Friday, September 15, 2017

Reality check, deniable but unavoidable Geophysics of a warming planet



Pumphandle 2016

August 31 an outfit called Investors.com under cover of the "Daily Business" wrote an editorial that no one had the guts to put their name behind.  Figures since it's such a perfect example of libelous criminal mischief and intellectual vandalism.  My initial read indicated some 24 talking points to build my case on.
  
I believe all too often timid professionally/politically constrained experts give aid and comfort to such deliberate misinformers by their obsessive public focus on fringe uncertainties -> rather than reminding everyone of the geophysical certainties we are dealing with here.  This latest example of malicious character assassination against Dr. Mann is an example of what such unrecognized seepage has accomplished these past decades.  

Before I begin my slog through that thing, I believe it's important to take a moment to look at the essence of what our planet's Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine is all about.  Starting point an unfortunate quote from that editorial:
CNN Newsroom host John Berman asked former National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read point-blank whether climate change had affected the intensity of Hurricane Harvey. 
Read said he "probably wouldn't attribute (global warming to) what we're looking at here. This is not an uncommon occurrence to see storms grow and intensify rapidly in the western Gulf of Mexico. That is, as long as we've been tracking them, that has occurred. 
{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Read - Navy meteorologist background.}
For the other side of that: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/28/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-more-deadly

Quite frankly it doesn’t matter what I, or some politically terrified official pronounces.  The outside reality is that our planet has begun a radical transition towards a much much warmer climate regime.  Simply because measuring and putting exact attribution numbers on it is exceedingly difficult, doesn't justify ignoring the geophysics unfolding under our noses! 


* Global warming is definitely directly related to that hot Gulf of Mexico waters that fed an explosive intensification of a tropical storm.

* Global warming is definitely directly related to the fact that the atmosphere is holding more moisture and making it available for storm systems such as Harvey to collect and dump, while adding energy to the system.

* Global warming is definitely directly related to the fact that our Jet Stream has gotten weirder and is currently causing the stalling and reversal of Harvey’s northward movement.

* Global warming is definitely directly related to the fact that sea level is rising and thus adding substantially to damaging storm surges.

* Global warming is definitely directly related to the "Brown Ocean Effect" that continued feeding moisture and energy into Harvey and certain other hurricanes after making land fall.

If I’m mistaken it should be simple enough to explain my error in a constructive manner.

If you can’t do that, perhaps you should consider allowing those points to take prominence over nitpicking fringe uncertainties and the struggle for statistical perfection.

What We Know about the Climate Change–Hurricane Connection
Some links are indisputable; others are more subtle, but the science is improving all the time
By Michael E. MannThomas C. PetersonSusan Joy Hassol on September 8, 2017


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Global Warming - temperature anomalies by country 1900-2016

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Dr. Mann explains the Hydrological Cycle in a Warming Climate
More Than Scientists - Published on Sep 20, 2015
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It's a fact: 
climate change made Hurricane Harvey more deadly
We can’t say that Hurricane Harvey was caused by climate change. But it was certainly worsened by it


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What is the link between hurricanes and global warming

https://www.skepticalscience.com/hurricanes-global-warming-intermediate.htm
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This article is in much need of revision considering it's twelve years old, still its from some of the most knowledgable on this topic, and informative.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/09/hurricanes-and-global-warming

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Yes, they have demonized this guy too, 
how about if we focus on the substance rather than the contrived vitriol.


Ex-NASA Scientist James Hansen: There is a Clear Link Between Climate Change & Stronger Hurricanes


Published on Aug 30, 2017



https://democracynow.org - Dr. James Hansen has been called the "father of climate change awareness." In 1988, Hansen first warned about the dangers of global warming when he testified before Congress. At the time, he was the top climate scientist at NASA, where he headed the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. We speak with world-renowned climatologist Dr. James Hansen on what role climate change played in unleashing Hurricane Harvey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43s5Zlhuyjs

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December 19, 2016

CO2 Science - Why We Can Be Sure.

This post is an interesting sort of one way collaborative effort and I've posted it before, but its worth repeating. You see, over the years I've communicated with a number of scientists and grads.  Asking straight forward questions and often receiving informative replies.  I try not to over do my welcome, after all these are very busy people with more important things to do. Still, for this post I sent a grand shout out to a number of my correspondence pals and received more responses than I expected including some informative surprises for me. I have taken great liberty slicing and dicing their responses. Rewriting some, leaving other quotes untouched and giving all of it some order.

