change—Will the ice disappear in this century? and predicted that “sea ice could disappear in the Arctic this century, at least in the summer.” -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/43424174. I'm sure they meant 'by the end of 2100'. This seems possible to my mind and it gives us plenty of time to adapt.

I mentioned this because, technically, any article published in the year 2000 was still in the 20th century. The 20th century did not end until the END of the year 2000. The whole world celebrated the end of the 20th century at the start, instead of the end, of the year 2000. 

The Arctic situation appears to be quite different from that of the Antarctic. In response to TheVat's request, I took it upon myself to check the IPCC position on the Antarctic in 2013 wrt sea level rises -- ""Just to keep things up to forum standards, could we have a citation for those ice free predictions?  Were they widely peer reviewed and agreed upon?  Or were those modeling approaches being revised at that time and much debated?" 

In the 2013 IPCC report, Section 13.4.4.1 (https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter13_FINAL.pdf), the opening paragraph states “Because the ice loss from Antarctica due to surface melt and runoff is about 1% of the total mass gain from snowfall, most ice loss occurs through solid ice discharge into the ocean. In the 21st century, ablation is projected to remain small on the Antarctic ice sheet because low surface temperatures inhibit surface melting, except near the coast and on the Antarctic Peninsula, and meltwater and rain continue to freeze in the snowpack (Ligtenberg et al., 2013). Projections of Antarctic SMB changes over the 21st century thus indicate a negative contribution to sea level because of the projected widespread increase in snowfall associated with warming air temperatures (Krinner et al., 2007; Uotila et al., 2007; Bracegirdle et al., 2008). ... ”

On closer scrutiny, the IPCC did not in fact claim that the Antarctic melt was contributing to a sea level rise. Zally et al’s 2015 paper really affirmed rather than contradicted what the IPCC had actually stated.

This implies of course that the Antarctic as a whole is NOT contributing to sea level rises.

At least that's my interpretation of the Report. I hope I haven't misinterpreted the above.

The trip to  the Antarctic, as mentioned in the OP, will no doubt contribute to our knowledge about peripheral ice adding to sea levels, but one would hope that they would mention in their report that the evidence suggests that this peripheral ice breakaway is offset by snowfalls inland. 

Just to ease TheVat’s concerns, the Wikipedia article on the subject cites a 2015 NASA report -- NASA (2015; https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses) in NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses

An excerpt of the Introduction states “A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.

The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.”

The report goes on to say that that the original paper was published in the Journal of Glaciology, and it cites many comments made by the lead author Jay Zally.

Once again Joigus, I found that to be a very interesting reference. I found this sentence in the Introduction -- "A remarkable example of change in chirality can be seen in the helical shell of the marine foraminifer Globigerina pachyderma, where in the Arctic and Antarctic oceans the mineralized CaCO₃ shells grow in a right-handed (dextral, counterclockwise) direction; however, for unknown reasons, in temperate and tropical waters, left-handed (sinistral, clockwise) shells predominate^4,5."

This suggests that temperature can have an effect on chirality at the whole organism level.

The paper itself was surprising in that the authors were able to reproduce chirality at will in calcium carbonate crystals by adding either dextro-rotatory or laevo-rotatory acidic amino acids to their solutions - aspartic acid and glutamic acid, I assume. They could not produce chirality with glycine, alanine and lysine additions to their solutions. 

I don't know whether members are familiar with the work of Louis Pasteur or not, but as far as I know he was the first to discover that some crystals were mirror images of one another. As a young chemist (He could have even been a post-grad), he was challenged to solve the mysteries of the chemistry of tartaric acid. Apparently nobody could get consistent chemical reactions with it. He had to go  to the wineries to get tartaric acid crystals. In my younger days, every bottle of claret had a sediment of tartaric acid crystals in it. He spent hours using a microscope studying the crystals and was the first to observe that there was a mixture of mirror-imaged crystals. He grew larger specimens in solutions and observed that one type bent polarised light to the left (laevo-rotatory) and the other to the right (dextro-rotatory). He had discovered enantiomeres.

It's interesting that only laevo-enantiomeres of amino acids are used in the building of proteins.

The  fact that he had to go to the wineries of course subsequently led to the discoveries that micro-organisms are in the air, that they can change the nature of fermentation reactions (vinegar or alcohol); and the standardisation of fermented food products of all kinds, and that micro-organisms could also multiply in the tissues of living organisms as causes of disease.

Almost every time I see a reference to  L- or R- enantiomeres, I tend  to recall that story about Louis Pasteur, and how it serendipitously led to huge advances in the standardisation of fermentable food products and awareness of microbiological processes and diseases.  

Thanks Genady. Does this particular coral grow in only one locality on the planet?

I liked Joigus' reference. Joigus, just to get my own thinking straight, does this chirality apply to dextro- and laevo- isomers of chemicals such as tartaric acid (Pasteur's discovery) and glucose?

I'm interested in an answer to String-Junky's question, and also whether anyone has checked whether the spiral in corals is the same in the northern and southern hemispheres.

Wow Peterkin! Where ever did you come across that video? It boggles my imagination to realise that anybody took that much time and effort into the reasons why Michaelangelo didn't like to paint wings on his angels. You can see that at one stage of his life, he did so reluctantly because he sometimes painted only one wing or else he superimposed a large bird with wings on his subjects to simulate wings. 

See, according to my hypothesis, he did not have the qualifications to practice angel-wing-painting, and he was scared of the authorities. So he managed  to get away with half doing it, with masking it, and if he did do genuine angel-wing-painting, he hoped that the authorities would not discover it -- lol. 

I'll give you an 'A' for effort, but my hypothesis still stands that angels had to have wings to commute from Flat Earth to Heaven as messengers. You don't see rocket fuel gas appearing from their rear ends, do you? And if they did, the Climate Extinctionists would be protesting on the streets -- lol.

Michaelangelo was a rebel and was known to have deliberately created imperfections in some of his paintings as a personal defiance of perfection. Hence he defied perfection by leaving wings off his angels. It is rumoured that he had manifested this same rebelliousness at wing-painting classes, so they flunked him in that subject and when he went into practice, he didn't have TGA approval to paint wings -- lol.

Yeah, some attended classes conscientiously, but some were work dodgers. You were lucky to see the depictions of the conscientious ones -- lol.