Warmer Pacific Ocean Could Release Millions of Tons of Methane 329
vinces99 writes: Off the U.S. West Coast, methane gas is trapped in frozen layers below the seafloor. New research from the University of Washington shows that water at intermediate depths is warming enough to cause these carbon deposits to melt, releasing methane into the sediments and surrounding water. Researchers found that water off the coast of Washington is gradually warming at a depth of 500 meters (about a third of a mile down), the same depth where methane transforms from a solid to a gas. The research suggests that ocean warming could be triggering the release of a powerful greenhouse gas (abstract).
Scientists believe global warming will release methane from gas hydrates worldwide, but most of the focus has been on the Arctic. The new paper estimates that, from 1970 to 2013, some 4 million metric tons of methane has been released from hydrate decomposition off Washington's coast. That's an amount each year equal to the methane from natural gas released in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout off the coast of Louisiana, and 500 times the rate at which methane is naturally released from the seafloor.
Scientists believe global warming will release methane from gas hydrates worldwide, but most of the focus has been on the Arctic. The new paper estimates that, from 1970 to 2013, some 4 million metric tons of methane has been released from hydrate decomposition off Washington's coast. That's an amount each year equal to the methane from natural gas released in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout off the coast of Louisiana, and 500 times the rate at which methane is naturally released from the seafloor.
How about a straight answer? (Score:2, Redundant)
I've stayed clear of the whole climate change (or whatever you want to call it) debacle for the last decade, since it has become so politicized.
I don't have enough field knowledge to combat every ridiculous claim, coming from either side.
From what I understand, there is little doubt climate change is happening, the questions is to what extent the impact of humans may be responsible.
Is there any solid evidence for this? How reliable are the models? How can we have a reliable answer when we haven't been recor
Re:How about a straight answer? (Score:5, Informative)
The Cosmos season one Episode 13 explains it quite a bit. And earth is getting warmer since the industrial revolution in the absence of other factors. Most of the debate comes from industries who stand to loose from climate based taxes.
Think of it as the lead debacle.
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Seriously? You seriously believe that?
If there is no opposition, then let's do it already. Sounds like everybody is for it.
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again: you dont actually understand how carbon credits work. The people who make money of carben trading are the companies that trade the credits amongst themselves. its effectively a secondary stock market.
and again: your position is that cleaner air and a cleaner planet and healthier people is somehow a bad thing.
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http://valuesaustralia.com/blo... [valuesaustralia.com]
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And a few paid shills like Frank Spencer. Not that he has ever actually published these apparently devastating critiques of AGW in any peer reviewed journal.
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I take it as a good sign. The climate denialist faction must become pretty desperate if they have to resort to this type of argument.
Re:How about a straight answer? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh the poor, defenseless coal, gas and oil industry. Those poor companies, operating at thin margins with little resources, in far away countries that are nothing but desert, and god-forsaken tar sands. Yes, we must help those poor folk defend their livelihood from big business! Think of their children!
You're right, this is comedy gold :)
Re:How about a straight answer? (Score:4, Funny)
Most of the debate comes from industries who stand to loose from climate based taxes.
Or from the various powerful special interests that stand to gain from climate-based spending and taxes.
Here's the list of largest companies by revenue [wikipedia.org]. And that's excluding state owned companies, like Saudi Aramco [wikipedia.org]. I'm not seeing a lot of powerful special interest groups that stand to make money from climate-based spending and taxes in that list . But I sure see a lot who would like to keep the status quo.
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I'd never seen that list before. It's pretty illuminating. Thanks!
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So you are new to /. ? ...
Anti global warming propaganda dimished a bit last 2 years. Before that we had 20 years of US based anti AGW propaganda
I don't get your point.
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Seriously, if climate change really does affecting trillions of dollars in Big Oil revenue, then where's the vast tsunami of propaganda against climate change?
says one of the local fonts of said propoganda.
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If YOU had read the studies, you would know that the risk of lung cancer was a major talking point only for the anti-smoking marketeers, who felt that the very high risks of smoking induced heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were not scary enough to cause addicts to give up their habit.
To continue smoking or to give it up is the one decision that will have the greatest impact on a person's health twenty years and more down the road. Whether this is from the nicotine addiction or from a
Re:How about a straight answer? (Score:5, Informative)
Methane release also played a key role in the Permian Mass Extinction Event. [wikipedia.org]
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The impact associated with the Chicxulub crater is associated with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, not the Permian–Triassic.
