When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

GW Johnson · 2017-05-23 11:34:50

The nominal density figures I always heard were 0.9 g/cc for ice, 1.0 g/cc for fresh water, and average 1.025 g/cc for sea water. That's just about 90% submerged ice floating in fresh water, and just about 7/8 submerged floating in sea water, just like you said.

GW

SpaceNut · 2017-05-23 18:02:17

Yes but you said it nicer with numbers.....

SpaceNut · 2017-06-01 19:30:19

I am sure that you all have heard about Trump withdrawal from Paris agreement with the twist is Elon Musk steps down from WH councils. With many nay sayers of global warming or climate change even occuring and ye we have Giant iceberg poised to snap off from Antarctica: scientists say that satellite data showed that the West Antarctic Larsen C shelf is poised to shed an ice block measuring about 5,000 square kilometres (1,900 square miles). Larsen C shelf unstable and vulnerable to collapse, which would release vast amounts of water, scientists say. The West Antarctic ice sheet holds enough frozen water to raise the average sea level by about six metres (20 feet).

Now for the other pole...
Stunning Photos of the Arctic Circle As It Literally Melts Away

Taken July 16, 2016, this overhead shot documents the Greenland Ice Sheet, the 660,000-square-mile collection of ice that covers roughly 80 percent of the surface of the island.

elderflower · 2017-06-02 03:07:28

Ice which is already floating is already displacing its own weight in water so won't raise sea level at all if it melts. It will, however unblock landfast ice when it melts or breaks up and this will result in sea level rise, but nobody knows by how much.
We will soon find out in the case of the Larsen C shelf.

GW Johnson · 2017-06-02 14:32:30

As I said in an earlier post, the amount of sea level rise you get depends upon how much ice actually melts. "How much melts" is the unknown, not the quantity of ice at risk.

You take ice volume above sea level that actually melts, ratio it by the density ratio (freshwater to ice), and that is the volume added to the oceans. You need a contour plot of the world's land surface to estimate how much rise that volume corresponds to. It's done by digital multivariate integration.

My figures may be obsolete, although many sets of figures of variable credibility are out there now. What I have been using is 1 m rise for 100% of the mountain glaciers, 6 m rise for 100% of Greenland, 7 m rise for 100% of West Antarctica, and 20+ m rise for 100% of East Antarctica.

And no, 100% of those things will not melt. That's been quite rare since the Mesozoic. I think the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum some 55 million years ago was the last time the Earth was 100% ice free. Those figures DO NOT include thermal expansion as the seas warm (something else we already think we see going on).

Geologists have found fossil beaches as high as 350 feet above current sea level, and as low as 480 feet below current sea level. That contrast corresponds to the difference between fully glaciated and fully deglaciated, complete with thermal expansion and contraction effects. That tells you upper and lower bounds on what can happen.

What "will" happen is in question. Inherently. One can hazard a realistic guess (but it is ONLY a guess): 50% of the mountain glaciers and Greenland as a lower bound, and add maybe 50% of West Antarctica for an upper bound. That would be without thermal expansion, and happening on a 50-100 year timescale. That totals 3.5 to 7 m rise, with more due to thermal expansion on a longer time scale.

Did you notice that I used precisely ZERO of the temperature projections and climate modeling to make that prediction? And yet it squares fairly well with what those scientist guys are saying. When two outfits get the same answer by two independent means, usually we can trust those answers.

Advice from an old engineer: screw the politics, get out of the fake news echo chambers. Start trusting your technical people more and your politicians (a whole lot) less. I have noticed that even many of the captains of business and industry are now siding with the climate science, not Mr. Trump and his tea party-dominated, science-denying regime. A big part of that shift is because renewable energy as a business has become the largest of all the job creators in the US since the Great Recession.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-06-02 14:39:12)

SpaceNut · 2017-07-03 09:41:35

34 picture slide show.... rivers and water rise

Disturbing before-and-after photos show what major US cities could look like in the year 2100

In January, a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency hinted at the possibility of an "extreme" sea-level rise scenario that would put some American landmarks, towns, and cities underwater during this century.
That scenariois considered unlikely, but possible. If the worst climate change predictions come true, parts of the US will be devastated by flooding and greater exposure to storm surges.
Research and advocacy group Climate Central took the projections laid out in NOAA's report and created a plug-in for Google Earth that shows how catastrophic the damage would be if the flooding happened today. You can install it (directions here) and see anywhere in the US.
We surveyed major US cities to see what they might look like in the year 2100.