I mention this because I want to be clear the following List of "CO2 science dependent" modern marvels is not my own cleverness and I want to send out a big Thank You! to my informed anonymous heroes!   http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2016/12/co2-science-just-facts.html

Also see
Archive, Hanscom AFB Atmospheric Studies, 
Cambridge Research Lab
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Key studies that have withstood the test of time:

1959 - “Carbon Dioxide and Climate”

An article from our July 1959 issue examined climate change: “A current theory postulates that carbon dioxide regulates the temperature of the earth. This raises an interesting question: How do Man’s activities influence the climate of the future?” … During the past century a new geological force has begun to exert its effect upon the carbon dioxide equilibrium of the earth [see graphs on page 43]. By burning fossil fuels man dumps approximately six billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. His agricultural activities release two billion tons more. ...
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1967 - “Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity”

The First Climate Model Turns 50, And Predicted Global Warming Almost Perfectly
Ethan Siegel, March 15, 2017, Forbes.com


Modeling the Earth's climate is one of the most daunting, complicated tasks out there. If only we were more like the Moon, things would be easy. The Moon has no atmosphere, no oceans, no icecaps, no seasons, and no complicated flora and fauna to get in the way of simple radiative physics. 

No wonder it's so challenging to model! In fact, if you google "climate models wrong", eight of the first ten results showcase failure

But headlines are never as reliable as going to the scientific source itself, and the ultimate source, in this case, is the first accurate climate model ever: by Syukuro Manabe and Richard T. Wetherald. 50 years after their groundbreaking 1967 paper, the science can be robustly evaluated, and they got almost everything exactly right.
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1972 - “Man-made carbon dioxide and the “greenhouse” effect”
A remarkably accurate global warming prediction, made in 1972

A paper published in Nature in 1972 accurately predicted the next 30 years of global warming

John Stanley (J.S.) Sawyer was a British meteorologist born in 1916. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1962, and was also a Fellow of the Meteorological Society and the organization's president from 1963 to 1965.

A paper authored by Sawyer and published in the journal Nature in 1972 reveals how much climate scientists knew about the fundamental workings of the global climate over 40 years ago. For example, Sawyer predicted how much average global surface temperatures would warm by the year 2000.
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1975 - “Climate Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”


Wallace Broecker was among the first climate scientists to use simple climate models to predict future global temperature changes. 

Broecker anticipated the actual increase in CO2 very closely, predicting 373 ppm in 2000 and 403 ppm in 2010 (actual values were 369 and 390 ppm, respectively). Broecker also used an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 3°C for doubled CO2; however, his model’s transient climate sensitivity worked out to be 2.4°C for doubled CO2.  …
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1981 - “Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide”


A paper published in the journal Science in August 1981 made several projections regarding future climate change and anthropogenic global warming based on manmade CO2 emissions. As it turns out, the authors’  projections have proven to be rather accurate — and their future is now our present. …

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2015 - First direct observation of carbon dioxide's increasing greenhouse effect

February 25, 2015

The influence of atmospheric CO2 on the balance between incoming energy from the Sun and outgoing heat from the Earth (also called the planet's energy balance) is well established. But this effect has not been experimentally confirmed outside the laboratory until now. The research is reported Wednesday, Feb. 25, in the advance online publication of the journal Nature.

The results agree with theoretical predictions of the greenhouse effect due to human activity. The research also provides further confirmation that the calculations used in today's climate models are on track when it comes to representing the impact of CO2.

Message to interested readers, I'm just an outside life long observer and my writing is done in fits and starts with constant short and long interrupts, thus it never surpasses the 'grandma moses' level.  But, my information is solid and my reasoning is solid and I welcome anyone with more time and focus, to take anything at WUWTW and use it as a starting point for better efforts that reach more people.  

Of course, if anyone were interested in helping me focus more on this, my obvious passion, to see what I could accomplish with the luxury of full-time focus on my side, please do let me.  

Citizenschallenge - P.O.Box 56 - Durango, Colorado, 81302 - citizenschallenge at gmail

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