The impact sites associated with the Permian–Triassic extinction are ones like the Bedout structure, but no impact sufficient (on its own) to explain the kind of extinction we see is known. The Permian–Triassic is special because it was so severe and because of the extreme impact on marine life. This is why the methane hydrate gasification hypothesis
wrong extinction (Score:3)
"First, what's pretty definite about the Permian Extinction is that a really big meteor hit near Chicxulub, in the gullf of Mexico, at the right time to contribute to it."
The Chicxulub impact was at the end of the Cretaceous 65 million years ago
The Permian ended 252 million years ago, and the initial event that started that extinction was mass vulcanism, but the methane release added to the CO2 warming, and over 95% of species were wiped out.
If man made C02 emmissions continued at the current rate for long
Re:How about a straight answer? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't have enough field knowledge to combat every ridiculous claim, coming from either side.
I'd be interested in hearing an example of a "ridiculous" claim from the side which thinks global warming is real.
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How about that Humans are 100% solely responsible? That's one example...
Science does not work like that (Score:5, Informative)
Humans are 100% responsible is a claim which makes headlines.
But have you read actual research.
It says, there is enough evidence to prove that most of the warming can be linked to human activities.
Science looks at evidence, and then presents a hypothesis. This is how it has been in the scientific method. When an evidence is discounted science looks at new evidence.
Science is never always right. Scientists make mistakes. And that is why its science. For example, some hypothesis about climate change was proved wrong. Does it mean that entire climate change argument is wrong?
Scientists will update their models, gather more evidence and then present the findings again. Being wrong does not discredit science. It merely improves it.
The problem is, people view science as they have viewed faith. There is no room for error or mistakes. So any process which makes mistakes is ridiculed. IPCC has made mistakes, so have other climate scientists. Some evidence may not be relevant or nonferrous. But it does not matter. We just move on.
There are some things about climate we do not understand. That is also acceptable. Sure, faith based systems have all the answers, but that is not science. You first have to understand what is science, and once you do, you will figure it all out.
Do not fear science. Embibe it. Question. But not because somebody told you to, or some rich publication says so. Question on your own merit. If you do not believe something to be true, instead of ridiculing and pointing to some site on the internet which says its wrong, ask the question.
What site X says, is it true? If not, why? You will find answers to all of it if you start looking for it.
But if you let your faith cloud your judgement, you will never understand. If you want to understand, question. Now ridicule.
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I understand how science works, thanks.
Can you link me to some conclusive research? Because I haven't found any. There seem to be just as many studies opposing that humans are responsible as there are studies implicating us.
Peer reviewed (Score:2)
Any study is valid if its peer reviewed. So first of all you need to apply this filter. You are not qualified to believe in a study. So people like you and me look for peer reviewed studies.
Secondly, you have to understand that a study is one study.
So if 20 sites quote Study X
and 2 sites quote study Y
It does not mean there are 2 studies Y and 20 studies X
Many times, these denier sites all quote one study, and in the cacophony confusion arises.
So whenever you find something, see if you can follow the breadcr
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Many times, these denier sites all quote one study, and in the cacophony confusion arises.
I would like to add that often these sites quote a study that does not say what the site claims it says, usuallly the contrary. So always check out the study, too. If you don't know the lingo, or can follow the science, there's usually some discussion to be found handling the misquoting of the paper.
As there very seldom is "conclusive" studies in anything -- and especially so in a cross-discipline field covering physics, astronomy and biology -- you'd be better off starting with Spencer Wearth's Discover
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It's neither true that everyone is qualified to pass judgement about a scientific field, nor that everyone should just accept what scientists say blindly. The truth is in the middle: It would be great IF everyone could check for themselves, but in practice this just isn't possible, so at some level you do indeed need to trust the consensus of the literature. Of course you put in measures (like peer review and other measures) to make sure the scientists are being honest. Do transgressions happen? Obviously.
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this is why i say you are a troll hiding beneath a veneer of "explain it to me", because evena cursory google search reveals tons of data and the sources of those data, including both direct measurements of trapped atmospehric gases from ancient rocks and ice cores, to the various proxies.
we dont just have 100 years of data, we have many hundreds of thousands. granted the resolution isnt as granular as the recent data (150 years of multiple daily local observations), expecially in proxies, but by its very n
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I understand how science works, thanks.