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publi … _final.pdf

GW Johnson · 2017-07-03 10:24:55

Thanks Spacenut. I downloaded the NOAA report. Nice to see similar estimates to my own. As I have said before, when two sources predict the same thing from independent means, you can trust that prediction more than otherwise.

GW

SpaceNut · 2017-07-08 15:05:21

Mayor of disappearing island: "We just need the help to come now"

Climate change is one of the big topics at Friday's G20 summit and researchers say it's one of the reasons a tiny island on the East Coast, Tangier Island, is washing away. Tangier Island, in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, rises only a few feet above the surrounding waves. An hour by boat from the mainland, about 500 people live on Tangier.
Since the 1600s, residents have survived on the bounty of the bay. Tangier produces an estimated 13 percent of the bay's prized blue crabs -- more than any other town in Virginia. "My father was a crabber. My grandfather before him and great-grandfather," said James "Ooker" Eskridge.
Since 1850, the island has lost 66 percent of its land. In about 100 years, it is all expected to be underwater and evacuation of island could begin in the next two decades. Researchers say one cause is rising sea levels due to climate change -- but Tangier's more immediate problem is something called wave-induced erosion.
The island is literally being washed away by the waves and will eventually disappear.
Mayor Eskridge said the last study took 20 years to complete—about the same amount of time the island has left.

Hoping that the federal government will step in but only time wil tell.

SpaceNut · 2017-07-10 20:22:30

When Will The Planet Be Too Hot For Humans? Much, Much Sooner Than You Imagine.

This past winter, a string of days 60 and 70 degrees warmer than normal baked the North Pole, melting the permafrost that encased Norway’s Svalbard seed vault — a global food bank nicknamed “Doomsday,” designed to ensure that our agriculture survives any catastrophe, and which appeared to have been flooded by climate change less than ten years after being built.

AS more melts its only going to get worse...

Arctic permafrost contains 1.8 trillion tons of carbon, more than twice as much as is currently suspended in the Earth’s atmosphere. When it thaws and is released, that carbon may evaporate as methane, which is 34 times as powerful a greenhouse-gas warming blanket as carbon dioxide when judged on the timescale of a century; when judged on the timescale of two decades, it is 86 times as powerful. In other words, we have, trapped in Arctic permafrost, twice as much carbon as is currently wrecking the atmosphere of the planet, all of it scheduled to be released at a date that keeps getting moved up, partially in the form of a gas that multiplies its warming power 86 times over.

SpaceNut · 2017-08-18 19:07:22

2.7-million-year-old ice core reveals ancient levels of carbon dioxide

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The Oldest Ice Core Ever Discovered Reveals CO2 Levels Of Millions Of Years Ago

The 2.7 million-year-old core is the only of its kind that can reveal what the atmosphere on Earth was like so long ago. This specific core showed that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the time it was formed was no greater than 300 parts per million, reported Science Magazine. Currently the Earth’s atmosphere is at more than 400 ppm a number that’s increasing.

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RobertDyck · 2017-08-18 20:33:01

Considering CO2 was 1,000 ppm just 80 million years ago, during the time of dinosaurs, and 7,000 ppm 500 million years ago, this result is hard to believe.

The atmosphere has fluctuated a lot: 300 million years ago was the carboniferous period. Back then O2 was extremely high, the only animals on land were insects. There were dragonflies with 3-foot wing spans, and centipedes 6-feet long. That was before bacteria or fungi evolved to decompose wood, so dead trees just lay on the ground until buried. Those buried trees eventually were pushed so deep that heat and pressure converted them to coal. All the coal in the world was created then. Now since dead trees rot, no coal forms. Oil can form, but not coal.

And going farther back, before large animals or even fish evolved, the planet went through "Snowball Earth"; an ice age so cold that the polar ice caps met at the equator. The only places free of ice were volcanic eruptions. It's believed the first time this happened was after cyanobacteria first formed. It produced oxygen for the first time, converting Earth's atmosphere from 95+% CO2 with significant amounts of methane, to a Nitrogen:Oxygen atmosphere. With no greenhouse gasses to keep Earth warm, the planet froze. With snow and ice covering the planet, that reduce albedo, a positive feed back. Volcanoes spewed CO2 and methane into the atmosphere, and other effects scientists are still working out. It's estimated to unfreeze Earth would have required 350 times as much CO2 as today, or 13% of the atmosphere.

