h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Fact 1: Global warming is 5% science and 95% propaganda.

Fact 2: The greenhouse gas with by far the greatest effect is water (this has been mentioned elsewhere in this forum). When all jet flights were stopped subsequent to 9/11, the average temperature of this planet fell by 1 degree C.

Fact 3: Meterologists have only been plotting trends in global warming for 20 years or so. They've detected a rise, but so what? This is a miniscule, insignificant part of the graph for an atmosphere that has radically changed composition in the long run and undergoes an ice age every 100,000 years or so.

Fact 4: We are indeed due a slide into another ice age. Don't go out and buy a new parka yet - it will probably take about 500 years for the temperature to fall - but there is a good probability that an ice age will be preceded by a rise in temperature. That'll screw up the ice-cap theorists.

Fact 5: Life is hugely adaptable. Bacteria live on gold seams, arsenic deposits, and other minerals that are totally useless to most organisms. Darwin got it right 130 years ago - life will adapt very rapidly to its conditions.

Fact 6: (I have argued this one blue in the face and I still believe it's true). Humans and their environment form a dynamic equilibrium and Le Chatelier's principle applies. The principle states that any dynamic equilibrium will act to remove a constraint and has successfully been applied to politics, sociology, chemistry, philosophy and an amazing range of fields. Whatever we can pump into our environment will, over time, restore an equilibrium - things do not spiral out of control.

As a somewhat cynical addition to the above (and I apologise), it has recently been demonstrated very well that the biosphere is many times more powerful than humans and their technology.

B

Fact 3...

This might be ignorant, but though I can agree that global warming has only been actively plotted for the last twenty years or so, is it not true that the weather has been monitored (especially in the west) for approx. a century (for the purpose of weather forcasts)?

Though the temperature increase in the last 20 years may have been minimal, how does this compare with the previous data?

Yours,

Discus

"Fact 5: Life is hugely adaptable. Bacteria live on gold seams, arsenic deposits, and other minerals that are totally useless to most organisms. Darwin got it right 130 years ago - life will adapt very rapidly to its conditions."

Indeed it will.

The problem is: Will any of that life be us?

Some of it may be.

The effects of changes in the climate over the next few hundreds years will probably include flooding of low-lying regions, increases in "disaster-type" weather and other geological phenomena in areas which are densely populated (isn't the fault line near Tokyo overdue for a major earthquake?), and possible changes to the nature and scope of polar icecaps in both positive and negative directions. Death tolls will probably rise as major areas of population are adversely affected.

It is a truism that the Earth will support exactly the number of people living on it at the time. There is no such thing as "overpopulation", because the excess population that local resources cannot support will, unfortunately, die.

It is possible that there will be some migrations away from the current Arctic and temperate zones to areas that, whilst currently arid, semi-arid, or desert, become more fertile, due to climatic shifts. That'll be an interesting one to watch: as the countries which currently try as hard as possible to exclude people from the third world start knocking on their door and say, "um...sorry about the last 500 years...can we come in please?"

RF

Tony Blair exiled to Siberia.

B

Master B made some statements. Here is my response.

“Fact 1: Global warming is 5% science and 95% propaganda.”

That’s not a fact, it’s a point of view. I don’t disagree that 95% of everything is coloured with inherent biases, whether it is arguments for or against global warming. So? Do you have evidence that the science is wrong?

“Fact 2: The greenhouse gas with by far the greatest effect is water (this has been mentioned elsewhere in this forum). When all jet flights were stopped subsequent to 9/11, the average temperature of this planet fell by 1 degree C.”

Such a phenomenon is both profound and newsworthy. A couple of days’ respite from airplane flights in the United States did that? Why haven’t I heard about it before, and which scientific body came up with that number?

And when did water become a greenhouse gas? Water *vapour* has some greenhouse properties but these are minimal compared to the effects of the true greenhouse gases. And it doesn’t gobble up ozone.

“Fact 3: Meterologists have only been plotting trends in global warming for 20 years or so. They've detected a rise, but so what? This is a miniscule, insignificant part of the graph for an atmosphere that has radically changed composition in the long run and undergoes an ice age every 100,000 years or so.”

Twenty years sounds awful short to me, but I’ll let it pass. Palaeoclimatologists have been studying climate changes covering a much larger period of time with ice cores, sediments and other indicators. In fact they’re the ones who have done the studies that allow you to state with some scientific accuracy that the atmosphere has radically changed in composition in the long run.

“Fact 5: Life is hugely adaptable. Bacteria live on gold seams, arsenic deposits, and other minerals that are totally useless to most organisms. Darwin got it right 130 years ago - life will adapt very rapidly to its conditions.”

Yes indeedy. Unfortunately we live in current time, not geologic time. The statement that you make that “ …life will adapt very rapidly to its conditions.” applies to geologic time and is of no consequence to me or my grandchildren or my great^100 grandchildren. Unless, of course you believe in Lamarckian evolution of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

“Fact 6: (I have argued this one blue in the face and I still believe it's true). Humans and their environment form a dynamic equilibrium and Le Chatelier's principle applies. The principle states that any dynamic equilibrium will act to remove a constraint and has successfully been applied to politics, sociology, chemistry, philosophy and an amazing range of fields. Whatever we can pump into our environment will, over time, restore an equilibrium - things do not spiral out of control.”