Can you link me to some conclusive research? Because I haven't found any. There seem to be just as many studies opposing that humans are responsible as there are studies implicating us.
Just as many? From Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature [iop.org]:
We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.
Based on those percentages, of the approximately 3977 papers published that took a position on AGW, about 3893 supported AGW and around 84 rejected AGW. So the appearance that their are "just as many" opposing studies is an illusion.
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This will be surprising to you I'm sure, but it turns you actually *can't* walk outside in Buffalo, put a finger in the air, and say anything definitive about the weather in Tahiti or Dubai or Moscow or Los Angeles.
Pic related: http://i.imgur.com/lZ7C4nY.jpg [imgur.com]
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You do realize the buffalo snow was lake effect snow right?
as in, it wasnt precipitation formed high in the atmosphere in clouds and falling to earth, but rather was water than came from the lake nearby?
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And what exactly is ridiculous about that?
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this is why youre a troll and your original comment is nothing but a thinly disguised "im not a scientist...but i dont believe the scientists"
Glad you asked (Score:5, Informative)
questions is to what extent the impact of humans may be responsible.
No, this is fairly easily measurable; we're dwarfing natural processes. Aside from natural seasonal variation the biggest natural contributor to atmospheric CO2 is volcanic activity, and the rate at which we're releasing carbon is completely unprecedented. You can figure it as equivalent to 1-2 Yellowstone supervolcano eruptions every year, or two Pinatubos per day. [wordpress.com] (the article quotes from a paper that I belive is available online but I can't find it at the moment).
The models are well-defined on the lower limit due to the physics of radiation; 3.7 W/m^2 increase per doubling of CO2 is a straightforward result of the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. That is equivalent to about 1 degree C global temp, and no one is worried about that. The issue is that water vapor is a much stronger greenhouse gas and you may have noticed that there's quite a bit of it lying around. Furthermore, air can hold exponentially more water vapor as it heats up. There's a lot of variation possible in the feedback loops but negative feedback is really unlikely.
Personally, I find the most useful way to approach the subject is to take a look at the history of climate science. Thousands of scientists did not wake up one day and accept the movement of the continents, neither did they accept that humans could have any affect on the climate without strong proofs. The Discovery of Global Warming [aip.org] goes over the history of global warming and has useful insights into what exactly a climate model is, and how even one-dimensional models can still tell us useful things even if their long-term predictions are not all that accurate
For a more detailed look into the science, you might check out Science of Doom [scienceofdoom.com], but a textbook on atmospheric physics may be more useful. Unfortunately, beyond the basics it starts to get complicated in a real hurry; unless you really want to start diving through papers and textbooks you will probably be best served by the IPCC report.
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I will be checking out the links you posted, and thank you for your answer.
However, if you could provide a short, succinct explanation as to how we know we are dwarfing natural processes, that would be great.
Where is the data coming from that we can assert that so confidently?
If the answer is in one of the links you posted I apologize, I won't be checking them out till the weekend.
Re:Glad you asked (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, pick up the IPCC or follow the Climate Change course at coursera. But one tl;dr is:
Carbon comes in various isotopes, mostly by action of the sun. So plants and us include an amount of C-14 because we interact with the atmosphere. Stuff like oil and gas contains no C-14 because it's been underground for millions of years.
By measurements we know that all the additional CO2 in the atmosphere is only C-12, no C-14 at all. So whereever it's coming from it's been out of contact with the atmosphere for a very long time. It is also replacing the O2 levels in exactly the amount expected if you were burning stuff. And its the wrong proportion for volcanos. And it's not coming from the oceans either (they're absorbing, not releasing).
Now, that narrows it down a lot. Draw your own conclusion.
This page is actually a really good summary: http://www.skepticalscience.com/anthrocarbon-brief.html
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Fantastic, thank you!