GW Johnson · 2017-08-19 17:05:04

There’s a whole lot more going on with Earthly climate over geologic eons than just CO2. Yes it has an effect. If nothing else is going on, you will see that effect. But it is not the cause of ice ages, the timing of its variation during the Pleistocene ice ages actually indicates it is more of a response and maybe a minor feedback item, not a cause.

There’s the gradual cooling of the planet’s interior over the eons, from its molten formation. There’s the early “dim sun” paradox, which seems to indicate that early on, the sun was around 30% dimmer than it is today. There’s the change in atmospheric composition from reducing to neutral, and then to oxygenated by the action of single-celled photosynthetic life.

There is absolutely no reason to think that early Earth atmospheres were the same pressure and density as today: in fact it makes more sense that our atmosphere has thinned significantly over time as planetary outgassing reduces with cooling, and due to the action of the solar wind (resisted by our magnetic field). Thicker density is an even bigger “greenhouse” effect than gas composition. There is the still not-understood effects of drifting continents upon ocean and atmospheric circulation patters. There are still more things we don’t even yet guess. Point is, we do not know. Which is why 1000-2000+ ppm CO2 in the Mesozoic has little to tell us today.

But over short terms of recent time, there are things we do understand. At this time in our geologic history, the air is thin, the CO2 is (or at least was) low, and we incompletely deglaciated about 10 millennia ago. The climate has been more-or-less stable all during those deglaciated 10 millennia. Now it is changing again, going warmer, when the best model we have (poor as it is) of the Pleistocene ice ages says we should be getting colder. This is Milankovich orbital variations on insolation of the northern hemisphere land masses, which seem to dominate the balance in their current continental drift positions.

The difference is us and our additions of CO2 to levels way beyond those of the last 3-4 million years. That’s circumstantial evidence, but that plus what we know about IR transmissibilities of various gases is the best we have. And it’s going to be the best we have for a long time to come.

If you’re looking for solid proof, there ain’t going to be any. We must decide what to do, or not to do, based on the best we have. Just like always.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-08-20 10:23:44)

SpaceNut · 2017-08-22 16:58:01

How weather has changed the world

Storms, floods, drought, climate change – all of these have an effect on our natural wonders and often cause permanent destruction and change.

30 slides

SpaceNut · 2017-09-08 18:22:51

With hurricanes Harvey and Irma strike land in rapid succession. Now José, a Category 4 storm, and Katia, a Category 3 storm, are not far behind.
Did Climate Change Spawn All These Hurricanes? Here’s Why It’s Hard To Say.

The scientific models still have a lot of unknowns when it comes to warmer temperatures and storms.

Some political leaders are drawing a clear link between the two, such as Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who declared on Thursday that Irma is a “concrete manifestation” of global warming. A few hours later, French President Emmanuel Macron said it was necessary to look at the “deep causes behind these types of events.”
But the connection between climate change and hurricanes is complicated, with several separate questions to consider. Is climate change causing more hurricanes (also called typhoons and cyclones, depending on where they originate)? Are the storms more powerful? Are they more destructive? And what does this portend for the future? Is climate change to blame for Harvey and Irma?
Harvey caused historic flooding in Texas. Is this proof that global warming is already making hurricanes worse? The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization and some American climatologists say it is, absolutely. But Vautard doesn’t want to be that assertive.

Found a great graphics on past to current huricane strength and this rivals Katrina...

kineticIRMA-600.jpg?c=800

SpaceNut · 2017-09-11 17:40:51

Well looky here Trump Just Admitted Climate Change is Real, But There’s a Catch

Donald Trump famously doesn’t believe in Climate Change, despite two of the biggest storms in history hitting the States within a week of each other, and a third possibly on the way.
Trump once called Climate Change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. He’s called it “bulls***” and “pseudoscience.” He famously pulled the US out of the Paris agreement. He’s filled his cabinet and the Dept. of Energy and the EPA with fellow Climate Change deniers. In short, Trump doesn’t think Climate Change is an issue.
Well…unless, of course, it affects one of his properties, then it’s a big deal. He wants to build a sea wall to protect his Scottish golf-course from rising sea levels, a position he could only come to were we worried about what scientists are saying about those sea levels.