Ah, but things do spiral out of control. It is disingenuous to state a physical law concerning chemical reactions and try to apply it to other areas. It can be done, of course, but it loses any scientific validity it had in its original field of application. Climate is mainly affected by affected physical factors, not chemical reactions, and chaos theory is a much better paradigm than Le Chatelier’s principle.

“As a somewhat cynical addition to the above (and I apologise), it has recently been demonstrated very well that the biosphere is many times more powerful than humans and their technology.”

I assume you are referring to the Asian tsunami? That was a product of the geosphere, not the biosphere, though admittedly it did have a drastic effect on the biosphere.

I am not convinced that we have enough data at this point to distinguish between a change in climate and a change in weather, though the melt rate of the arctic and Antarctic ice caps has me almost convinced now that we are undergoing a climate change. Will strict adherence to the Kyoto protocols stop or reverse the damage? I dunno, but I suspect that the answer is no. Should we try? Yes, because doing nothing in the face of the (admittedly obscure) evidence means bowing down and accepting the biggest darn tragedy of the commons ever.

Fact 1: OK, I will grant that the statistics are made up. But it's still a topic wildly overblown by governments and media.

Fact 2: Water not a greenhouse gas? Are you kidding me? Molecule for molecule, water has twice as much greenhouse effect as carbon dioxide, methane or ozone.

NONE of the greenhouse gases 'gobble up ozone', as you put it. That is the job of CFCs and similar, whose greenhouse effect in the troposphere is minimal, but which are bombarded in the upper stratossphere to form free radicals which catalyse the decomposition of ozone.

Fact 3: Global warming has only been linked to climate changes in the last 20 years. It is true that we have records going back a thousand years or so, and no-one thinks it strange to mention that in the 1200s there were thirty years or so of average temperatures higher than today. The point I am making is that why should a rise of 2 degrees in the last twenty years be any cause for concern, when we know temperatures have been higher than this in very recent (by geological standards) history.

The archaeologists who can indeed retrieve atmospheric samples from ice floes and the like will only back this up - our climate is unpredictable.

Fact 5: Humanity seems to be taking rather a selfish point of view here. So what if we cannot adapt in time to major changes? It is my suspicion that we are now sufficiently technologically advanced to ensure the survival of the species. But at least we're all in the same boat.

B

Sorry, I missed a rebuttal.

I will confess to not being an expert with the maths, and I suspect fewer people are than who claim to be, but as far as I can understand it Chaos Theory describes climate changes well and accurately (or not-so-accurately, because that's the point of CT) on smaller scales. Le Chatelier can still be applied to the grand scale. Certainly on the molecular and medium levels, things spiral out of control, and this is what causes typhoons, tornadoes and the like. On the very largest scale, however, the atmosphere is still an equilibrium, otherwise it would be 100% carbon dioxide, 100% methane, or 0% existant. These are the logical results of applying a spiral out of control.

B

On the very largest scale, however, the atmosphere is still an equilibrium, otherwise it would be 100% carbon dioxide, 100% methane, or 0% existant. These are the logical results of applying a spiral out of control.

I'm not sure how true this is. After all CO2 is still being absorbed by plants (mostly algae´, not rainforest as many people think) so CO2 would never reach a 100% level. The problem is that the level might be rising(as some scientists claim). But because there is quite a lot of air around, it takes a lot of extra CO2 to increase the level significantly. Which would mean there isn't an equilibrium but the situation is changing...

About water being a greenhouse gas. This is definately true, and it is a bigger one than CO2. The problem however is the light that is reflected back of the earth after it has hit the earths surface. The main wavelenghts af this light are exactly in the area in which CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas. (whithout going into details: each kind of mulecule has specific wavelenghts of light that it absorbs. Water absorbs a lot in the main areas of visible light (of the top of my head) This makes it an important greanhousegas. CO2 however absorbs a lot of energy in higher frequencies, which match the light frequencies of the reflected light.)
Hope that made sense to anyone other than me.

Rod

Well, nearly, but not quite. Instead of light, you mean electromagnetic radiation.

Heat is carried on infra-red radiation, which is of a lower frequency than visible light. All greenhouse gases absorb radiation of these wavelengths, which makes the molecules vibrate faster, which in turn produces the friction that warms the atmosphere.

Rainforests and other plants are not really a net CO2 sink. Sure, they store it up by producing cellulose. But when the plants die, they decay and release that CO2 back to the atmosphere (or more accurately, the bacteria doing the decaying work release it back). The best CO2 sink is the oceans themselves, in which CO2 will dissolve at an equilibrium level. Some CO2 is then removed by marine organisms to make shells and suchlike.

B

>Well, nearly, but not quite. Instead of light, you mean electromagnetic radiation.

Yes I did, but I didn't want to complicate things any further. And, after all, it's all the same stuff, it's just wavelengts etc...

But I stand corrected

Rod