Re: Cold, hard facts defy the doomsayers

George wrote:


Al Zenner wrote:

I've snipped a lot out for brevity, and it is still too long.


People didn't believe for many years that the ozone was being affected
by manmade chemicals (some still refuse to believe it), yet NASA's
satellite data has essentially put that argument to rest.

I am a digital electronics engineer, not a climatologist. Yes there is satellite data on ozone depletion that points at man made chemicals. But there are several points that bother me.

1. Refrigerants are heavier than air. When released they should sink, and only slowly a portion diffuses very high.

2. Most are released in the Northern hemisphere. With the equitorial heating I understand there is not a lot of mixing between hemispheres.

3. Most weather is well below the stratosphere and the ozone layer.

4. The 'ozone hole' is in the southern hemisphere, with a much smaller one in the north. Major predicted ground effects are not found either currently or historically.

5. Historically the 'hole' appeared in the first satellite data and was initially dismissed as an artifact. So we do not know that it is new since industrialisation. Volcanoes and ocean spray chlorine are much older.

That ozone is affected by chemicals has always been clear. How much of
the effect comesfrom manmade chemicals vs. how much is from natural
effects is what has been questioned.


No reputable scientist I am aware of questions the detrimental effect of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer, Al. They have been detected within the layer itself.

>
The Sahel is expanding rapidly as we speak. So is the Gobi desert. The
American Southwest has been in a prolonged drought with no end in sight.
The arctic and subarctic permafrost is melting in large regions of the
north. The glaciers in Greenland and in Antarctica are showing
significant melting. I think we have less time that you think we do.


Paleo records show severe desert conditions in the US southwest such that we currently are having a warm dry spell. Up north in the permafrost, how far north of the 'tree line' are tree stumps showing it used to be forest?


We are even
less prepared for what will undoubtedly be a global loss of coastal
habitat.


But this has been occuring since the last glacial maximum.
People move to the shore every year, and then complain about erosion.





You should look at this report carefully.

I will. But it all lacks long term baseline information. Usually nature
bumps along with changes coming in spurts. I agree the general trends
look a lot like we're headed into global warming, but OTOH nothing we
have is definitive in describing anything falling outside some long term
norms which we don't know as well as we wish to know.


The average global temperature being higher now than at any time in the last 400,000 years (according to measurements taken from Antarctic and Greenland ice cores) is pretty definitive.



Chart in Scientific American for the last several glacial periods implies that we should be well down into the next ice advance. Instead for the last 10K we have an irregular flat trend different from all previous cycles. This is not since industrialization but the start of cattle herding and land clearing for crops.

If causality and solutions were clear cut then there would be no foot
dragging about taking countermeasures against global warming. In the
last 20 million years,what's the warmest the earth has been? Are we
apt to exceed that?




Milankovitch's theory is but one piece of the climate change puzzle. Don't be lulled into thinking that that climate is so one dimensional that it can be predicted by a single parameter. If there were no human effects on climate, it would likely be much easier to verify that theory. The problem is that our emissions have changed the experiment, which is likely changing the outcome. For instance, we are currently in a interglacial period. Since industrial emissions didn't occur during any of the previous interglacial periods, the likely reason why we have a much higher global average temperature now than at any time during the past 400,000 years is due to those emissions. The standard Milankovitch theory does not account for the terminations of the ice ages.
http://muller.lbl.gov/papers/Causality.pdf
George

George; you are a knowledgeable and reasonable person. Your posts are informative and the referances I often bookmark for rereading. I do change my mind when presented with good reasoning and data, but slowly!

Here in Vermont we used to have 5Km of ice and year around sledding. Due to global warming we now have months of poor sledding. I have seen years of heavy snow and light snow. This has been a light snow year. Last night our forcast of light flurries resulted in 12 - 16". Climate is what you expect, weather is what we get.

Geologically I live below the rock surfaces on a glacial morraine above a major river valley (Winooski = onion) 10Km from Lake Champlain.

Jim Lillie - blithering id-ten-t.
Town of Essex, Vt, has a railroad junction.
Village of Essex Junction.
I live on the west side, on West St.

Remember - the orfice of home and land insecurity is watching!

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Cold, hard facts defy the doomsayers
    ... by manmade chemicals (some still refuse to believe it), ... satellite data on ozone depletion that points at man made chemicals. ... It takes upto twenty years for them to reach the ozone layer. ...
    (sci.geo.geology)
  • Re: Cold, hard facts defy the doomsayers
    ... by manmade chemicals (some still refuse to believe it), ... satellite data on ozone depletion that points at man made chemicals. ... It takes upto twenty years for them to reach the ozone layer. ...
    (sci.geo.geology)
  • Re: Cold, hard facts defy the doomsayers
    ... by manmade chemicals (some still refuse to believe it), ... satellite data on ozone depletion that points at man made chemicals. ... It takes upto twenty years for them to reach the ozone layer. ...
    (sci.geo.geology)
  • Re: Cold, hard facts defy the doomsayers
    ... by manmade chemicals (some still refuse to believe it), ... satellite data on ozone depletion that points at man made chemicals. ... It takes upto twenty years for them to reach the ozone layer. ...
    (sci.geo.geology)
  • Re: OT: Global Warming the Pseudo Religion.
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