Re:Glad you asked (Score:5, Informative)
The amount of CO2 we release into the atmosphere is easily measurable, and it matches with the observed increase in CO2 in air, water, and biomass. It's about 40 billion tons per year now: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/GCP/carb... [ornl.gov]
The amount of CO2 naturally emitted by volcanoes and forest fires and such is a bit harder to calculate but you can get reasonable order-of-magnitude estimates. Volcanoes, for instance, emit about 0.3 billion tons per year. There are lots of sources on the US geological survey page: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/haza... [usgs.gov]
No matter how you slice it, even the most outlandish estimates for CO2 from natural sources fall 1-2 orders of magnitude short of the amount of CO2 necessary to explain the global increase.
There are natural CO2 absorbing sources but the additional amount they absorb each year is tiny.
CO2 Emissions Estimates (Score:4, Informative)
Here [unipi.it] is the paper I mentioned, and here is the USGS's take on the matter. [usgs.gov] From what I understand there are a number of ways to estimate human CO2 output, one being to add up all the fossil fuels [ornl.gov] that are being consumed globally, which is likely not terribly accurate but we're still talking about two or three orders of magnitude difference. Another estimation method uses carbon isotope ratios [skepticalscience.com]. I get the impression that estimating volcanic emissions is somewhat difficult [usgs.gov], but there's a fair amount of continuous monitoring for various reasons. Terrence Gerlach, a vulcanologist with the USGS, seems to have done quite a bit of research into the subject. The nice thing about scholarly publications is that they have to tell you where the numbers come from; if one wants to find out more about either part of the estimates then you just follow the references.
In summation, parts of the estimates come from direct measurements and the other parts seem to be estimates based on fossil fuel consumption. I am sure that there's a whole world of study out there for estimating various factors.
As an aside, humans are still far from matching or exceeding the most violent outgassings that have resulted from the formation of Large Igneous Provinces. I believe the Deccan Traps and Siberian Traps released about 3 orders of magnitude more CO2 than humanity has liberated. While our current burn rate would have us match those outgassings in about a thousand years, I don't believe that our fossil fuel reserves are projected to last that long. However, Large Igneous Provinces generally took millions of years to form, not hundreds; there is every reason to believe that what we are doing to the planet is unprecedented. On the other other hand, we're mostly skipping the problems with particulate matter and sulfides that came along with volcanic eruptions. For what it's worth.
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Natural carbon processes are neutral.
By far the the biggest aberrations in the natural world are volcanoes.
Volcanic activity varies year to year, but volcanoes emit 0.3 billion (or 300 million) tons of CO2 per year on average.
In comparison human activity releases in excess of 40 billion tons of CO2. Every year.
And its only increasing.
Imagine a cube 18 miles on a side (more than 95000 feet tall). Made of CO2.
That's what 40 billion tons of CO2 looks like.
That's what we put into the atmospehere every year.
Whil
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Actually the question isn't to what extent humans are responsible. We know that humans are mostly, if not entirely, responsible. This is not controversial. It's also not controversial that over the next century the planet is going to warm by at least a few degrees, regardless of any actions we take (the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has already 'locked in' a certain amount of warming). In all likelihood, this is going to continue for at least a millenium, again regardless of what we do now. This is unless
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Actually the question isn't to what extent humans are responsible. We know that humans are mostly, if not entirely, responsible. This is not controversial.
It is controversial though, as it is contested a lot. How do we know that humans are mostly, if not entirely, responsible?
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It's not 'contested a lot'. The only people who 'contest' it are US republicans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
FTA: "It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of observed warming since 1950, with the level of confidence having increased since the fourth report."
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Yes, the IPCC conclusion and report is what is contested.
If you think contesting it is stupid that is one thing, but to deny it is being contested...
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Again, that doesn't really count as being contested. By that logic, it's also a subject of controversy as to whether the dog did indeed eat little Johnny's homework. Also, it's contested whether the sky is indeed blue - a colorblind person sees it as gray.
It doesn't count as contest if the people contesting it are ignorant and/or are doing it for political purposes.
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When you add up all of the natural factors that affect temperatures it's clear that we should be in a slight cooling trend right now but the warming continues. That alone implies that human contributions are responsible for all of the warming lately.
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We know that humans are mostly responsible because:
- the isotope type of carbon in the atmosphere can be measured, and it matches the output you get when burning fossil fuels and not other origins
- the amount of carbon in the atmosphere that is measured matches the output you would expect by burning the fossil fuels we know are being used globally
Now the heating up of the atmosphere is not a simple relation to the fossil fuel CO2 output since there's all kinds of heat sinks that we didn't realize the Earth
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Geoengineering won't solve the problem, it will just replace the problem with another problem. That said, it's possible that the new problem will be easier to deal with than the problem of CO2. In that case I'm all for it, but we need to first figure out more about the effects of climate change before we make any hasty decisions.
