Enough energy to melt 7 tons of glaciers

[undergroundpanther]

Ironic...





http://www.grist.org/article/2009-11-18-oil-enough-energy-to-melt-glaciers

[gristy]

1. Nothing but optimism in 1962.

Ah, how times have changed.

[timeforpeace]

2. Back then the scientists were warning about an ice age, weren't they? Guess the science wasn't in.

[robdogbucky]

3. Not exactly

but if you say so:

From the robdogbucky archive, due to the courtesy of a DU poster a couple of months ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lgzz-L7GFg


From the educational film "Unchained Goddess," by Frank Capra in 1958 regarding world wide weather and how it works.



Just my dos centavos

robdogbucky

[robdogbucky]

4. Just a little more for you to chew on tonight...

Interview: James Lovelock on Climate Change
- 2 Feb 2007
By Christine Carter

FirstScience: Is global warming really happening?

James Lovelock: I have no personal doubts about the validity of global warming. Not only are there odd events that have happened so rarely in the past that they’re extraordinary, but there’s a concatenation of them that the man on the street notices. Ask almost anybody if they think the climate’s changed in the last couple of decades and they will all say ‘yes’ and give you lots of examples. Where I’m living, people are talking about growing olives in Devonshire and wine is grown all over the place now: there are even vintage British wines. Global warming is much more than just a real effect, it’s something deadly that will threaten nearly all of us who are now alive by the end of this century.

FS: Has global warming ever happened before?

JL: The climate change we’re seeing now is closely similar to a geological event that occurred 55 million years ago, at the beginning of the period geologists refer to as the Eocene. We’re not quite certain how, but about two million million tons of carbon dioxide came into the Earth’s atmosphere over a period of about 10,000 years. I think the most likely cause was a volcanic sill: lava underground from a volcano coming up beneath a petroleum deposit in what is now the Norwegian Sea. This vaporised practically the whole deposit and put a huge quantity of carbon into our atmosphere.

FS: What would the climate be like without humans?

JL: If we had never developed as an intelligent species, the climate right now would probably be moving slowly back towards the next glaciation. There’s some debate about that: some think the present interglacial era would go on a bit longer this time, perhaps as long as 50,000 years. But sooner or later we would be going back into an ice age again. Now we will not: by putting so much carbon in the atmosphere, we have irreversibly changed the Earth. We won’t have another ice age, not at least for another 200,000 years.

FS: What can we expect to see in 20 or 30 years from now?

JL: I can speak not just from my own view, but from the opinions expressed by senior climatologists who have represented their thoughts in a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The last one was in 2001, but the update is due in 2007 and I’ve seen it. Quite simply, it’s very stark: it says that by around 2040 to 2050, the European summer of 2003 (where over 20,000 people died of overheating) will be the norm. People might be able to deal with the consequences: they may go away for the summer to cooler places or they can turn up the air conditioning. But for the plants and the ecosystems, there’s no such relief. European agriculture will probably cease to produce food by then, it will become a desert and scrub region. And the rest of the world will not be exempt: Asia and America will be suffering the same consequences, as will Africa and the nations of the southern hemisphere. We will be entering a world where food supply becomes more and more scarce and there will be mass migrations. Anyone with an imagination can see the awful human consequences of that, and we’re talking about something which is only about 30 years ahead.
http://www.firstscience.com/home/articles/earth/interview-james-lovelock-on-climate-change-page-2-1_9814.html

On James Lovelock from his Wikipedia page:

A lifelong inventor, Lovelock has created and developed many scientific instruments, some of which were designed for NASA in its programme of planetary exploration. It was while working as a consultant for NASA that Lovelock developed the Gaia Hypothesis, for which he is most widely known.

In early 1961, Lovelock was engaged by NASA to develop sensitive instruments for the analysis of extraterrestrial atmospheres and planetary surfaces. The Viking program, that visited Mars in the late 1970s, was motivated in part to determine whether Mars supported life, and many of the sensors and experiments that were ultimately deployed aimed to resolve this issue. During work on a precursor of this program, Lovelock became interested in the composition of the Martian atmosphere, reasoning that many life forms on Mars would be obliged to make use of it (and, thus, alter it). However, the atmosphere was found to be in a stable condition close to its chemical equilibrium, with very little oxygen, methane, or hydrogen, but with an overwhelming abundance of carbon dioxide. To Lovelock, the stark contrast between the Martian atmosphere and chemically-dynamic mixture of that of our Earth's biosphere was strongly indicative of the absence of life on the planet.<4> However, when they were finally launched to Mars, the Viking probes still searched (unsuccessfully) for extant life there.

Lovelock invented the electron capture detector, which ultimately assisted in discoveries about the persistence of CFCs and their role in stratospheric ozone depletion.<5><6><7> After studying the operation of the Earth's sulfur cycle,<8> Lovelock and his colleagues developed the CLAW hypothesis as a possible example of biological control of the Earth's climate.<9>

Lovelock was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974. He served as the president of the Marine Biological Association (MBA) from 1986 to 1990, and has been a Honorary Visiting Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford (formerly Green College, Oxford) since 1994. He has been awarded a number of prestigious prizes including the Tswett Medal (1975), an ACS chromatography award (1980), the WMO Norbert Gerbier Prize (1988), the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for the Environment (1990) and the RGS Discovery Lifetime award (2001). He became a CBE in 1990, and a Companion of Honour in 2003.

An independent scientist, inventor, and author, Lovelock works out of a barn-turned-laboratory in Cornwall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock


More centavos

robdogbucky

[timeforpeace]

5. No need to convince me. I'm just getting whiplash from watching for ice age one decade, ice caps

melting the next.