Nah the sea is not rising the island is sinking....not....

Just need to remove a few more regulations that will cost him money to do.....

SpaceNut · 2017-09-11 20:43:26

I do not know if I should cry or laugh at this Calls to punish skeptics rise with links to climate change, hurricanes

Judith Curry a retired Georgia Tech professor, she argued on her Climate Etc. website that Irma, which hit Florida as a Category 4 hurricane on Saturday, was fueled in large part by “very weak” wind shear and that the hurricane intensified despite Atlantic Ocean temperatures that weren’t unusually warm.

Have we really stouped to this new low.....

SpaceNut · 2017-09-26 16:59:28

Why is Africa building a Great Green Wall?

Eleven countries are planting a wall of trees from east to west across Africa, just under the southern edge of the Sahara desert.

The goal is to fight the effects of climate change by reversing desertification.

This is the only thing that a Trump wall is good for and its not even living....

SpaceNut · 2017-09-26 18:51:38

Wow another chunk so soon?
Iceberg that broke off Antarctica was 4 times the size of Manhattan

44BA9E5300000578-4920970-The_Pine_Island_Glacier_found_in_western_Antarctica_has_been_los-a-16_1506429832378.jpg

1024px-antarctic_lakes_-_sub-glacial_aquatic_system.jpg

elderflower · 2017-09-27 05:58:50

Pieces of ice that are already floating do not raise water level when they melt. This is down to Archimedes.
However removal of large masses from the snouts of the glaciers enables them to drain ice from the uplands faster than before and this does raise sea levels.

GW Johnson · 2017-09-27 10:20:25

West Antarctica has a bit thinner portion of the ice cap, and part of it is founded upon rock below current sea levels. It is also the smaller portion of Antarctica's total area.

That is why most estimates of sea level rise if West Antarctica were to 100%-deglaciate are "only" 7 meters. In contrast, the estimates of sea level rise if East Antarctica (larger, thicker, almost entirely on rock above sea level) were to 100%-deglaciate are 20+ m.

Another piece of this puzzle is what has actually happened before during the Pleistocene ice ages, from the geologic records. "Fossil beaches" have been identified as high as 350 ft (~105 m) above current sea levels, and submerged as much as 480 feet (144 m) below current sea levels.

It's very hard to connect all that to actual climate temperature distributions, but the 350 foot high stands would probably correspond to 100% deglaciation of everything on the planet, coupled with thermal expansion due to a warmer-overall ocean. Conversely, the 480 foot low stands would correspond to the very most massive glaciated ice cover, combined with thermal contraction of a cooled ocean.

Bear in mind that 100% deglaciation of any of the big sources is actually rather unlikely: mountain glaciers 1 m rise, Greenland ice cap 6 m rise, W Antarctica ~7 m rise, and E Antarctica 20+ m rise. These are immediate volumes that do not include thermal expansion of a warming ocean.

But partial deglaciation of one or more of these sources does seem very likely, since we already see it underway in the mountain glaciers and in Greenland, plus there are these ominous signs showing up in W Antarctica.

Just for the sake of argument, let us assume 25%-by-volume deglaciation of everything but E Antarctica by 2100. That's 0.25 (1 + 6 + 7) = 3.5 m sea level rise. Substantially more than a billion people, and most of the world's largest cities, lie at or below that level.

Alternatively, in the past I have assumed 50% deglaciation of only the mountain glaciers and Greenland, for 0.50(1 + 6) = 3.5 m rise, the same basic answer from different assumptions.

Let's try to bound the problem with consistent assumptions: either 25 or 50% deglaciation of everything but E Antarctica, since we already see signs in the other three. Low: 0.25(1 + 6 + 7) = 3.5 m sea level rise. High: 0.50(1 + 6 + 7) = 7 m sea level rise. So, call it "multiple meters but single-digit".

See the forced migration problem? A migration of utterly unprecedented scale? One our hunter gatherer ancestors did not have to cope with because they did not build fixed cities and all the associated infrastructure? And there were not as many of them back then, as there are of us now?

THAT'S the problem and the risk. It's still unpredictable, except in the very real sense that some of it is already underway! We do NOT know how much or how fast, which makes coping even harder. And you DON'T need disputable definitions of "average planetary temperatures" or always-problematic computer climate modeling to see it coming.