Sadly a lot of groups are going to see geoengineering as a way to further their own agendas, so it's possible that that solution too will become corrupted.
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It has had negligible effect on Conservative Republican thought processes, hence it doesn't exist.
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Excuse me, but you can't wave away controversy by asserting that there is no controversy. That is intellectual dishonesty. Believers (NOT accusing you personally) also engage in tainted discussion every time they invoke the mantra of "denial" and "denier". It's a loaded word, and is INTENDED to serve as a loaded word, and is taken from a playbook. The appropriate word is "unbeliever" or "nonbeliever" or "disbeliever". If that degree of honest discussion ever becomes prevalent on the side of the believers, a
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You are asking a group of people who believe the world is no more than 5,000 years old and there is no evidence (in their eyes a serious intellectual way) that humans evolved from primates for a straight answer why they do not believe? Especially since those that due are liberal which are obviously wrong all the time in their opinion just look at obamacare etc so there is zero credibility.
It is an embarrassment such a solid group even exists in my country! I just can not fathom this in the 21st century peop
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I don't think you are going to get a simple, straight answer from anybody. One side, the scientists, are scientists and therefore always qualify their statements, for the simple reason that they want to give correct answers to some very complex questions, and the other side is not interested in the truth or correctness of what they say, they just want to make it impossible for the lay person to understand things enough to realise that we need to take action.
Try to step a little bit back from what you read i
Re:How about a straight answer? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How about a straight answer? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't have to believe in climate change to realize dumping large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is a problem. Just look at the acidifying oceans. Yes, it isn't methane (hence the difference in name and molecular structure). The implication of your statement is that since we have no good way of separating out the influence of man made climate change and natural climate change, we can forget about the controversy until the science resolves it. The science around the acidifying ocean is not in doubt except possibly by Sen. Sessions who never met a scientific fact he couldn't contradict.
You do recall the ocean, yes? Base the food chain? Screwing it up means you eventually go hungry.
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From what I understand, there is little doubt climate change is happening, the questions is to what extent the impact of humans may be responsible.
That is not the question.
The question is, now that climate change has become inevitable, what should we do about it?
The answer varies considerably for different values of "we". However for most values of "we", it would make sense to do what can be done to reduce the greenhouse gases our human activities produce. For while this might not make a difference, it might make a big difference since everything suggests that that the climate's near future is characterized by one or more tipping points, and even a
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The fact it even is politicized is stupid.
Science is science and facts are facts.
They dont care about a person's politics.
the only place where climate change or human responsiblity is even a "debate" is in the political realm.
In the real world and among climate* scientists it's not a debate.
yes there is solid evidence.
yes the models are accurate.
yes we have sufficient data to show it.
CO2 levels are at their high point in nearly a million years (humans have only been around for 2 MY).
Sea levels have risen 8
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That sounds interesting. Although it will likely only add to my confusion.
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No actual science went into the creation of the NIPCC.
No actual peer review by actual scientists went into the NIPCC.
What did go into it was substantial sums of money from fossil fuel companies.
The NIPCC is not a scientific document, but a peice of political ideologically driven garbage meant to defend the fossil fuel industry.
http://www.climatesciencewatch... [climatesciencewatch.org]
Using the NIPCC as your "proof" that scientists are wrong is like trying to convince a scientist to believe in God using the Bible.
Its so dumb it's no
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Again: Incorrect.
Solar activity has no correleation whatsoever.
We are currently in a period of LOWER solar activity.
If solar activity were teh culprit we should expect to see lower temperatures.
We do not.
Let me state it again clearly for you just so you do not misunderstand:
For the last 35 years solar activity and global temperature have been going in opposite directions.
Read http://www.skepticalscience.co... [skepticalscience.com]
It even includes a handy graph which shows both solar activity and global temperatures over the same
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Yeah...just trying to understand everything better without having to take an entire climate change course.
I mean, I pretty much accept the IPCC report because on subjects I am ignorant on, I will lean towards the scientific consensus.
Doesn't mean I don't want to know more....
