Re: Subduing the earth and misinterpretation

On 4/25/06, Janice Matchett <janmatch@earthlink.net> wrote:
> At 09:15 PM 4/25/2006, Dawsonzhu@aol.com wrote:
>
>
> "...I note that I only recall one paper in the last two years that mentioned
> a possible pathway that ameliorates the effects of CO2 that was published in
> Science. Nevertheless, it is clear that CO2 is at the highest levels in the
> last 10 M years. .."
> @ The BS Repellant is found below. ~ Janice

I've already posted in more detail earlier, but it should be noted
that nowhere in the article does it address Wayne's point. My
previous post gave the data behind the assertion that we are at
unprecedented levels of CO2 right now.

In order to combine my posts I want to deal with Mark Steyn's blog.
How come scientists said it was cooling then and warming now? Janice
already posted the answer in part the albedo effects of airborne
aerosols (the forcing effect of these aerosols was -0.8 W/m^2 while
global warming is 2 W/m^2 so you cannot fix global warming by
polluting) and the other reason is Randy Isaac and me. Huh? Yeah,
during the intervening time period we were busy working in the
semiconductor industry improving the computer technology in order to
make more accurate models. Still, the models are not as accurate as we
would like. The polar ice caps are melting faster than we predicted.
This unfortunately produces an accelerating effect because the ice
reflects sunlight so well -- much, much better than pollution.

This is another thing that the lay person doesn't understand about
global warming: it is not uniform. The temperature is warming much
more slowly here where we live versus at the poles. Global warming can
sometimes be described as the lessening of the difference of
temperatures. The arctic warms much faster than the tropics. We have
witnessed this. While the signal for overall global warming is still
in the noise, the signal at the arctics is not. We have measured and
not predicted significant temperature increases in the arctic, ice cap
melting as measured by a number of techniques including recently by
microgravity measuring of the antarctic, the increase of fresh water
in the oceans and the resultant disruption of the thermohaline
circulation in that the cold water return in the Atlantic is down 30%.

We have had a significant increase in sea surface temperature which is
a major driver of hurricane intensity. At this point, it is unclear
which is a stronger driver this or the normal multidecadal cycle for
hurricanes. It should be noted that the debate within the hurricane
community is whether we are seeing the effects of global warming on
hurricanes now or in the future not whether global warming makes
hurricanes more severe.

Oh, and if you say we cannot affect climate note that we can even
affect weather. In 2002, the following news story in Nature noted
this:

http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020218/full/020218-6.html
[subscription to Nature necessary]

Smoke belching from the Indian cities of Bombay and Calcutta is
already shifting regional monsoons, said oceanographer V. Ramanathan
of the University of California, San Diego. An 'Asian haze' the size
of the United States already drifts over the Indian Ocean every year.
Received on Wed Apr 26 09:12:30 2006