My own opinion (only an opinion, based on Murphy's Law) is that we are already past whatever "tipping point" there might be, so that this massive and sudden sea level rise is going to happen whatever we do, at one or another level of rise. But it does seem prudent to buy more time to cope by reducing those things that we do, that we already know make the problem worse, as fast as we practically can.

That word "practically" is important. We cannot simply stop using all fossil fuel suddenly, because we really do not have the necessary wherewithal to replace it ready-to-go. People would die in a lack of power and food disaster that we ourselves created.

But we can accelerate the transition to renewables by solving the storage problem for wind and solar. That solution is different for large-scale versus local application, so there are really at least two solutions to be found. We could also accelerate the effort to bring thorium-based fission to a deployable technology.

Why thorium? There is orders of magnitude more of it than uranium, plutonium is not involved, and the waste products are not quite so devastatingly toxic.

As for fusion, if we can make it work, so much the better. But if not, well what I suggested in the paragraph just above is about the best that can be done. Fusion has been been "15 years away" for the last ~60 years that I know of personally. I don't recommend counting on that genie to come out of the bottle anytime soon. Not until it actually does. Which is a lot more than just "break-even" in some lab device.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-09-27 10:47:07)

SpaceNut · 2017-09-27 17:24:28

One issue that was seen with solar and the huricanes was that a grid tied system does not work when the power lines are down so even a partial battery storage would be recommended for it to be of value.
Agreed that there should be an "accelerate the effort to bring thorium-based fission to a deployable technology."

GW Johnson · 2017-10-21 10:41:10

Responding to Spacenut in post 196 above, consider what distributed generation could do for an electric grid that loses 50% of the electricity in resistance losses. If you do that with rooftop solar, augmented where feasible with windchargers, using some battery storage, you (1) eliminate a lot of the grid loss, and (2) when the grid is down, if you open the connection switch, your rooftop solar can supply at least some power as a standalone unit, using the battery as power source to operate the controls to get it started.

The only thing that prevents doing it this way is byzantine bureaucratic rules, nothing technical. The problem with waveform and phase-matching was solved some years ago: you buy the quality AC waveform generator, not the cheapest ones.

GW

Terraformer · 2017-10-21 13:54:25

That would be good for Puerto Rico. If it's grid is going to be destroyed every decade, it might be worth just skipping it. Can we have solar installations that can be taken down before the hurricane hits, and store the batteries in a shelter?

SpaceNut · 2017-10-21 14:57:05

Elon Musk is working to bring his power brick to Puerto Rico as part of its infrastructure rebuild.

The Tesla CEO and the Puerto Rico governor exchange tweets about the potential for a new electricity system.

Elon Musk can rebuild Puerto Rico's power grid, if given the chance

Can Elon Musk fix Puerto Rico's broken power grid?

Tesla has built solar energy grids for islands before, such as Kauai in Hawaii. However, that island's population is about 70,000 people. Puerto Rico has 3.4 million residents.

SpaceNut · 2017-11-03 21:16:30

I was surprised to see this article with the current non belief that we are responsible for some of the climate change that we are seeing....
Trump-released gov't report: Climate change mostly human-caused a conclusion at odds with White House decisions to withdraw from a key international climate accord, champion fossil fuels and reverse Obama-era climate policies.

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#176 2017-05-23 11:34:50

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#177 2017-05-23 18:02:17

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#178 2017-06-01 19:30:19

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#179 2017-06-02 03:07:28

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#180 2017-06-02 14:32:30

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#181 2017-07-03 09:41:35

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#182 2017-07-03 10:24:55

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#183 2017-07-08 15:05:21

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#184 2017-07-10 20:22:30

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#185 2017-08-18 19:07:22

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#186 2017-08-18 20:33:01

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#187 2017-08-19 17:05:04

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#188 2017-08-22 16:58:01

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#189 2017-09-08 18:22:51

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#190 2017-09-11 17:40:51

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#191 2017-09-11 20:43:26

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#192 2017-09-26 16:59:28

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#193 2017-09-26 18:51:38

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#194 2017-09-27 05:58:50

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#195 2017-09-27 10:20:25

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#196 2017-09-27 17:24:28

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#197 2017-10-21 10:41:10

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#198 2017-10-21 13:54:25

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#199 2017-10-21 14:57:05

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#200 2017-11-03 21:16:30

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

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