[robdogbucky]

6. In the case of that whiplash

you complain about it must be real slow motion whiplash:

Arctic reverses trend, is warmest in two millennia
Source: Associated Press

The Arctic is warmer than it's been in 2,000 years, even though it should be cooling because of changes in the Earth's orbit that cause the region to get less direct sunlight.

Indeed, the Arctic had been cooling for nearly two millennia before reversing course in the last century and starting to warm as human activities added greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

"If it hadn't been for the increase in human-produced greenhouse gases, summer temperatures in the Arctic should have cooled gradually over the last century," said Bette Otto-Bliesner, a National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist and co-author of a study of Arctic temperatures published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

The most recent 10-year interval, 1999-2008, was the warmest of the last 2,000 years in the Arctic, according to the researchers led by Darrell S. Kaufman, a professor of geology and environmental science at Northern Arizona University.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/0...


More...

[robdogbucky]

7. Also FYI

A Brief History of Global Warming Science
1859: Tyndall establishes that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

1890s: Arrhenius surmises that the climate of the earth could potentially be changed by the CO2 emitted from the human use of fossil fuels.

1930s: Guy Callendar assembles evidence that the effects of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are capable of being perceived.

1950s: Plass, Suess and Revelle follow up on Callendar’s research.

1960s: Keeling uses systematic measuring to establish that concentration of atmospheric CO2 is rising.

1965: Environmental Pollution Board of the President’s Science Advisory Council warns that by 2000 there will be 25% increase in CO2 concentrations from 1965 level. “his will modify the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate...could occur.”

1965: President Johnson states in Special Message to Congress that “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through...a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”

1966: U.S. National Academy of Sciences Panel on Weather and Climate Modification repeats warning.

1974: Weinberg, Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory “realized that climatological impacts might limit oil production before geology did.”

1978: Robert White (NOAA’s first administrator and a President of the National Academy of Engineering states “We now understand that ... carbon dioxide released during the burning of fossil fuels, can have consequences for climate that pose a considerable threat to future society ... The potential ... impacts ominous.”

1979: JASON committee (Stanford Research Insitute) publishes 184 page technical report warning of expected doubling of CO2 concentrations “by about 2035” with wide variety of undetermined possible geophysical, economic, political and social consequences.

1979: Carter Science Advisor Frank Press requests National Academy of Sciences for review of JASON committee report. Academy committee headed by MIT meteorologist Jule Charney concurs with JASON report “If carbon dioxide continues to increase, find no reason to doubt that climate changes will result, and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible.” (Oreskes, 2006)

Global warming as a threat to the ecology was widely recognized within the scientific community by the 1980s. Within a decade, this recognition resulted in global political acknowledgment and action commencing with the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an agreement setting voluntary limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The international effort was sharpened by a move to mandatory emissions reductions with an agreement by the 3rd Conference of Parties (Kyoto Protocol) which was signed in 1997. Although the United States signed the agreement at the COP3, the treaty was not ratified by the US legislature and entered into force in 2003 without the US as a signatory. This means that even though not required to implement the provisions of the Protocol, the US is expected by international law to “refrain from actions that would undermine the Protocol’s object and purpose”. (Ackerman, 2002, 2)


Whip on dear lash

[timeforpeace]

8. Keep it coming. Say, you're not cutting and pasting without attribution, are you?

[robdogbucky]

9. Snark, snark

You know you can just about always tell something about someone’s sincerity and intent from the nature of their comments. Whether they care to discuss for real or whether they have some other (?) agenda. This seems like one of those times and no, I certainly do not expect you to conduct any discussion with substance. I have gathered your substance is lacking.

Why don’t you do your own homework instead of trying to be clever and snarking on a message board? Some people like to read for information and learning. Do you?

Just to humor you just this once, as I am in a good mood from being with grandchildren on this holiday weekend and I feel generous. Then it’s back to family and probably some football.

The “Brief History…” I quoted from came from local DU Poster “kristopher,” who published this timeline on DU I think more than once, but most recently on Tue Nov-10-09 03:52 PM, and was contained in response #26 to response #21 on a thread entitled “IEA Report - Unless there is an "energy revolution," the planet will heat up by about 6°C by 2030” in the Environment/Energy Forum herein. There are frequently very lively and informative discussions there with some learned folks that have already done some quality research and gain credibility over time.

The name of kristopher’s post was:
“Timeline on awareness of greenhouse issue”

After having read this and many other websites and blogs and news articles, and interviews, etc., one gets a feel for those that have done their research and are reliable in what they write. “Kristopher,” is one of those people. Now, when you take each and every one of his notes and look them up on any search engine you can see that his note taking is reliable, such as I do below for the first “note,” assembled by kristopher. You can also get a pretty good education doing just that. To wit:

A Brief History of Global Warming Science
1859: Tyndall establishes that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

http://coraifeartaigh.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/150th-anniversary-of-tyndalls-greenhouse-effect/

Tyndall further speculated that changes in the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, especially water vapor, might have caused "all the mutations of climate which the researches of geologists reveal...." Tyndall was a pioneer of the greenhouse effect.
1890s: Arrhenius surmises that the climate of the earth could potentially be changed by the CO2 emitted from the human use of fossil fuels.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/archive/previous_issues/vol4/v4n19/cutting.htm


Just like I can see from your posts what you are like and what your likely motives are in being here and writing what you do where you it do when you do it. Comprende?

Enough attribution for you sparky?



robdogbucky