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Here is a graph [www.ipcc.ch] from the IPCC AR5 that summarizes the different sources of radiative forcing since 1880. It's from Chapter 8 of the IPCC AR5 Working Group 1 report. [www.ipcc.ch]
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Pretty much every prediction they've made to date have been proven wrong ...
Maybe it has more to do with your lack of understanding of what real scientists are actually predicting and the time scale of those predictions than any bad predictions by the scientists. Also maybe your judgement of "wrong" is not scientifically justified when you take into account the uncertainty attached to the predictions. Finally if you are getting the supposed predictions from bloggers rather than directly from the scientific literature they are often expressed out of context and in a hyperbolic man
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Where I live would be under water after being scoured away by hurricanes. If the doomsday people had of been right in their predictions from the 80s.
I also see you and Spy Handler were smacked because you don't accept the doomsday religion.
That pretty much sums it up. GLOBAL WARMING BECAUSE "STFU"
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and too lazy to spend the hundreds of hours it would take for me to properly educate myself on all the issues.
This is the only thing you got right.
Yes, you're too lazy to actually know what youre talking about.
That's why you're spouting misinformatoin and BS rather than actual facts.
"Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate"
http://www.skepticalscience.co... [skepticalscience.com]
"City sensors account for very few of the data sources and even when city sensors are omitted the trend is apparent."
"Multiple sources of data all show the same thing."
"The temperature increase is not an artifac
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well, if they're not claiming catastrophic climate change being imminent any day now then they're just meteorologists. and meteorologists are staying out of it.
so the scientists that are climate scientists - and only climate scientists at that - have a bias that it's going to happen "soon" and is going to be huge. the hockey stick model. and every year they find more and more of things that will might cause it to be more severe and more severe.
just makes it kind of hard to have a real opinion. except that
And the title of the nature channel special (Score:2)
we do not need fracking (Score:2)
Nature just fucking proved it.
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In Soviet Russia, Nature fracks *you*!
Save Our Backsides (Score:2)
You know what this sounds like, right? (Score:2)
I know the methane clathrate gun hypothesis was disproven, but the difference between that and this becomes academic beyond certain amounts of warming.
The return of Cthulhu might be really bad... (Score:3, Insightful)
For those interested, this appears to be the paper. [wiley.com] The paper itself is paywalled; you can look at the supplementary material, which includes the diagrams. Oddly, the paper does not seem to be online at the university, even though other papers by the various authors are. Why do I know this? Because I wanted to see the temperature data that they used, so I went hunting.
The paper implies that the temperature data is very noisy, but that they were able to extract a signal anyway. The raw data should be provided in the supplementary material, so that people could attempt to replicate/verify this essential finding. Of course, the raw data are no where to be found. So we have no way to check.
Personally, I'm tired of "science" like this. If you're going to make a claim, put your damn data out there where anyone can see it. Raw data, a clear description of how you processed it, program code if you wrote a program. Otherwise, you're no better than the astrologist pontificating about the influence of Venus on your dog's love life.
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One must note that environmental science is best at observation, and typically poor at prognostication.
One must note that slashdotters are best at making unsubstantiated assertions, and typically poor at well argued comments.
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Re:"Expected" to release methane (Score:5, Insightful)
in no way negates the point of his statement.
There is no point to his/her statement; it's just a (pretty random) assertion. There is no reasoned point, no subtantiation, no reference, not even an anecdote that attempts to convince as to why 'one must note' this. So, when it comes to prognostication are environmental scientists hacks? Evil? Lazy? Incompetent? All of the above? Tell us! Don't leave us hanging!
Re:"Expected" to release methane (Score:5, Funny)
I prefer a limerick.
There once was a statement from popo
It really sounded quite loco
The thing had no point
AC has him coined
As a hater of the treaty of Kyoto
Re:"Expected" to release methane (Score:4, Informative)
Nonsense. Here's a list of 17 correct prognostications [bartonpaullevenson.com] and their confirmations, including full citations.
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I'm incredibly lousy at making unsubstantiated assertions! Never made one, never will! There, have I defended my comments enough?
Only CO2 matters (Score:2)
See eg "Fossil fuel's future", http://www.sciencemagazinedigi... [sciencemag...igital.org]
Counter-intuitive in the case of methane.
Re: (Score:3)
Methane is more effective at heat trapping than CO2.
Methane also breaks down into CO2.
Methane matters.
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Without gases which absorb IR, your hot gas would have been able to radiate its heat out to space even without rising in the atmosphere. In that case, even the surface would be able to radiate its heat directly to space.
But in the presence of gases which absorb IR, the s
Re:"Expected" to release methane (Score:4, Insightful)
If I observe water temperature rising in a pot of water while I keep adding fuel to the fire, it doesn't take great prognostication skills to predict boiling water in the near future. So your observation is irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: "Expected" to release methane (Score:2)
There's also a lot of unknowns about whether the CH4 even makes it to the surface. There's a lot of microbial activity between the sea floor and surface that loves to eat methane and release CO2:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki... [wikipedia.org]
http://link.springer.com/artic... [springer.com]
Tons of CO2 is a lot better in the atmosphere than tons of CH4.
Re:"Expected" to release methane (Score:5, Informative)
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Have you ever heard of the Pascal wager?
The (un)likelyhood of an unwelcome outcome should be weighted by the severity of harm if it happens, to make a rational informed decision.
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You say that like it means it might not.
If I park a car at the top of a hill and let off the parking brake...I expect it to roll downhill. Do you think it wouldnt?
If I toss a chunk of ice into a fire...I expect it to melt. Do you think it wouldnt?
Re: (Score:3)
The Methane Clathrate gun [wikipedia.org] is a pretty well known and understood situation. Methane Clathrates exist, the temperature at which they're released is understood, and the impact of all that methane on the atmosphere is also well understood. The only question that's still open is when exactly ocean temperatures will reach the range in which the gun will be triggered. Just hope you aren't around for it.
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one must note that all science is observation.
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Back in the real world, we call people who cherry pick time ranges to get the answer they want liars.
Deal with the science, and quit repeating the lies of others. They are dishonest, you are merely a fucking retard.
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Back in the real world, all the computer models completely failed to predict the last twenty years or so of nothing much happening. Just as the models that predicted a new ice age in the 70s completely failed to predict twenty years of warming.
What models? Computer models from the 70s? Citation please. Or did you mean the pop science in the media? It was never a real theory, it was entertainment.
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just because you say it doesnt make it true.
http://www.skepticalscience.co... [skepticalscience.com]
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Oh my god. The quality of any model is much more dependent on the understanding of the system and the mathematics governing it, than it ever will be on the computational horsepower you throw at it. If anything the need for computational capacity indicates how lacking a model is. The most powerful models of the physical universe can all be run on pencil and paper.
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Woosh sailed over your head.
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disproven so many times that the amount of ignorance required to believe it is no longer even funny.
If solar cycles were driving it, and they are not, then we should be cooling right now.
There is zero correleation between solar cycles and the warming trend.
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You keep saying that, but that doesnt make it true.
First, the Sun:
This is a solar activity compared to global temperatures:
http://www.skepticalscience.co... [skepticalscience.com]
Solar activity has actually declined over the past 40 years, while temperatures have gone up.
I'd challenge you to explain that, except you cant. And neither can the people you mention.
And the fact you even mention them shows your level of ignorance.
Piers Corbyn in particular claims to make accurate weather predictions up to a year in advance.
He isnt even
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Long live the sun god!
He sure is a fun god!
Ra! Ra! Ra!
Another energy source (Score:2)
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The oil industry wants you to burn petrochemicals instead. It is more profitable and less of it than Methane.
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That's not entirely true, Japan has a program now to attempt to harvest methane. If they find a way to do it cheaply enough, poorer nations will be use using it. However, burning it still results in extra carbon in the atmosphere, although admittedly a less dangerous form. Some of the big oil companies also have small projects to see if it viable.
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Less dangerous form? Really? CO2 is CO2. If what you mean is really that there is a lower QUANTITY of CO2 released by producing one joule of electric or mechanical energy by burning CH4 than by burning oil or coal, just say so.
Also, I find it annoying when people refer to "carbon" in the atmosphere when they really mean CO2. Does anyone say there is a lot of hydrogen in the atmosphere because of the water vapor? Compounds behave chemically completely differently from their elemental constituents.
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Instead of complaining, tell the damn people with the money to learn how to harvest the stuff.
Tell me how to harvest it please, and I will become one of the people with money.